List of Mapping Software

[mikoking]

I am looking for the best set up for making various maps for D&D campaigns. I am thinking about getting CC3, CD3, and DD3, (Campaign Cartographer, City Designer, and Dungeon Designer) but I am unsure as to if this is the best choice. I love the style and feel that they offer, although I don't know if that is something that is readily available through the programs or it I need to work with it extensively to be able to achieve that look. If you look at maps of Fearun (Forgotten Realms) http://www.pocketplane.net/volothamp...aerunlarge.jpg then you can see the type of feel that I am going for. Ideally, I would have a more aged look to the maps, but that requires more expertise than I have now. I have always just drawn my maps up to this point or printed ones that fit my campaign from google, although I am working on making an extensive campaign setting like Forgotten Realms or DragonLance called Auewk-Nea and it requires that I up my game.

Digression of the original question aside, is there anyone who has used these programs that can tell me how user friendly they are? I am a rather quick learner, but I am learning from scratch without even an iota of pc cartography experience. The closest I have ever come to PC cartography is printing large maps, piecing them together, then taping them.

[Korash]

Well, the CC suite of programs are (simplifying here) symbol based with a CAD pedigree waaay back. The style of the symbols used will give you a certain feel to the map. There are a lot of styles available, but I can't tell you if they are available by themselves or bundled with some other styles, or bundled with other stuff. Some people have had problems with the learning curve, while others didn't. It all depends on how your mind works I guess.

If you want to know what can be done with the CC suite, do a search for CC on this site and you should get a very good idea of its capacity.

**EDIT** If you are more of a procedural type of mindset, Gimp is free, and can be considered to be equal in capacity (weaker in some areas, stronger in others) to Photoshop. There are plenty of tutorials here at the Guild for both Gimp and Photoshop. They both have a learning curve that can be intimidating however.

[mikoking]

My paycheck is going to be hitting in about 2 hours and I think I am going to get the CC, CD, and DD bundle for $99. I have been looking at different map making programs for a while now (about 2 years on and off if you can believe it) but I was never quite to the point of dedicating myself to this project of mine until now. I have a decent paying job, plenty of time to where I can tinker with the maps, and I want to have my father help me on this project as much as possible while I still have him with me.

[Craig Viau]

Hi,

Looking for best map making software based on goals below. Thanks

I have a fantasy world I've been working on in Gimp. However after putting in some time there I realized I really want to be able to zoom in. Right now the map is essentially Earth sized with 6 continents. It is at a scale of 1 league per pixel a league being about 8237 feet. I want to be able to zoom in to add the rivers, villages and other smaller features. The map is 16200 leagues east to west and 6300 leagues north to south. I want to zoom in to at least 10x current the current scale so about 825' per pixel but I'm flexible on that. At that scale I'd have over 10 billion pixels. I have very specific requirements for the terrain, mountains and major rivers & cities based on which races will border each other and what terrain types they prefer...so random map generation wouldn't work. I'm looking for the best map software which would allow me to draw the map but then zoom in or out. I have a friend who took some kind of cartography course and said I should us QGIS software which is free but looks like a professional realistic map making software. If I could end up with a google map of my world that would be the ideal. I'm not as concerned with making it pretty but if there were some features especially for the coast that would make it more realistic (Fractal) that would be useful. I realize it is unlikely to be able to combine any kind of fractal or other computer generation with my specific requirements for terrain. I have done some good research on weather patterns to make this as realistic as possible. I have about 19 terrain types. What I don't have but would be nice is elevations and of course the map is flat like any Earth map not spherical so that isn't realistic either.

If that isn't hard enough it would be great if I could transfer the current Gimp map into the new program and then continue to edit it from there.

[shasjas]

Title: ViewingDale
Vendor: Viewing Ltd
Web Site: http://www.viewingdale.com
Type: Raster/Symbols
Focus: Mapping
Platform: Windows
Price: £25 boxed, includes worldwide P&P. (~ $49USD)
Description:
ViewingDale is a mapping program, zoom browser for maps and VTT. It maps at no fixed scale meaning that you can have multiple icons or maps on screen at all different scales / resolutions. Grids in square and hex. Maps are created by placing clip-art/images within the map environment handling opaque, cut out and semi transparent icons with grouping
Examples:
Vendor Gallery

ViewingDale says its no longer for sale. Has anyone got any alternatives as it looks really awesome?

[SirDrakke]

Figured I would add a note here, great post for a list of software to have and use. Now I need to get to work.

[soggymuse]

Title: Paint Tool SAI
Vendor: Systemax
Web Site: https://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/
Type: Raster/Vector
Focus: General
Platform: Windows
Price: $45
Description:
PaintTool SAI is high quality and lightweight painting software, fully digitizer support, amazing anti-aliased paintings, provide easy and stable operation, this software makes digital art more enjoyable and comfortable.
Examples:

• Sizael Kingdom
• Island of Froj
• Tahnih Burrows sketch
• Anuur B&W (minus the grid, border, and labels which were added in Photoshop)

I can only include my own maps because I've not found any by others that I know for sure were done in SAI, so please excuse the bad examples. They should be enough to show the programme's potential, at least.

