Map Mastery: How to Make Continents & Islands

okay so some people were asking me how I made the maps that I did and the one that I posted on the subreddit so I figured I would go ahead and make just a short little tutorial for how I use Inkscape to make that map so this is going to be for world maps with some terrain and some vague gradients the first thing you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to get Inkscape obviously install it it's a free program it's a vector editing program so it's not like Photoshop it's not like it does vector editing so what this is is you have points connected into shapes not just images with pixels and so what that lets you do is that lets you zoom in really far without losing resolution it's gonna be useful for what we're doing because we're gonna use the vector and path aspects of this editing tool to create coastlines so step zero getting scape step one set up your grid I'm gonna hit ctrl shift D you can also find this under the document properties right here go to grids there may or may not be a grid default just you know remove it if you don't want it and you can have either a rectangular grid or an axonometric grid action metric is what we want for hexes as you can see here this is the these are the grid settings I have for this right here this is six segments per six subdivisions per triangle segment right here and you get this through these selections here if you want fewer segments then you of course have to reduce the major grid line every blank but you also have to increase your spacing here so I found this spacing by essentially doing some math to figure out you know what's 1/6 of what the regular spacing would be if your spacing is set to zero then you get you know your absolute minimum your spacing is set to one then you get one triangle length here is one centimeter I believe in this instance right so I go with this for my purposes feel free to copy that and these angles right here if they're both set to 30 then you're going to get perfect hexagons so that's what you want figure we do a hex grids I don't know how to do horizontal hexes with this program I don't know if it's possible but I use vertical hexes so I've learned how to deal with it essentially the page dimensions you're gonna want your width to be some multiple of eight point six six okay and or 0.866 really and that's because if your hexes are one centimeter tall like I have line or one inch or one whatever one unit tall then they are 0.866 wide and so for every one hex that you want you need point eight six six as your width and I have eight point six six because I have ten hexes this thing is 10 hex is wide and since the hexes are also 1 1 centimeter tall it's also 6 X's tall now normally if you have normally your grade is going to start on 0 0 that's going to put your origin here so what I like to do is shift that origin up by 1/4 of a hex so if your hexes are 1 then by 0.25 if your hexes are 2 then they will be by 0.5 in order to basically have a nice hex right here right in the corner so that I can have a nice tessellation just for ease of working all right so these are just the the sizes for the page that I'm using for now the size the map that I presented earlier was much larger it was 60 something wide and 50.5 tall it was a much larger image but this will be useful for her this we find for our purposes so once you get this established your your hex grid how you want it and you can play around with those spacings and things like that then you begin by sketching your shapes and this is where if you're going to want to trace over something you can yes file import and you can import an image you know PNG JPEG whatever and lay it down and then trace over on top of it once you have let's see if I see if I can find a small image let's use let's let's grab a Star Wars something let's say we wanted to trace over this guy right here so we make him much smaller and right now I have snapping turned on and I'll get to that in a second so if we wanted to trace over this battle droid here then I would grab just draw a freehand and then you know trace over him like so and you just trace right on top of it and then delete it when you're done but rather than tracing a battle droid we're instead going to freehand some eyelid shapes so let's make one island sort of look like that like it it's actually good if it's terrible because you're about to improve on it because your next step is to sketch it again but you know better so I I like the big Cove that we've got going on here and I sort of like how this one's protruding into it so these gonna be my my main features that I want to focus on go ahead control a just select all of these and just grunt them so that now these are the first and there are layers you can work with layers I don't need to I find that I don't really need to for just working with terrain but it is there if you need to or if you preferred it so next up we're going to you know draw it a little bit better and look for specific features that you want like I want this Cove back here and let's say I want a bit of a peninsula right there you know just little specific things that you're looking for right and then same same deal right here I want that right there and then do to do and let's say I also want a little blobby bit right here let's say I change my mind I want a bloody bit right there all right and then we delete the old and here we go we've got this nonsense now you've sketched it and you've got it about sort of in general how you want it like a crayon drawing you're gonna grab your Bezier tool here and you're gonna want to make sure that you have snap turned on so all of these are different things that your drawings can snap to okay so right now I have snapping turned on I've got it can basically snap to all the things