Getting the scale right between a world map and single continents

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Chris_92
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Jun 26, 2019 3:21 pm

Getting the scale right between a world map and single continents

Post by Chris_92 » Sun May 17, 2020 4:49 pm

Hi!
The title says it pretty much: I created a world map with a couple continents. I saw it as a learning opportunity so I didn't really care about the raster or anything except the projection overlay and the world units, which I roughly sized about the diameter of the earth. Now I started to make more detailed maps for each continent and again, I didn't care too much about anything for the first detailed map. I actually had to redraw the continent I want to detail based on its position on the world map (using the projection overlay) because copying it from the world map didn't work due to different sizes.

The whole thing is a bit complicated to explain so here's the TLdR: I didn't care about scale at all in my maps and now all the sizes are way off and I can't adjust the world units to make any sense whatsoever. It's a big mess basically.

I probably can't fix the issues for this world map but I'd very much like your advice on how I should proceed to get everything into scale for the next one. Correct scaling is one of the most important things in creating maps after all.

Cheers and thanks in advance. :)

Uldar
Posts: 35
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:46 am

Re: Getting the scale right between a world map and single continents

Post by Uldar » Fri Sep 11, 2020 3:40 pm

Hi, Chris. I started OWM in June, and this is the first problem I ran into: scale, scale, scale. How in the world do you get this right, and how do you make the features appropriate for the scale? The software is easy to jump into, but getting scale right feels tough.

I started by doing an inch to 1,000 miles for my entire world. It was low detail, so a few tiny mountains and some rivers, and it ended up decent. If your world for example is 10,000 miles by 15,000 miles, you do a 10" x 15" map, and off you go. When I tried to go down to my first region map, scale just didn't look right. I threw out the next 3 maps. Then I landed on doing a 8 mile to 1cm hex map as a hybrid between the cool features of OWM and the rigid scale of hex blocks. That worked really well for me while I got used to scale. I'm working on a city map now, and buildings need to be to scale, so I'm doing a 2 pixel to 1 foot scale (1 mile to 10K+ pixels). Then when I use the measuring tool and do it in pixels, I can divide by 2 for feet. That's working out well, too.

Not sure if that's the same scale you're struggling with, but you can probably follow a similar path to success. Biggest map is the whole world or portion of which you're concerned. Do a really simple scale that fits the entire area of your world (10K by 15K for example) where 1" or 1cm covers the page size you're trying to fill. If you wanted to do a 5" picture, that would be a 1" to 3,000 mile scale. Then when you move down from a big region to a smaller one, decide on how many miles you want your portion to represent, how big of a page you want to cover, and adjust the math on your scale to be consistent.

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