Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Mapping Software

This is topic Mapping Software in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by WBSchmidt (Member # 8533) on :

Does anyone here use (or is aware of) a software program that is good for drawing maps (both exterior and interior)? I want to start mapping out some of my world and some of the cities and buildings where I have events taking place. If any of these have printing capabilities that would be great also.

-- William

Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :

I use a variety of programs for mapmaking, two-dimensional and three-dimensional mapping.

A vector drawing program, CorelDraw
A vector tracing program, CorelTrace
A bitmap program, CorelPaint
3-D rendering program, Anim8or, freeware
Interstellar space mapping program, Celestia, freeware

I've used Adobe products for vector drawing too. I prefer Corel. Adobe Illustrator has vector tracing and drawing capabilities.

In Anim8or, I render scaled physical features, mountain ranges, buildings, landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, rivers, oceans, in depth, height, and length. Anim8or is also an animation program. Flyby, flythrough, flyover, flyunder views of scenes, moving figures, moving vehicles, are nifty. The program has a steep learning curve and heavily uses RAM resources. I run it on 2 Gigs.

Celestia supports scripting and object importing. Create a 3-D model in Anim8or, import the object into Celestia, write a file for where, when, and how it renders, write a script for a flyby of the object and see the object in orbit around a distant star's Jovian planet. Celestia has a steep learning curve and consumes RAM resources too.

I'm sure there are programs that do mapmaking with more robust user-friendly features than vector programs, but I like the flexibility of being able to control every aspect of the input and output.

All of them output to print, directly, or indirectly as JPEGs. Anim8or, Celestia, and CorelPaint output to AVI formats also, no sound though. For dubbing in sound on video, I go to other programs.

[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited May 09, 2009).]

Posted by Tiergan (Member # 7852) on :

About 6 months ago this question came up, and somone suggested Autorealm, and I got addicted to it. It can be drawn to scale, all the pieces(terrain, cities, streets and such) It even will calculate the distance between points. Takes a little to get used to, but I would imagine all programs do. don't remember exactly the website, but a simple search for the name should pull it up.

Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :

http://www.profantasy.com/

Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :

I've used Photoshop, with neat instructions from Zombie Nirvana Games

Posted by Rhaythe (Member # 7857) on :

I prefer cheap (as in free) alternatives:

Blender - 3D modeling
Gimp - Photo Editing
Scribus - Vector art

Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :

Autorealm - http://www.autorealm.org/

Also check out this: http://www.rpgweb.com/index.html

Here's some info at Liberty Hall's wiki:

http://wiki.libertyhallwriters.org/doku.php?id=howto:worldbuilding#software

[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited May 11, 2009).]