that it can snap to you no corners of object corner of the bounding boxes you just need to make sure that you're that you're snapping is turned on for grids so to do that you go over here to snap right there and you can set the the basics here I think this is the default right here the default I think works for me so you can mess around with that if you want different Mechanics for that but so this is going to be snapping - every single intersection alright and this is important because this removes all artistic skill necessary this is the very important part because I actually don't have a lot of artistic skill here we're gonna start inside with our first point and I'll explain why in just a little bit we're gonna start inside and then just trace it and click a bunch and stay sort of accurate you don't have to stay really accurate because it's gonna change anyway it's worth noting that this is not this is not good if you have a very specific shape that you want okay this is for if you just have a general shape that you want and you can't really make coastlines like you can't draw them very well and so you're looking for some help on that front if you already have if you already have Talent you might not need this but if you're like me you know sans a lot of artistic talent this can be useful so we've completed our shape and it looks like this now to change the fill and stroke you right-click it go to fill and stroke and fill is the color here right and then stroke paint is the outline so once you've got that you know about how you in general want it right then here is where the magic happens I'm going to take this object here and I'm going to go to extensions okay so I have this object selected I go to extensions I go to modify path and I don't know what any of these other things do so don't ask me I only know how to do the thing that I need to know how to do and I fractal eyes okay this is what I use for my settings just for how often I click the more often you click to make these little segments the more little bits of randomness you're going to have along your coastlines so you may need fewer subdivisions if you click if you click less often you just have like big general shapes you may need more subdivisions the smoothness is how smooth it's going to be if you have very low smoothness you're gonna have some birds some little spikes and edges that don't really look realistic some loops where it's sort of intersects on itself and you're gonna have to go in and fix those manually but you get more roughness this is what I use I think it looks good I don't like to have the live preview on because the Escape is not the most stable program so I just apply it and it does its thing and the reason this is called fractal eyes is because that's exactly what what is it doing and see here it was important that we had the lines cross over because it breaks your shape and it does this because it doesn't fractal eyes the shape it fractal eise's the path like this is my starting point right here and it went around and it basically just takes that as one continuous path it does it doesn't know how to make the shapes connect back up right but fortunately if we just put both the starting and the ending point inside the shape and then cross over each other we can do this we've got it like this we can go to object or we can go to path and we can Union or ctrl shift + which is what I often do and what that does is it basically that's what you do when you want multiple shape multiple shapes that are different to become the same shape you you use the Union tool and so what that was doing here is there was that little bit on the inside we used Union it basically flattened all of it and now it's all one shape and there's no little burrs or anything like that on the inside alright now you'll notice this is still spiky but it's now fractal eyes because that's what Coast lines are they are fractal shapes mathematically speaking so your brain is very good at recognizing patterns like that if you just try and draw a squiggly line unless you have talents on at some level it won't look like a coastline and you won't be able to identify why or why not and it's because your brain is very good at picking out these little self similar patterns that that show up in fractals and so the fractal eyes tool is very useful for making those specific shapes that your brain latches on to to go ah yes I recognize that pattern that's a fractal pattern I'm happy with that I've seen that in maps before so it's still spiky but we can fix that you go to your edit paths and you control a to select all of them and then you go up here to make selecting nodes smooth and that smooths it all out okay now you're stuck in that you're gonna have some little little hiccups here and there that you might not like and so in order to fix those now you might like them or you might not so to fix those you go in here click on it and you can just use the arrow keys or you can hold alt and do fine positioning back and forth but I just like to like on some of these that are just a little bit too much I just like to futz around with them with the arrow keys you know bring them back out and make them not as sharp turns right I control you select everything in resharpen it and then make it smooth again all right now right here we have a little quirk of Inkscape I don't know why it does this but whenever you do this technique it will always put two points on top of each other and even if you delete them and you know and fix things right okay sometimes it gets rid of it sometimes it doesn't like it will make a new point on top of another it's a it's a glitch in the system the way that I have to get around that it's not a big deal you just have your stroke style have a curved joint okay you make sure it has a curved joint and