# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Software Discussion >  Free Cartography Software

## Soth_Dargaard_13

I am looking for free software that will help me make a continent map for D&D (v.3.5) that looks old papery and hand drawn (but good hand drawn)

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## Redrobes

The software list is here
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...pping-Software

and my advice is to look in the finished maps section. There is a thumbnails page where you can browse loads of map pics. Look for the ones you like and see what they used to make it. Click on their name to get to the thread.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ed-Maps-Thumbs

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## Gallifreyan

You should download Gimp. These are two Gimp tutorials that show what Gimp can do: Hand-Drawn Mapping (for the Artistically Challenged) and Creating old, weathered paper using the Gimp. There many other excellent Gimp tutorials in the Guild.

Here is the website for Gimp.

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## Sheelon666

Prepares some cover:

 What is the general opinion of Autorealm for mapping?  Been casting about for an alternative while I practise with Gimp (skill level currently about 1-2%) and it seems like a cheap (read free) version of CC3 but with a hell of a lot less whistles and bells.

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## Greason Wolfe

If you're interested in AutoRealm, one of the members here (Vandy) compiled all the "Tutorial"/User Guide information into one PDF document located here;

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ll=1#post41356

GW

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## Sheelon666

Been reading that today, but just looking for a heads up as to how easy (wrong word choice perhaps) or perhaps worthwhile each investment in time might be.

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## Midgardsormr

Autorealm is pretty easy to use, but in my opinion, it doesn't produce very nice-looking results. It's said that the artist is more important than the tool, and that's true, but a good artist will almost always choose the best tools available (unless using a difficult tool is the point of the exercise).

Gimp is the king of free graphics apps, and the tutorials found here can get you mapping in a fraction of the time of trying to figure it out on your own. In addition to the two that Gally recommended, also look into RobA's venerable artistic regional map tutorial.

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## Hai-Etlik

Besides The GIMP, you may want to look at Inkscape.  It's more akin to Autorealm in being a vector graphics editor (The GIMP works with raster graphics), though it's a much more general one.  You may find better suited to your your way of working, or you may not, but I recommend you try both.  You may even find it best to start in Inkscape and finish in The GIMP.

If you want to try playing with a real Geographic Information System, which really isn't what you asked for, but which you may want if the cartography bug bites hard enough, there's QuantumGIS. It will let you do things like switch projections or check the distribution of orc tribes against the carrying capacity of the local ecosystem to make sure they don't starve themselves out.

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## Sheelon666

Went through the AutoREALM users guide the other night, and after about 2 hours had a VERY basic map, albeit with not a lot of features and some problem areas I just could not get to work on my first go.  ATM I'm putting AutoREALM on back burner and going to go through the Gimp Tutes in detail and see how that works out.  Thanks for the advice folks.

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## occasionalcartographer

> Besides The GIMP, you may want to look at Inkscape.  It's more akin to Autorealm in being a vector graphics editor (The GIMP works with raster graphics), though it's a much more general one.  You may find better suited to your your way of working, or you may not, but I recommend you try both.  You may even find it best to start in Inkscape and finish in The GIMP.
> 
> If you want to try playing with a real Geographic Information System, which really isn't what you asked for, but which you may want if the cartography bug bites hard enough, there's QuantumGIS. It will let you do things like switch projections or check the distribution of orc tribes against the carrying capacity of the local ecosystem to make sure they don't starve themselves out.


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!  :Smile:  ). 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!  :Smile: 

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  :Smile:

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## occasionalcartographer

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

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## Midgardsormr

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…

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## leroucoq

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 ...




> 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! 
> 
> ...

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## Rod

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.

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## selden

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.)

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