How do YOU create various resolutions of the same map?

[Jaxilon]

For example, a world map and a zoomed in regional map showing greater detail.

My first instinct is to create one huge map at the regional resolution and then just shrink down the world version. Obviously there could be some issues such as rivers no longer showing and so forth but it would ensure everything was in the exact right location. Possibly some of the features could become muddled however.

Then I thought, well, perhaps draw the original coastlines and shrink that down and then fill in all the stuff you want to show on the world map. The problem there is the challenge of placing the mountains and everything else in the exact locations as the regional maps would later show with greater detail. This seems like twice the work since you would be drawing the same area features in two different resolutions. That seems less than efficient unless you just want two entirely different looking styles in which case it's not a big deal.

I would love to hear how others have handled this.

[Redrobes]

I write an app which is specifically designed to alleviate this issue. See sig. So naturally this is the way I do it. I don't have a fixed resolution image for the map.

[Jaxilon]

You are correct RR and I should have guessed what your answer would be . In the case I am thinking of there would only be two images of different resolutions.

I recall a challenge we did some time ago of various locations from our CWBP and at the end you used your application to overlay our regional/area maps on the world map which was very cool. It also happens to have shown the very issue I am talking about because some of the entries did not line up as well with the original world map.

I guess in the end if the resolutions between the two are large enough it doesn't make any difference but if the world map shows any sort of features then to my mind they need to match.

[Hai-Etlik]

Vector graphics, or better yet, unsymbolized vector data in a GIS.

Also, simply zooming in doesn't really work very well. A projection suitable for a world map, isn't generally a good projection for a continent, and a projection that works well for a continent, isn't necessarily a good match for a single city.

[Mark Oliva]

We use only raster graphics, no vector graphics. Nonetheless, or main mapping program, Fractal Mapper (TM) 8, has multi-zoom functionality that makes such operations very easy. It's described in our free 220-page PDF tutorial, You can get it at:

http://www.vintyri.org/vintyri/tu1.htm

[Jaxilon]

Somehow I think I am failing to state my question accurately.

Let me try another way:

You are hired to create a world map and several regional maps of said world. Lets say they plan to hang them on their wall. Obviously the regional maps will show more detail than the world map but you still want them to have the same shape and major features.

I guess if it were in vector you can shrink and expand the areas as needed but you still deal with what detail to show or not as well as pixel loss at some point. I don't use much vector software other than Inkscape and I'm not great with it except for making labels.

So basically I am asking what methods have others found useful to do this. I have an idea but if there is a shortcut I'm all ears.

If I was doing everything by hand on paper I would have to make sure I didn't put a mountain where none existed on the other one (world/regional).

[Hai-Etlik]

Somehow I think I am failing to state my question accurately.

Let me try another way:

You are hired to create a world map and several regional maps of said world. Lets say they plan to hang them on their wall. Obviously the regional maps will show more detail than the world map but you still want them to have the same shape and major features.

I guess if it were in vector you can shrink and expand the areas as needed but you still deal with what detail to show or not as well as pixel loss at some point. I don't use much vector software other than Inkscape and I'm not great with it except for making labels.

So basically I am asking what methods have others found useful to do this. I have an idea but if there is a shortcut I'm all ears.

Most GISes have the ability to do various kinds of conditional symbolization based on scale. So you can tell it to do things like, if the scale is smaller than 1:100,000, only display cities with a population of at least 750,000. There are also tools to simplify linestrings and polygons so they are suitable for a particular scale, Inkscape does include a form of this.

[waldronate]

I use Fractal Terrains for that purpose, but the public versions only do basic landforms and rivers at this point, no lines or text or symbols. The coastlines and river systems in FT, for example, show an appropriate level of detail for the current zoom level. FT3 can do exports for CC3 to allow for additional annotations beyond the basic level.

If you want to use FT for basic roughing-in to get regional items in the correct places, you can sketch in the desired landforms as climate types. FT has the ability to do useful reprojection to get regional area maps with different amounts and kinds of distortions than the whole-world map.

http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/cshelf/index.html shows a way that world-to-regional mapping can be accomplished in Wilbur, but you're pretty much stuck with the basic fractal elements without painting or erosion.

[tilt]

hmmm..... haven't done this as my current game is only in a "region" - so I don't have an actual world map for the Mountain Realms map - however if I had to have a world map AND full region maps of everything (which may seem a bit overkill - I'd probably just select some regions and map those) I think I'd make the world map first - rough sketch of everything. Then i'd divide it into manageable sizes and map those in high res, finally when all those where done I'd shrink them to make a new world map.
Another attack route could be to make the world outline in vector but I think the first idea would work best for me

[guyanonymous]

I write an app which is specifically designed to alleviate this issue. See sig. So naturally this is the way I do it. I don't have a fixed resolution image for the map.

Can you export the maps you create in viewing dale at full size (e.g., massive resolutions like 30000x___) or as tiles for use in googlemaps?