Krall
Banned
Do you already have the outline of the entire landmass drawn, and you want to know how to make a separate path that only covers part of the entire landmass, or are you essentially asking how to draw lines over a basemap?
Inkscape and maps.
- Thread starter LSCatilina
- Start date
Do you already have the outline of the entire landmass drawn, and you want to know how to make a separate path that only covers part of the entire landmass, or are you essentially asking how to draw lines over a basemap?
Krall
Banned
I'm not sure whether what you're saying is unclear or I'm just not interpreting it correctly, but I don't understand what you mean. Could you elaborate on what you're trying to do?
Looks like a good start. I can see your internal borders (light grey overlapping your national borders (black), though. To fix that, copy the shape with the black borders (i.e. your country's outline), then remove the border from it by pressing "Shift + Ctrl + F", going to "Stroke paint" and clicking the X. Then, select "Edit" and click "Paste in place", and you should get a copy of the same shape in the exact same place - remove the "Fill" from that, and you should have the border separate and on top of your internal borders.
Or, at least, that's what I'd do.
Krall
Banned
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean. What were you changing the opacity of, and what do you mean by "it shows the whole map some"?
That's the point : it allows you to still see the map while drawing on it, following physical features. Once you'll have drawn what you want basing yourself on the map, you can remove totally it, as when you trace something with a special paper IRL.
Hey there, don't know if this counts as necroing, but I'm looking for a way to connect borders of individual subdivisions with the sea/land border and each other, and then fill them in individually in different colours. Is that possible? Help much appreciated
This is a great tutorial to inkscape. I haven't been able to make head nor tale of it!
Krall
Banned
Hey there, don't know if this counts as necroing, but I'm looking for a way to connect borders of individual subdivisions with the sea/land border and each other, and then fill them in individually in different colours. Is that possible? Help much appreciated
I think I could help, but I'm having trouble understanding your wording.
Could you elaborate?I think I could help, but I'm having trouble understanding your wording.
Sure thing: so what I've done is traced coastlines, lakes, and having a go at rivers - all the basic stuff. Cities and towns are also simple enough. What I'm trying to do next is copy the subdivisions in that landmass, and give them all different fills. Essentially, what I'm asking is whether it's possible to connect the borders of those subdivisions to my coast layer without having to trace the coastline again, and do it in a way that lets me fill each one separately with different colours.
...I feel like I'm still being vague
Say I were making a map of America or Britain - what I've done and can do is trace the coast and rivers and cities, but what I'm looking to do is something like tracing the actual states/counties themselves and colour them in separately to one another.
There. Hopefully I've made my intent clear, appreciate the help!
Krall
Banned
Sure thing: so what I've done is traced coastlines, lakes, and having a go at rivers - all the basic stuff. Cities and towns are also simple enough. What I'm trying to do next is copy the subdivisions in that landmass, and give them all different fills. Essentially, what I'm asking is whether it's possible to connect the borders of those subdivisions to my coast layer without having to trace the coastline again, and do it in a way that lets me fill each one separately with different colours.
...I feel like I'm still being vague
Say I were making a map of America or Britain - what I've done and can do is trace the coast and rivers and cities, but what I'm looking to do is something like tracing the actual states/counties themselves and colour them in separately to one another.
There. Hopefully I've made my intent clear, appreciate the help!
Ah! You, my friend, need Boolean Operations! Now let's see if I can explain this in a way that makes sense.
Boolean Operations allow you to do stuff with two overlapping shapes - such as fusing the two shapes together, deleting the overlapping area from one of the shapes, or creating a shape that consists solely of the overlapping area. They can be found under the Path drop-down menu:
The main three that will be useful are Union (fuses two shapes together), Difference (deletes overlapping area from the lower shape), and Intersection (creates a new shape consisting of the overlapping area).
To demonstrate their use, I'm going to use the totally serious and not at all made up example of Rectangula, Oblongia, and Trianglvania.
We've got the landmass and the borders between these countries, but we want each country to have its own colour with no overlap into each other's territory (long-running dispute over the legality of Oblongia's occupation of Trianglvania notwithstanding).
