The bezier drawing tool does a good job and allows better control over the results. I do resort to handdrawn stuff from time to time. For that I draw it, and scan it. Then I put it on a separate layer and draw over it using the bezier tool.

As for overkill, it is true that most of the features are not needed for map drawing. The essentials, in my opinion are:

1) Bezier Lines and Closed shapes.
2) Layers with top to bottom sorting
3) Texture fill with transparency as a bonus
4) Symbol management
5) Shape modification tools like welding two shaps, trimming shapes with another shape, finding the intersection and so on. Intersection of two shapes is very useful in drawing a forest right up the coastline.

Both Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW do these far easier than any mapping program out there including profantasy. Well I will say that symbol management for Corel bogs down when you try copy and paste with a large number on the sheet.

However Dudjinni, Profantasy, has an advantage in their symbol libraries. But thanks to Dudjinni rise in popularity many symbols are now full color png files that can be used in any drawing program.

Plus Dubjinni and Profantasy seem to be more advanced in how they combine vector drawing and bitmap effects. For those who don't know, it used to be that when you dealing with a bitmap editor like Photoshop you had these tools that you could light, fade, soften various parts of a bitmap or a photo. Vector drawing programs were not very capable in this regard. A lot of people export separate layers as multiple bitmaps into photomap. Do whatever processing they need and then combine them all back into one bitmap.

But now many programs allow you to post process your vector drawing right in the software itself and use a variety of bitmap effects. So now it very easy to add cool effects like colored map borders like this.

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Another use would be in Sithson map in a previous post. WIth bitmap tools he can merge the shaded contours into a pleasing continuous fill like the ones on this example.

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Both of these were done by Profantasy with Campaign Cartographer 3. They have many more tools to do different effects. http://www.profantasy.com

Enjoy
Rob Conley

Quote from: estarThe bezier drawing tool does a good job and allows better control over the results. I do resort to handdrawn stuff from time to time. For that I draw it, and scan it. Then I put it on a separate layer and draw over it using the bezier tool.

I couldn't seem to get as good results compared to hand drawing when doing coastlines.  Grnated I was trying to reproduce something that did not scan well so the "tracing" feature did not owrk, or should I say too well.

QuoteAs for overkill, it is true that most of the features are not needed for map drawing. The essentials, in my opinion are:

1) Bezier Lines and Closed shapes.
2) Layers with top to bottom sorting
3) Texture fill with transparency as a bonus
4) Symbol management
5) Shape modification tools like welding two shaps, trimming shapes with another shape, finding the intersection and so on. Intersection of two shapes is very useful in drawing a forest right up the coastline.

I got to learn how to do 5) for the very reason you describe.  Currently just working it with laers and trasnparency.

QuoteBoth Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW do these far easier than any mapping program out there including profantasy. Well I will say that symbol management for Corel bogs down when you try copy and paste with a large number on the sheet.

The latter I address by working in wireframe mostly to deal with the thousands of objects on the page.

QuoteHowever Dudjinni, Profantasy, has an advantage in their symbol libraries. But thanks to Dudjinni rise in popularity many symbols are now full color png files that can be used in any drawing program.

I'd like to get some of those.

QuoteVector drawing programs were not very capable in this regard. A lot of people export separate layers as multiple bitmaps into photomap. Do whatever processing they need and then combine them all back into one bitmap.

That's what I do in CorelDraw for many maps, it works very well especially with all the erase, paint, fade and clipping tools.

One thing I do enjoy about CorelDraw is you can import almost any file format in and export it out as another.

FYI: illustrator CS2 has this nifty thing called "Live Trace" Which is just a fancy word for a one button click that traces scanned / photos / you name it into a illustrator editable vector object. It very faithfully renders drawings, excpecally if its line art like pencils, or pen.

I Have not had more time to work on my map but I will post my progress if I get a chance to do that, which might be some time next week.

Regardless, The one thing I do miss is having a big library of objects to plunk down on my map thats premade. That would save me lots of time. So proboly once I finish with the asthetics of the map ill switch it to CC3 and plunk down objects from that, since you can always save illustrator files into several other formats.

Quote from: XantherI couldn't seem to get as good results compared to hand drawing when doing coastlines.  Grnated I was trying to reproduce something that did not scan well so the "tracing" feature did not owrk, or should I say too well.

The process should replicate your handing drawing precisely, given time. The trick is to zoom in far enough to duplicate the fine detail. Also you should click the  nodes on the CHANGE OF DIRECTION for best results.

Tracing over a hand drawn maps is a process of

1) Click on the change of direction.
2) Drag until the curve fits the line
3) Click on the next change of direction.

It takes me about 4 hours to draw the coastlines and islands found on a moderately complicated 8.5 by 11 drawing. I used to draw on huge 2 foot by 3 foot sheets but never could scan them in right.

I use the Mark I eyeball on them. This is possible because they use hex grids. So I can just eyeball the coastline in the hex to get an accurately copy. The ones based on the Wilderlands of High Fantasy I did this way back in the days of pen and paper only in the late 80's. Used a pencil and then inked in the final line. Note this takes roughly the same amount of time.

I don't use any of the auto traces as they invariably suck.

Here is a scan of one of my original hand drawn maps

messed around with the map a bit more. Enjoy.

Quote from: RPGPunditI find myself in a debate right now regarding the FtA!GN! sourcebook and a map of The Setting, the game setting for FtA!; but my debate is in whether or not to include a map, or leave the specifics of terrain up to each GM and his imagination.

Hand scrawl those suckers to show that it's an approximation, open to interpretation? I mean literally handdrawn so it looks like something an amatuer would do with quill or charcoal on the road. It's hard to have it feel both professional and rough. You'd need either someone with a moderate amount of artistic ability to do it with actual paper and then scan it or use a computer with a tablet where you can draw with one of the cheap Adobe knockoff paint programs (the higher end tablets now come with these).

I wouldn't do that for RChandler's stuff though. Not likely to feel 'modern'.