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Thread: Free Cartography Software

  1. #11

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    Almost 3 years from the post I replied to... I hope not to wait so long for answers

  2. #12

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    You might want to actually start a new thread in the How Do I…? forum with either GIS or projection in the subject heading. Hai-Etlik is bound to put in another appearance either way, but we might as well keep the searchability of the forums high.

    I'm not entirely sure I entirely understand the dilemma, as I have only the most passing understanding of projections and the scientific end of geography, but there are two programs I know of that are designed exclusively for reprojection: g.projector and flex projector. One of the two is published by NASA. I don't know if that makes it better or worse than the other…
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

  3. #13

    Info

    Do you know Migratio ?
    It's not free but not expensive as other GIS software and you can manage map projections. You can also do pojections on the fly.
    All you need is to have a shapefile to import in migratio and to know his projections (you can find it in the .prj file) to report it in Migratio.

    After that, you can create maps withs different projections and import data in polygons to put differents colors on it. There's an evaluation license to test it and you can ask question to the support which is reactive.
    Hope it helps ...

    Quote Originally Posted by occasionalcartographer View Post
    Hello everyone!
    First, a short 1-paragraph history about me and fantasy worlds:

    Mainly in the 90s I used to play RPGs with friends, above all "The Dark Eye" and another game invented by ourselves (of course, inspired by games and fantasy worlds we already knew) that we simply used to call "the right adventure" (ah, our primary language is Italian but we speak Sardinian too - obviously Sardinia is where we are from - and that name was a direct translation from local Sardinian... that strangely make more understandable sense in English than in in Italian! ). It was a magicless and monsterless world, similar to Medieval Earth but with its own continents, civilizations, history and so on... and with our own playing rules (e.g. the combination of 2 "d6" dice in order to have a "d36"). I prepared a map, then we added our own home-nations (for example, one of my friends, fan of Howard's stories, placed his own version of Cimmeria, named Kimmeria, another one who liked Vikings and Celts created his Xeltia, and so on...) and other "States" and civilizations we invented. This map was realized on paper and I prepared it paying attention to the shape of the planet and I choosed my own projection, that very later I discovered to be named sinusoidal.

    Some years after the end of active playing, one of my friends (the one who particularly likes Howard's worlds) began to write a book inspired by our old "adventures" in that world, so he needed regional maps. I scannered a copy of the old map and started to look for map projection converters but I did't find anything that was directly exploitable, the only important thing I understood was that the best manageable map projection was the equirectangular one, but I din't have any program, so... I created my own grid and started to stretch the map with PAINT (!) and then with an useful free program that I discovered, the notorious GIMP, and I worked also on hundreds and hundreds of single pixel lines... a very long work that took 1 year and a half but that gave me satisfaction with an equirectangular map that I can also put on a Google Earth "sphere" and that I can manage in many ways.

    But I still needed different projections for local maps, like azimuthal ones to be locally developped by my friend and me, and I wandered surfing the net, and finally I discovered this forum and downloaded the program you said... but it seems not to satisfy my aim... I am just looking for an as-simple-as-possible program that can change projection; I am able to give geographic coordinates for each point of the map (my knowlwdge about geography, topography and so on is quite good... the map is easy to be georeferenced!). If something isn't clear just ask me; every kind of aid&suggestion is welcome and if you like I can suggest to my friend to put something you like (names, civilizations...) into his story and consequently in our "realistic fantasy" world... Don't exclude that this book could become (real)worldwide famous!

    I'm sorry if my English syntax is not perfect and I am thankful even to everyone who has spent few minutes just to read.

    ...And if you have any questions about whatever you want, just ask... I think I'll be pleased to answer

  4. #14
    Guild Applicant
    Join Date
    Feb 2014
    Location
    Montreal
    Posts
    4

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    I use QGIS 2.8 downloadable at qgis.org. It is a free open source GIS software that is best suited for cartography. I personnaly use QGIS, GRASS GIS and GIMP to make fantasy maps. I combine those three softwares to make fantasy mapping, QGIS and GRASS for geographical information and GIMP for graphical finishing touches. If you are new to GIS softwares, there are a lot of tutorials available with a simple google search. Hope this can help someone.

  5. #15

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    A relatively simple command-line map projection program is MMPS. Although it's designed to be used under Linux, it can be built to run under Windows, too. See http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~arcus/mmps/

    (Sorry for the necro-posting.)
    Selden

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