Let's start with Rectangula. The vertical black line is its only land border, so we're going to copy it and then paste it in place. "Pasting in place" is a function in Inkscape which places a copy in the exact same position as the original when it was copied, it can be done by pressing "Ctrl+Alt+V" or by selecting the option in the Edit drop-down menu. We need to use the black line for something, but we want a copy in the exact same position to show Rectangula's land border, so we've made a copy in the exact same position for us to use instead! Now, we use the Bezier Curves tool to extend that path so that it encompasses the whole of Rectangula's (undisputed) territory, like so:
Now we're going to select the shape we're using for land (the pale brown/beige one in this instance), copy it, and also paste it in place. The overlap between this land shape and the black line encompassing all of Rectangula's territory is Rectangula's exact territory - so, to have a shape that consists of Rectangula's territory and nothing more we need to select these two shapes and use the "Intersection" Boolean Operation to make a shape of the overlap, like so (the land shape has been converted to a blue outline to make this easier to see):
Now we take this shape, use the Page Up and Page Down keys to put it behind the text and shapes we want it to be behind, and use the Fill and Stroke dialog (Ctrl + Shift + F) to make it the most patriotic colour imaginable: hot pink.
We can't just copy this process for Oblongia because its land border is not a single path - it's a combination of the diagonal path and the small section of the vertical path that it shares with Rectangula. So, first we make a copy of the diagonal path and use the Bezier Curves tool to extend it around Oblongia's territory, ignoring Rectangula's territory just as we ignored the sea before:
We start by copying the land shape, pasting it in place, and using the Intersection Boolean Function to get the overlap.
The result unfortunately overlaps Rectangula's territory. Now, whilst Rectangula would argue that Oblongia does illegally claim Rectangulan territory even they wouldn't say they wanted that bit, so we need to remove this overlap. To do this we make a copy of Rectangula's territory shape and paste it in place (Ctrl + Alt + V, as before), then use the Home key to bring this copy above the Oblongian territory shape. Now we select both shapes and use the "Difference" Boolean Operation to remove the upper shape (Rectangula's territory) from the lower shape (Oblongia's territory).
We now have a shape consisting solely of Oblongia's territory! Let's colour it a nice turquoise, to differentiate it from the Rectangulan scum.
Making a shape consisting solely of Trianglvania is simple, using the same method as for Oblongia:
Though the status of Trianglvania is technically still disputed, the All-World Congress recognises Oblongia's occupation as legal, so I've coloured it a darker turquoise.
And there you have it! I probably could've communicated this in a more concise and simple way (and without rambling about fictional disputes over perfectly triangular areas of land), but I've never found brevity easy.
Anyway, if you have any questions about how to use this methods or are confused about any part of this, please feel free to ask!
Oh, you bloody legend
It's a little bit of trial-and-error, but on the main it has helped so much. Thank you!
It's a little bit of trial-and-error, but on the main it has helped so much. Thank you!
Krall
Banned
Oh, you bloody legend
It's a little bit of trial-and-error, but on the main it has helped so much. Thank you!
Glad I could help!
Alex Richards
Donor
The alternative of course is to draw one shape out as you want it, then allow bordering shapes to overlap and just use layering to put them below the previous shape. It's less neat and can pose issues depending on what you want to show, but can be useful if you've got a huge map and are concerned about putting too many nodes next to eachother.
So making separate subdivisions worked perfectly; one small aesthetic question now. How do you set the fill to be like those National Geographic maps? With a line of colour around the border, fading out towards the middle of the shape.
Something like this:
Something like this:
Does anyone know how to fix this when I do paint bucket?
The left is an example of what happens when I try to fill in something like the right. Does it have anything to do with the stroke?
The left is an example of what happens when I try to fill in something like the right. Does it have anything to do with the stroke?
I am trying to scale up two images to get them roughly the same size, but I can't get them any where any where the same size. Do I just need to keep on trying or is there some way of making it easier (such as pinning one point on both images so they are fixed points) or doing it automatically.
Thanks for any help.
Thanks for any help.
Krall
Banned
I'm afraid I literally never use the paint bucket tool, so I've no idea how to fix that.
Fading like that isn't easy to do in Inkscape, though I believe it should be possible.
Try copying the subdivision's shape, pasting it in place, and change its colour to whatever you want the colour in the middle to be. Then using Inset (or Linked Offset or Dynamic Offset) to make it smaller, then apply some sort of blur or glow effect (they can be found under "Blur" and "Shadows and Glows" in the Filters drop-down menu). You should be able to achieve a similar effect, at least.
I am trying to scale up two images to get them roughly the same size, but I can't get them any where any where the same size. Do I just need to keep on trying or is there some way of making it easier (such as pinning one point on both images so they are fixed points) or doing it automatically.
Thanks for any help.
You should be able to modify the size of anything in Inkscape directly by changing the W (width) and H (height) values that appear along the top of the screen when you have the image/path/whatever selected.