Trouble figuring out sizes

General discussion on mapping.

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jamesmuia
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Joined: Sun May 08, 2016 11:36 am

Trouble figuring out sizes

Post by jamesmuia » Thu Jul 14, 2016 11:39 am

I'm trying to start a map, but I'm a little lost on what size I should scale everything at. I'm making a map for a future video project, so I can work with it being really large, however if I were to write a book, obviously 9k by 9k would be too big.. How easy is it to scale everything down, but make text and icons readable on such a small page?

Just not really sure if people make multiple maps, at different scales, for different things, or if you can have one large map and scale it up or down for anything you need.

I also don't really know what scale to start out as as far as pixels per mile. Is the default (I think) 1 mile per 100 pixels pretty standard?

Thanks,
James

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Kanchou
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Re: Trouble figuring out sizes

Post by Kanchou » Thu Jul 14, 2016 5:05 pm

jamesmuia wrote:I'm trying to start a map, but I'm a little lost on what size I should scale everything at. I'm making a map for a future video project, so I can work with it being really large, however if I were to write a book, obviously 9k by 9k would be too big.. How easy is it to scale everything down, but make text and icons readable on such a small page?

Just not really sure if people make multiple maps, at different scales, for different things, or if you can have one large map and scale it up or down for anything you need.

I also don't really know what scale to start out as as far as pixels per mile. Is the default (I think) 1 mile per 100 pixels pretty standard?

Thanks,
James
James,

I'll break up the answers
How easy is it to scale everything down?
Very easy, you can select the entire map, then go to "New Map From Selection" and change the scale and all items will be scaled. Everything that OWM creates is vector based, so scaling won't cause any issues.\
However, do keep in mind that if you are scaling the map a lot the artwork which is not vector (.i.e. features and textures in formats such as .png) could look worse if scaled significantly. I suggest you do some experiments with a very rough draft of a map so that you can see the effect of scaling before you spend a long time working on your map.

Document Size
The key is what you want to use the map for.
* First you want to decide on a resolution. Minimum resolution for printing is 150 dpi. I personally would choose 300 dpi.
* Then you want to select the actual map size. If you are planning on printing to a particular size (say a poster or a book page), then go ahead and select the map size in inches/cm that correspond to what you are trying to print. The pixel size will be calculated automatically from the document size and resolution.

Bigger is not always better. For instance, a map in letter size at a good printing resolution (300 dpi), is only 3300 by 2550 pixels. Large maps require more system resources (RAM and CPU), so only go bigger if you really need to create a map that big.

About multiple maps
If you are trying to keep maps that go from continent/world size to village size, then the best thing is to create a somewhat large world map based on the document size you need, then you can select sections of that map and create a new map from selection to add more detail.

If you mean multiple maps depending on what you are trying to do with it, remember you can also upscale a map. So you could make a map in letter size, for instance, and later on upscale it to be poster size.

Map Scale
That just depends on how much land you are trying to represent with your map. It has no effect in any of the document size options and is only used for reference for the measure tool so that it will show distances correctly. You can always start drawing your map and when you have an idea of how big your continent is in pixels and in the "real world" size you can update the map scale under Map->Setup.

Hopefully this helped a little bit. Please let us know if you have any more questions!

- Alejandro
Alejandro S. Canosa
Three Minds Software

jamesmuia
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun May 08, 2016 11:36 am

Re: Trouble figuring out sizes

Post by jamesmuia » Tue Jul 19, 2016 2:38 pm

Thanks Alejandro, your reply was a real big help! It gave me some things to think about before I start. Can't wait to get started!

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