that's that should be fine because all of your your joints should be curves anyway sometimes when there's one point sitting right on top of another point it causes some glitches but if it's a curved joint then it won't show up the glitch will still be there but it will be invisible which is which makes it tolerable alright so now we're gonna do the same thing here go faster so we're just gonna push it I'm gonna push him in a little bit more here and you can also what you can do is look at different different maps to find different interesting coastline shapes that you like or even download maps and just lay them on top of each other and trace over them and then by doing this tactic the tracing itself will be completely lost like you're not you're not gonna be tracing anything by the end of it it's not gonna look anything like it originally was especially if you layer them together but what it will do is basically give you the let you know like oh here's where a bay would happen here's where a peninsula would happen you know it lets you again make those really subtle patterns the brain is really good at picking up on so that your structures your super structures of your continents and islands and stuff like Barbie allistic this is kind of this is a little bit this is a little bit gobbledygook for me but there are places that look like this so this is you know maybe you know really maybe like a volcanic area like a like a southeast a Pacific Islands type thing ok so now we do that and then we also make sure it's curved I don't like this shape right here that's actually they're probably perfectly realistic but just isn't what I'm looking for so I'm just going to and I'm just you know fuxing with and I delete a couple of them right when I go back in here you straighten them and then recurve and there we go that's closer what I'm looking for all right this is a little bit you know splotchy and gobbledy for what I would like but it's you know it's it's different it's a certain kind of aesthetic and your your world might be in want of something like this if you want it to be less goopy then you just have less protuberances when you're making your general shape because the Fraxel will try and follow your general shape you can also fractal multiple times if you want more little squiggles on top of squiggles that's also perfectly fine all right so now that we've got those we need to we this is Bayes these are basically our Islands right so we've got our superstructure done and if you're just trying to make shape on background shape on ocean you're already done that's literally all it takes right you just get you just squiggle your shape fractal eyes it and you're done right but if you want to make a little bit more make it a little bit prettier and then down here I really like the default colors that this has here I haven't I've made a couple of custom colors a couple of times but I haven't really needed them [Music] all right so clicking here is what changes the fill color and then you can right click and set stroke selected all right two-five yep that's fine these are also point two five yep okay next up to add a little bit of extra dimensionality another thing you can do if you hit control D that duplicates your shape okay so now you've got a duplicated shape I'm going to get rid of the stroke I'm only any worry about the fill and I'm going to make the fill the same shape same hue as the background but I'm gonna make it lighter okay so now it's a lighter hue and I'm gonna do that with all of my land okay actually real quick if you want lakes this is really easy you do the same thing you just make your lake okay little inside thing but you'll see my path fractal eyes apply and you'll see what happens when you don't do the little inside beginning and ending thing yeah it makes it just makes a gap but that's not really just connected it's not a problem yeah so if this is your lake right here you just select both of these guys and control shift - instead of control shift + and it just subtract sit and cuts it right out so you just let the lake is just you use carve it out of your continent shape alright so we duplicate him copy this guy and you can select so now I've selected one of my islands over here ctrl shift V that will paste the style so you can just paste the style of that right on top of this so now I've got one it's just this color with no outline on top of my land color down below okay so I'm gonna go over here to my blur right here I'm just gonna blur him actually before I blur him because the blur is a little bit weird I'm gonna combine these guys so it's all one object now and I I would typically do this once you're done with your structures entirely your continents your Islands once you're done with those then you do this step we're gonna go in and we're gonna add a stroke and we're going to make it pretty thick we're gonna make it like 0.05 right let's make it let's just make it point one all right so we could point one and let's make it the same color as the fill okay so now and I'm gonna push page down to push it down beneath okay and that's already an aesthetic right there you can already use this if you want that sort of minimalistic look and what I'm using there is I'm using page down and page up and you can also use home and end so like if I want to push home that brings it to the front and brings it to the back that's just the keyboard shortcuts so I have I have the light blue shape selected and I've made it a little bit thicker I've I've buffed up its it's outlined so it's sticking out a little bit and now I'm gonna blur it just a little bit just like just point to that's fine and now I have a gradient all the way around my shape and so now it looks like I've got some shallow water here and that includes inside the lakes what-have-you the same