A roadmap to bamboozle my dad

[Eowyn Cwper]

Okay, am I spamming? I'll calm down, I promise.

My dad has been using Michelin maps for over 40 years. As my next personal challenge, I want to create a map so realistic and close to that style that he thinks it's a real one. Whether I prevail or fail miserably, I will enjoy doing this and I'll share the full progress here. First actual try to fully roadmap! I think I've really gotten the hang of connecting roads in Inkscape.

For reference, I would like it to look something like this.

carte routière pau.png

And here's where I'm at after some experimentation.

michelin project.png

Let me know what you think!

[Styescape]

Okay, am I spamming? I'll calm down, I promise.

No, you don't. You're just very active here, why should this be bad? A community like this is living from active members. How boring it would be, if anyone is posting just once every month
And besides that, I'm very happy to see people posting many WIPs here, because I learnend so much by understanding their process of production. So in my opinion, feel free to share all you're mapping.

Coming back to mapping, I'm curious if you can fool your dad . I think with a vector software like Inkscape, you have the best tool for this project. Another possibility would be a Geoinformationsystem like QGIS. It would make it a lot easier to deal with scale, but time to get familiar with the software seems to be too long to be effective for your project.

What you got so far looks realistic. Every small bend I felt looking to sharp is represented in your example in the same way. So I'm excited to see how close your outcome will be to the "real" map style.

[Kellerica]

Yup, what Styescape said. I have to say I'm absolutely thrilled that the beginning of 2020 has brought us so many active new members! We get a lot of people joining all the time, but sadly most of them only post a couple of times and then lurk in silence (if they visit at all), so I'm always extremely happy when people stick around. So please don't feel like you're spamming, and keep the maps coming, yeah?

Heh, an interesting goal you're attempting to meet - let's see if your dad will be fooled I'd say you're off to a fine start already. Maybe the red stroke on the yellow main load could be a little more narrow? At least at this zoom level, I think it looks a little different than the example map you posted. But I do understand the map is still in very early stages, so I'd imagine there is still a lot of adjusting to come anyway. In either case, this should be interesting to watch!

[Eowyn Cwper]

Thanks guys! I love the community and what it taught me so far, if anything, is that I should try to learn new softwares, mostly GPlates and maybe QGIS, it seems. I'm good friends with learning curves but it's still scary. :D

I figured out Michelin's ratios for road sizes, and you're right, I was on the wrong track. ^^ Here's the maths I will follow from now on (it turned out difficult to adjust the visual output so I prefer risking to ask my brain to do some maths rather than just copy-pasting the style; mistakes are still probable though ^^').

unknown.png

michelin project.png

[Eowyn Cwper]

Intersections are hard. ^^'

michelin project.png

(WT 1h40)

[Yrda]

How did you make these intersections?

[Eowyn Cwper]

Layers! The border of each road is not in the same layer as the colored part. Well, they're not exactly layers but it's still a matter of putting things over or under other things.

[Redrobes]

I have a little experience here as once I had to write the application to make these kinds of map. Not a Michelin one but I did the software inside of a car GPS road mapper system where it had to look like these.

What I can tell you from that is that the road network is held in a database and the map is generated using an algorithm - you probably knew that. The road intersections are hard because when a road joins up with another it has to colour the intersection correctly but there is usually a border to it which goes around both. In the algorithm you plot the roads with lowest height to highest and at each stage you need to plot the road in black a few pixels wider than than the core colour. To do this manually is quite a chore tho.

In my opinion you can get these street views in vector form from OpenStreetMap's data. Then you can write a script to plot them using a language like python or perl. I used image magick to do the line artwork for a map recently and its not too hard to get it to do those borders and junctions for you too.

I have the feeling tho that you want the road network to be different from reality. I am not sure if you want to make a few small changes or a wholesale set of changes to the road layout to really screw with him.

Once quick and dirty way to do the intersection borders is to take the roads and create a copy and make that black and white. Blur it a bit then darken and contrast enhace back to black and white again. The all black roads should be wider than when you started. So just put that into the background layers. The problems are a) that tight corners get filled in a couple of pixels giving it away a bit and b) you may need to do several of these since there are roads which go over some and under others.

[Eowyn Cwper]

Woah, I didn't know anything about algorithms in mapping. I don't code, though; that seems like another world to me. Although I think the way I make roads is a bit like what you described: I draw a road, I make a thicker copy and put it in the background. Then I just have to get the intersections right, but it's not a chore to me and will be even less once I get a little experience. These days I'm experimenting a lot. ^^

My road layout should be a little original as I like to come up with a few quirks, but not so much that it will look unrealistic. I hope.

[Eowyn Cwper]

I took it up again!

michelin project.png