If you create your own maps digitally, what do you use as map-making software?
Personally, I am fond of Inkscape, as it gives me maximum flexibility and the vector-based approach is great for scaling and rotating things.
Honorable mention for small village photos and maps: Tiny Glade.
Pencil and paper.
I use inkscape for overland maps. I use Watabou Medieval City generator for city maps. I use Dungeon Alchemist for dungeon/indoor battlemaps.
Inkscape enjoyer here. The vector based tech makes it not that limited to my skill at drawing but rather how I can manipulate the vectors and points. Make things thinner or wider, change a curvature etc. And nothing is set in stone. I’m using it for everything. World maps, region maps, settlements, dungeons. You name it. For dungeons (and inside locations) I gathered all my most used assets to save time.
I used worldographer for my world map for my current campaign.
I’ve used inkarnate in the past for battle maps, but I was not happy with performance when you have a lot of assets.
I recently got Canvas of Kings which seems awesome and perfect for what I want but I have been pretty busy and haven’t had a chance to make any completed maps in it yet.
For large-scale maps, a combination of Inkscape, Gimp, and Wilbur for me! The general process is:
- Rough out landmasses in Inkscape
- Rough out a heightmap on those landmasses in Gimp
- Simulate erosion on Wilbur
- Bring it back to Gimp for colouring and manual details
- Back to Inkscape for labelling
I made this as a fancied-up version of a Quiet Year game I played with some friends https://i.imgur.com/gB3sIEs.jpeg
For smaller-scale ones like D&D battle maps, just plain old Gimp (or sometimes some layout with Inkscape beforehand, and also sometimes some textures made in Inkscape). I made this version of Biete Mariam, a church in Ethiopia https://i.imgur.com/nz1ysvY.jpeg
I’ve been eyeing krita for fancy brushwork - GIMP is primarily photomanipulation software, and doesn’t really hold a candle when it comes to brushes. Have you tried it out?
Technically yes, I have, but it was so long ago now that my experience is probably too outdated to be useful. I remember it being fine, but I was already familiar with Gimp and wasn’t doing enough to justify learning a new program. I am drawing everything with a mouse as well, which probably affects the way that I interact with features quite a bit.
Like I said, though, I expect that my experience is not very reflective of the current state of the program, so I might need to try it again
I use Gimp and just hand-draw everything. I’ve learned that players don’t really care too much about maps, so going above and beyond with high quality, ultra detailed stuff is wasted effort unless you derive joy from the creation process.
I really like Inkarnate. Very reasonable yearly subscription and a great tool. Obvious caveat that if you want something completely custom built, rather than using their textures and artwork, something else will probably work better. For my needs it works though.
I settled on Campaign Cartographer 3+.
It has a steep learning curve, but seems to be the most powerful tool by far.
Inkarnate works great and has a lot of usable styles and assets.
A couple years back I got illwinter floorplan [Link[(http://www.illwinter.com/floorplan/) on steam sales. Which for “indoor map” fits my need.
I don’t play D&D, in general do not use “battle map” but still sometimes like to take time to visualise/describe a situation (and because it can be fun to do)I’ve been using Wonderdraft. It’s resource heavy for my little laptop, but it’s easy to use.