goes for it just in Reverse if you want internal gradients so like let's say I wanted a political border right I'm going to duplicate then I'm going to see yeah subtract okay and then so I've got this shape right here okay and I'm going to blur him by point two right okay and then what I'm gonna do I'm actually going to make him yeah okay yeah so he already has okay yeah sorry I was trying to do the stroke thickness but he was already that way so then I'm going to duplicate this again and this is what is called actually making a different color just to be clear about it this is what is called a mask okay so I have duplicated this shape so this is my island shape I'm gonna select that set mask boom now I have an internal gradient okay and so what this is doing is I'm saying okay so I have it I have a gradient out here but it's overlapping into my main shape my continent just a little bit okay so I'm gonna take my continent shape I'm going to duplicate it put it on top of the the square that I'm using to make my gradient right click set mask and now what that's doing is it's saying okay only the things that are under this shape right here get to be shown that's what a mask does in this instance so only this little part of the gradient gets to be shown from that red shape and so that's how you would do that's how I've done political borders all right and then the last thing last step with those with everything that I've done including the political borders is to do terrain and terrain is basically just the same thing it's even simpler you just make your shape like if I want this to be mountains up here you just make your shape you oh I've already got my fractal iced over here let's let's turn down the smoothness a little bit on it let's make it let's make it spiky let's what's making about spiky boy turn down the smoothness and well I didn't have that many division so he's not that spiky but spiky enough and if you wanted to even spike here you can go to work on these things alright select them and it doesn't matter that this break is here because what we're about to do they get smooth okay and then we're gonna do the same thing we just did so we're gonna make him we're gonna get rid of his stroke so he's just a solid shape and we're gonna make it a darker gray all right they've written we got this guy on top we're gonna select them both right click set mask boom there you go it's as easy as that and you can you know fill in with different colors for you know your your jungles and your you're radioactive jungles what have you and I recommend staying in the muted color palette that's just what I prefer but if you've got some reason for you know hot pink territories go for it and that's really all there is to it and it's just a few simple steps the main benefit that it has is you don't need a lot of intricate artistic skill and knowledge to be able to just slap down some general shapes do a couple of steps and you have yourself something that looks really good now you do get more skill and more skill comes in in figuring out okay what shapes do I want and it's probably gonna be the hardest thing you find yourself in the hardest place you find yourself in is when you're looking at the blank pages why I suggest drawing their shapes multiple times okay and don't be afraid to scrap it and start again just because it's so easy just to get another one of these shapes down right and when you start adding a bunch of place markers when you start adding a bunch of roadways and I will show you real quick for instance this is how I would add a river okay same thing it's just a line instead of a shape here you know turn off the fill there actually is a fill here it's just like that so I can turn off the fill extensions yeah just proud just gonna fractal eyes it again because it's fractal izing a path not a shape so I can just fractal eyes a line like this and rivers are the same way as coastlines they're they operate under the same principles that make the same patterns that your brain is looking for and then smooth it out and you've got yourself a river right here and you can add a cap to it so that it's got that little cap right there and what I typically do is I'll do so I'll do like a whoops so stroke fill so I'll do a base color like this and then duplicate it and then a lighter color and then I will make it thinner right by some amount and that's those are typically how I do the rivers and then to take care of this thing here you just duplicate this shape and then get rid of the fill so that you just have an outline this is just now a black outline of your shape and it cuts over this that now you have a river right and you use the same thing for roads you also want to fractal eyes your roads unless you are in a suitably post-industrial setting roads really really follow landscapes and landscapes follow the same fractal shapes that anything else does if you have a non fractal shape in your landscape it's going to really stand out so you can use that if you want like hey there's this scar that's like perfectly straight it's really weird in your landscape it's gonna draw the players eye I say player because I make these for RPGs usually but in any case that's pretty much it if you have any other questions feel free to message me I will answer what I can otherwise thank you so much for your time and I hope that you have happy world building

Channel: Haunted Automaton

Views: 3,076

Keywords: mapmaking, fantasy, rpg, map, mapping, cartography, inkscape, tutorial

Id: jt5qr22xN3k

Length: 33min 9sec (1989 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/murcos]

Nice! I have been using inkscape for a while now but this video really taught me new ways of using it, particularly the masking. Definitely gonna use it! Will you make more tutorials? How to do mountains etc.