Here's another new member

[Gamerprinter]

Thanks for the welcome everyone



Well, for example... One of the cities I would really like to have a map for is in the world I posted here.

It's called Hub. It's situated in the middle of a narrow path through a sacred forest. The country, Almin, used to be a number of provinces that were conquered under Almin rule some centuries ago. Before this was the case, Hub was an Almin enclave on foreign soil. This caused many foreign fugitives to run to Hub because their own government's laws did not hold there. That, plus the fact that the 'pass' through the forest is a major trade route, caused the city to grow rather quickly.
However, it is forbidden to cut down the forest, so the city is quite long and narrow.
The trouble with mapping it is that it is also very tall.
In Hub, a single tower can hold several different types of housing or shops, be connected to several bridges or other houses on different levels, be a gate on another level, and so on. There are streets on ground level, high level, and everywhere in between. Generally speaking, the higher your house is, the more prosperous you are.

Long story short, a map of Hub becomes a random cluster of squares and lines pretty quickly. I don't think anybody in Hub itself has a full map of it. Not a good map to start with, methinks
I might try and map one of the other cities first, or one of the little towns around it... So much to do.

Depending on the size, I might create halves or quarters of the city to capture all the detail and all the city. And I'm sure this would end being lots of maps and work to do, but I'd start at the ground level and go up level by level, including all other buildings in the quadrant or other map area.

Depending on the number of floors per building, this could be lots an lots of maps, but it would effectively do the job.

I use Xara Xtreme for all my mapping, but I'm pretty much alone at using it around here... its a raster/vector hybrid drawing program. I do hand-drawn to completely Xara created maps for all my stuff. Another option would be GIMP, the free Image Editor, like Photoshop. Or perhaps Inkscape, which is like Illustrator, but like GIMP, free. Xara is inexpensive, but not free.

GP

[Rahva]

How do they build up without wood? Is it all stone, or dead limbs, or is it dug out around the trees, or is it all tents?

Imported materials, nowadays mostly stone.
There was a simple trading post there first. Just somewhere traders spend the night on a long journey, tents and such.
When this started to prosper more people came to live there to make a profit off the traders, and a militant order of Almin monks came to make sure nobody touched the forest. Instead of beating in the heads of the heretics they provided building materials from Almin at discount prices. They made it an Almin settlement so that the money spent protecting the forest would eventually come back in taxes, profit, foreign trading goods, and so on. (This wasn't something the monks made up, but the Almin government, of course. It was one of the conditions for allowing them to go there.)
In the 'modern' era the religious aspect of Hub is more in the background. The most obvious sign is the huge cathedral that was only recently finished. It's pretty much the only building not physically attached to the rest of the city.

So do you think you want linked maps or full 3D for the city ? And if linked do you think you would be organized enough to maintain a good indexing system or would you want the app to do the linking and fetching for you ?

I tend to be kind of obsessive when organising this sort of stuff. If I do linked maps I'd be able to build a comprehensive website around it no problem. That's a pretty good idea, thanks
But now that you mention 3D I want to build this city in Maya. Oh man what am I doing.

[Redrobes]

Maya

You have Maya ??? and you sketch your maps. Flippin eck - I think you will be teaching us Maya with some tutorials before long. Some of us here try to use Blender and I use Light wave 3D too. Arcana and a few more go with 3D Studio and theres a few more less well known ones being used in there too. RobA uses PovRay as well.

But I think most of us here make the 3D stuff, render it flat and then use the image as the map. I.e. we dont use the 3D model as the map itself. That could be done tho. I think since you are able to, then make web pages for these maps and put links on them to other maps. Thats tedious and I think theres better ways to do that but its a free and moderately easy way to do it if your technically confident enough to do it.

[Rahva]

I've never really thought to use Maya (or any 3D program really) for maps, save for Terragen.
Do you use this for city maps, interior maps or for terrain?

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[Gamerprinter]

There are a few Terragen mappers here. Periodically I use Nendo to create subdivisional surface models then import to one of 3D apps to render the final. Although a challenge early last year, I did an entire dungeon layout in 3D and a slightly not top-down map - more an experiment really.

Often, however, I create hand-drawn map elements that begin as 3D models that are rendered, then referenced for hand-drawn work.

Plus there are other mappers here that use a variety of 3D apps, from 3D Studio Max, to Vue 6, and Bryce.

Anna another member here is completely recreating the world of Greyhawk, in largely Bryce and Vue generated maps.

GP

[Ascension]

Man if I had Maya I'd never leave my house. Hope to get it next year

[ravells]

Welcome to the Guild, Rahva!

[Redrobes]

I've never really thought to use Maya (or any 3D program really) for maps, save for Terragen.
Do you use this for city maps, interior maps or for terrain?

Mainly I use 3D modellers for making tokens - images that I can put down onto a map using another app. We have a challenge every month - I am sure your aware, last month I did a Dr Who themed one where I rendered up some Daleks and used these as tokens on a map.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3687

For terrain I exclusively use 3D. I find that a computer can do a reasonably good job of performing the physics of terrain and its a lot of effort to do manually. So I create height maps, run a terrain physics sim on them and texture the results of the sim.

I write my own mapping app, terrain app and texturing app so I am somewhat biased and odd in my toolbox. But people use Bryce, Terragen, Fractal Terrains, a little bit of WorldMachine, Global Mapper, and some more use photoshop type apps to create some noise maps and render with them too.

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!