Cartography: How do they do it?

[Emiricol]

Lordnightshade, that campaign map is truly amazing. How long did it take altogether? And are there mailing lists for making maps like that with Photoshop?

 

[Lordnightshade]

carpedavid, the link you gave doesn't work for me...

Emiricol, that map took me a while to do. As for a mailing list on that sort of thing there may be one but I don't know about it.

What I did was pencil the map first, setting up all the terrain details and the shapes of the contenients. Then I scanned it into photoshop.

This is where the hard work came in. I started by laying down the base colors in areas I wanted to show different terrain features, then I went in with several different shades and the air brush.

After I did that it still looked pretty sloppy with chunks of color everywhere, so I attacked it with the smudge tool... lots of smudge tool... and I used the burn tool in areas I wanted darker. But the smudge tool is what got all those cool terrain effects.

It took me several weeks working on it off an on. I don't know how many hours exactly maybe 12 or so...

 

[Eternalknight]

For an example of what a relatively unskilled user can do with Campaign Cartographer, click here

 

[Lordnightshade]

Bump!

 

[Tashtego]

AutoRealm

I'd like to recommend AutoRealm, an open source mapping program. I've seen some nice things done with it. Check out http://www.gryc.ws/autorealm.htm and download it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/autorealm/

 

[shadowlight]

Photoshop for Dungeon Maps

Lordnightshade,

I use photoshop mostly for dungeon encounter-level maps... I print them out and use with minis for most of my games. Here are some examples:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dndprep/files/Maps/
and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cantongeeks/files/

 

[Clumsy Bob]

Bad links on the last post, you need to be a member to view the files

 

[Fast Learner]

Re: Photoshop for Dungeon Maps

I use photoshop mostly for dungeon encounter-level maps... I print them out and use with minis for most of my games. Here are some examples:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dndprep/files/Maps/
and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cantongeeks/files/

The ones at dndprep look almost exactly like the ones I make, and like some that I'll be releasing on the web around the end of the year.

Very cool!

 

[kenjib]

Lordnightshade, thanks for the great tips on how you created that map. It looks fantastic!

Anyone have any other tips? Shadowlight, how did you make those nice maps with Photoshop?

 

[Lordnightshade]

I would like to know how you got the nice grid in those maps Shadowlight... what do you do in PhotoShop to get those?