World map workflow in Inkscape

ultramedia

Hey Guys,

Just been working on a workflow for making cool looking world maps in Inkscape, thought I'd post an example and see what you all think...

xXm0RpH3usXx

so this is all vector based? nice
but what would you use it for? as texture for a terrain it probably will not be sufficient enough. and for an inventory map... i dunno, why should one need it in vector format?

ultramedia

Hey xX,

I went with vectors because I wanted to be able to create maps quickly by just blocking out basic shapes and then having the fractal coastlines done automatically. In the example below you can see the shapes on the left and the (automatic) end result on the right.



The other thing I wanted to be able to do was manually specify different biome themes but then automatically generate interesting looking patterns inside them to represent biome variation. So it's trying to look nice enough to use as an overall world map for a game but at the same time create useful details that I can vectorise then blow up to use as a base for height maps.

xXm0RpH3usXx

but now you need to sculpt your terrain according to your texture, right?
or do you have some height map trick up your sleeve, too? :P

dissonance

Just as a guess, you could use the light/dark color information (separate from the biome information) combined with coastline detection to create isolines as in a topo map, then interpolate them and add some noise based on the same fractal used to break up the biome borders.