New to Digital Cartography? Software General Information

[Airith]

thanks everyone, great welcome xD lots of info I couldn't find on search engines

Will probably do what Torq said, hopefully I can start doing that sometime this weekend.

Also, is CAD any good? My design class has CAD as a major part of it, ofc it's next semester but still. I know it supposedly costs a lot, teacher talked about that once, but I do get to use it for design class xD

[RPMiller]

CAD is just a generic term for a type of software. That said, yes, CAD is very good for making maps as that is the tool of most modern cartographers that aren't going for an artistic look. Applications such as AutoCAD, MicroStation, and even Campaign Cartographer are all CAD applications. The way they work is pretty much the same across the board. (I was a CAD draftsman for several years right after college - I used AutoCAD and MicroStation) So if you learn one of the CAD applications you'll have an easy time with any of them once you learn the commands.

This leads me to Campaign Cartographer 3 which you'll see many fine examples of maps made by it on this site. If you can afford it, it is much cheaper than the "big CAD" apps, you may want to consider going that route, but ultimately it depends on what you want your end result to look like. Take a look around and see which of the different apps produce the most maps that you like. That should help you decide.

[pyrandon]

CAD is a great program type for vector-based mapping (much like Inkscape & Adobe Illustrator). As you said, very expensive, but would work wonderfully for those clean-line plan type drawings. If you have access to that and need to learn it anyway, it may be worthwhile!

[Gamerprinter]

Although AutoCAD and Microstation which are the major CAD applications used in the engineering trades - its really more technical drawing than true map production, sure you can make maps, but symbol sets aren't made for the kind of maps used in most games.

That's the difference with Campaign Cartographer - it is built on a basic CAD engine, however all the coding over the last 30 years was to make more applicable to RPG map-making.

CC3 is only $39, those others are thousands of dollars each, Microstation most expensive of all. Yes they are all CAD, but CC3 and the rest are very much "apples and oranges".

I hear all the advocacy of free software, that's not me. If I pay for software, I can yell at somebody when something's wrong, not so with free software. That's not the only reason, but I don't use GIMP/Inkscape, nothing wrong with it, its just not me.

[RobA]

When was the poll added? I hadn't noticed it before.

-Rob A>

[ravells]

A while back....about a month or so...but I didn't really publicise it.

[Alistair]

New to this site and just noticed this post...

I make regular use of the following:

Fractal Mapper 8
Fractal World Explorer 1.7
Astrosynthesis 2

I've used several other things, mostly online random dungeon generators and the such though. I used Campaign Cartographer 2 for a while as well.

[Juggernaut1981]

As I mentioned in my September Challenge entry, when I do my maps I use a combination of AutoREALM (probably Vector?) and GIMP with a tablet laptop (Fujitsu Lifebook T Series)

Generally the process is:

#1 Stick in all the big features (land, rivers, etc)
#2 Export into JPGs the icons available in AutoREALM (because I don't know how to export the individual icons in AutoREALM so I could use them as brushes in GIMP)
#3 Build a number of layers in GIMP to deal with the different sections of the map (oceans, landscape, roads, structures, map-notes/labels)
#4 Tweak around by inserting layers and fidgeting with their interplay to get the effects I want. Fidget with colouring,etc.

[mearrin69]

Hi all,
I'm pretty new to making maps - been doing some of the tutorials here over the past week or so - but I'm not totally new to graphics software.

Specific to mapping, I have purchased (but barely used) Dundjinni, Fractal Mapper, and Astrosynthesis (I guess that sort of counts). I use Fireworks for web work but like the way it functions so I've used that quite a bit as a GM for making and editing images to use in-game...and I've also made a couple of maps with it. I also have Photoshop and Illustrator (not current versions) but I've never used them for mapping until recently (using PS for tutorials found here). I have a very old version of Painter but haven't used it for mapping either...not sure if it even *would* be useful.

Beyond 2D, I've used a number of modeling and rendering apps - ranging from Sketchup and Silo all of the way to Maya and Max. I'm tangentially involved in the 3D content creation world (as a business analyst) and have had the opportunity to use review units of a lot of this stuff and have bought quite a bit more just because it interested me. I'm considering trying out 3D to render objects for maps (buildings, trees, etc.) to see if I like the look. trueSpace 7 (now free, I think), and maybe some others, allow you to render to PSD layers and I think that'd be useful for this.

Since coming here (one week maybe) I've bumped into some new apps like Wilbur. Hoping to try these out when I get time. I downloaded and took a brief look at Wilbur but have to admit I didn't get a chance to check it out fully - looks cool though!
M

[jlvoideater]

I always used Dundjinni, but have to use GIMP until my laptop is fixed. I have an Ubuntu laptop and Macbook, but I only have the PC version of Dundjinni.