[3l3phant]

The link above does not exist. I searched the site for Terraform and came up with nada. Not sure if anyone already posted this. If so, sorry.

Looks like it's still an Ubuntu package:
http://fossies.org/linux/privat/terr...src-0.9.5.tgz/

[waldronate]

Is there any way to get items in the first few posts updated? The Wilbur links, for example, have all moved from http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton to http://www.fracterra.com as a result of an ISP closing down unannounced last year.

[3l3phant]

Here's an updated list of (I think) all of the software in the thread:
Alchemy art software - http://al.chemy.org
ArcGis - http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis
ArtRage - https://www.artrage.com
Astrosynthesis - http://nbos.com/products/astrosynthesis
Aurora toolset - http://www.neverwinternights.info/builders.htm (General Information)
AutoREALM - http://sourceforge.net/projects/autorealm/ Campaign
Blender - http://www.blender.org/
carrara pro 6 - http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-8-5-pro
Cartographer 3 - http://www.profantasy.com/products/cc3.asp Drawplus X4 - http://www.serif.com/drawplus/ Dundjinni - http://www.dundjinni.com
CityEngine - http://www.esri.com/software/cityengine/
CoPan - http://www.underhill.ca/Software/Cop...s/CopanWin.php
DomMap - https://web.archive.org/web/20130228...m3minions.com/
Dungeon Painter Online - http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/
DungeonForge - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...dungeon-master (This one seems like a related project but Idon't think it got funded)
DungeonForge/MapX - http://1drv.ms/1Uh9jGJ (Doesn't seem to be available for download)
Fireworks - https://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks.html
Flaming Pear http://www.flamingpear.com/products.html (I love Lunar Cell, Glitterato)
Fractal Mapper - http://www.nbos.com/products/fractal-mapper
Fractal Terrains 3 - https://secure.profantasy.com/products/ft.asp Gimp - http://www.gimp.org
G.Projector - http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/
G'MIC - http://gmic.eu
GDAL - http://www.gdal.org/index.html
General List of Raster Editors - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...aphics_editors
Genetica Viewer and Wood Workshop - http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/index.htm\
GeoServer - http://geoserver.org
Global Mapper - http://www.bluemarblegeo.com/products/global-mapper.php
GRASS - http://grass.osgeo.org
Heavy Metal Map - http://www.heavymetalpro.com/HMMap_Features.htm Adobe
HexoGrapher - http://www.hexographer.com
Illustrator - http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html
ImageSynth - Retired
InkScape - https://inkscape.org/en/
ISIS3 - https://isis.astrogeology.usgs.gov/index.html
It's Full of Stars - https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=73256...B937B6CF%21122
Leveler - http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller.php
MandelBulber - http://www.mandelbulber.com
MathMap - http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/schani/mathmap/
MicroDem - http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pgu...m/microdem.htm
Modo - http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/ (As far as I can tell it was ImageSynth)
Nendo - http://www.izware.com/nendo/index.htm
OpenLayers - http://openlayers.org
OpenSCAD - http://www.openscad.org
Ortelius - http://www.mapdiva.com
Paint Tool Sai - https://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/
PD Particles - http://www.thebest3d.com/pdp/
PhotoPlus - http://www.serif.com/photoplus/
Planet Genesis - http://planetgenesis.sourceforge.net
PostGIS - http://postgis.refractions.net
QuantamGIS - http://www.qgis.org/en/site/
Radeon Tray Tools - http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-tray-tools-/
Real Draw - http://www.mediachance.com/realdraw/
Relief Map Generator - http://www.snapfiles.com/get/gfreliefmap.html
RPG MapMaker - http://fmteau.perso.neuf.fr/rpgmapmaker/rpgmapmaker.htm
Terraform (Now available as an Ubuntu package) - http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...rraform.1.html
Texture Maker - http://www.texturemaker.com/news.php
Tiled - http://sourceforge.net/projects/tiled/
TwistedBrush Pro - http://www.pixarra.com
uDIG - http://udig.refractions.net
Unity Game Engine addon downloads - http://unity3d.com/learn/resources/downloads
ViewingDale - http://www.viewingdale.com
Visio - https://products.office.com/en-us/vi...chart-software
Vue Frontier - VUE Frontier
Wilbur - http://www.fracterra.com/software.html
World Machine - http://www.world-machine.com
WorldSpinner - http://worldspinner.com
Xara Xtreme - http://www.xaraxtreme.org
Xtreme - http://www.xara.com/us/ (?)
YeOlde Map Maker - http://www.yeoldemapmaker.com