8 ms·

Fantasy Map Brushes

448 points by starkparker 3y ago

livrem 3y ago
Looks like five new sets added since last time I visited that site a few years ago. Thanks for the reminder! Should get back to using a RSS reader to not miss updates from sites like that. Last time I tried it seemed to work quite well to import the Photoshop-brushes into Krita. I do not remember if it had built-in support for that or if there were extra steps, but a quick search shows there are several tutorials available on how to do it anyway. On the other hand the terrain images extracted from those maps are quite useful also as just images to copy-paste without setting up fancy brushes.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  Feedly’s fine for RSS btw
  - gnatolf 3y ago
    I mostly agree. Every time they add a new feature (none of those have ever been useful to me) I am afraid they're going to take it further from what I use it for. Which is only RSS feed reader. To their credit - if you ignore all the little additions, the base functionality is remarkably identical over the last decade or so.
    - mock-possum 3y ago
      Yep that’s exactly my experience as well. I really am bracing myself for when they make categories a premium feature or put a limit on how many feeds I can have or something nasty like that… but meanwhile, they’re just fine.
perforator 3y ago
Looks amazing! What would be the best way for someone to start making maps with these with no prior experience?
- sgbeal 3y ago
  > with no prior experience? Grab the PNG bundles and copy/paste those into your graphics editor of choice.
  - VikingCoder 3y ago
    Oh that I had time... I really wish I had the time to make a web-based map-drawing tool that would already know how to access all of these amazing CC0 and Public Domain assets... Seriously, honestly, if I were a billionaire, I'd be a patron of the arts like this, all the time, hiring people who want to make tools like this. /sigh/
    - johngossman 3y ago
      I have this bookmarked. I'm not sure if any of them meet your criteria, but... https://blog.reedsy.com/fantasy-map-generators/ https://blog.reedsy.com/fantasy-map-generators/ 15-year old me would probably fail out of school playing with these
    - catapart 3y ago
      Real question: What features do you think would be necessary for an MVP of what you're wanting built?
      - VikingCoder 3y ago
        It's hard to not take the M in MVP too seriously... But I have to take it seriously... I've broken into MVP 1, MVP 2, etc.. * I suspect HTML5 Canvas is the easiest tool that would get the job done - I mention this because in my mind, I know the limitations of Canvas, and I think they line up quite while with what I'm imagining. It's possible something else could be easier to start with, but might not be able to easily implement ALL of these features I've laid out... But I think it's possible to get started with just CSS. [1] * An open source and easily appended list of tile families and their descriptors (size of tiles, positions of them, etc.) and the link to their licensing * Let you pick a tile family * Let you select a tile as your current brush - every click places a tile --- * Select an eraser that deletes tiles that you click within * Pick the background to use (such as parchment [respect their licensing, too], or just solid colors) * Select a tool to move existing tiles by clicking within them, dragging them --- * A way to filter tile families (and backgrounds) by licensing ("show me only CC0", "show CC0 or CCBY3.0 etc.") * change the size of your image map * image map can be bigger than your browser window (with scrolling) --- * Change the size of the tiles you are about to paint * Change the color of the tiles you are about to paint * Change the opacity of the tiles you are about to paint * Change the rotation of the tiles you are about to paint --- * Pick a font, size, color, bold, italic * Type text * The Eraser can delete text * The Mover can move text --- * The Eraser can also drag through things to erase them * Turn on and off a grid to snap tiles to * Save as JSON button (x, y, tile id) * Load from JSON button * Save as Image button (otherwise people can use a screen scraper themselves) * The image is a PNG which has the JSON encoded in it as EXIF so it's easy to restore and continue [1] : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13526712/make-div-draggable-using-css https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13526712/make-div-dragga...
g5095 3y ago
DMs rejoice
- breakfastduck 3y ago
  Guilty pleasure. Whenever I DM a campaign I spend a significantly high percentage of my time preparing on making maps when I should be planning encounters... Map making and world building are fun.
johngossman 3y ago
Amidst so much dreck on the Internet, I like to cherish such gems.
- thih9 3y ago
  I guess this is a gem in large part because it is free and high quality work. I wish there was a way to demonetize the internet a bit; or to provide easier access to places that don’t always try to sell you something.
account-5 3y ago
This is excellent. I love(d) fantasy books maps. I loved trying to track where the characters were in the world's I was reading about. I used to draw my own for the books I was going to write, unfortunately my talents lay with drawing rather than writing...
- JackFr 3y ago
  > darwing rather than writing... Indeed! :-)
  - account-5 3y ago
    Unfortunately my phone only corrects properly spelled words and leaves obviously incorrect words as is. But certainly an ironic and suitable mistake!
nonethewiser 3y ago
How would one use these brush sets?
- whartung 3y ago
  I have not looked at these specifically, but can give a simple example. You're probably familiar with how the maps look in Lord of the Rings. If you notice, the mountains have a look to them, a schematic representation of essentially triangles, perhaps done with a fine brush. It's not just two straight lines in a corner. So, anyway, one of the brushes in these sets might be those mountain icons. Then, when making your mountain range on your map, you select the "mountain top brush", and then "stamp" mountains in an area using the glyph. So, in that sense, it's not a "brush" per se, something that you actually use for brush strokes. Rather, its an iconography that you can place on your map. That's a trivial example of how these can be used. They may well be more sophisticated than that.
  - ornornor 3y ago
    So it’s really more like a physical rubber stamp of sorts that you can scale up or down but that will otherwise always look the same? I also know very little about this and the “brush” denomination really confuses me.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      Reading a bit more, I think “brush” is being used in the context of photoshop. Sounds like its a specific feature there.
    - crtified 3y ago
      In traditional painting, since hundreds or thousands of years ago, many drawing techniques relied heavily upon using different physical brushes. The properties of each different brush would make certain tasks easier for the painter. In more modern times, as computer-based drawing evolved, that same principle became a basic feature of drawing applications - that is, the ability to change between different (virtual) 'brushes', each with different characteristics, such as shape, but also intensity and other factors which make the artist's job both easier and more nuanced. In a way, your reduction of the idea to "a set of rubber stamps of sorts" is true, in the same way that a physical brush is equally "a stamp of sorts", if the artist chooses to use that brush in a suitably monotonous stamping action. But in digital art (as in physical art) the total picture is more about the skilful wielding of myriad tools and techniques, through multiple steps and recombinations. To bring in another analogy - every wood worker uses basically the same tools, the basic claw hammer shape hasn't changed in a long time, the basic screw drivers, drill bits, etc. The same set of rubber stamps, in a way. Is that a constraint upon creativity and uniqueness? Perhaps, but not meaningfully.
aaroninsf 3y ago
TIL in the context of tools for image editors like gimp, "brush set" is the term of art for "glyph set." I suppose you could "paint" with these but the intended use is "single-click stamping." Lovely work, reflective of both craft care and affection—but boy I do wish another term had been adopted :P
takk309 3y ago
I am kinda excited to integrate some of these sets into a real location map built in ArcGIS! It may not result in a spatially perfect map, but it will be way more fun to build and look at. I can see a good use case for public engagement type maps.
xipho 3y ago
Here Dragons Abound is another hidden gem in this vein: https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/ https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/
- programd 3y ago
  Indeed. The Here Dragons Abound author's blog post on the overhead of maintaining this very cool open source project for the benefit of others [0] is rather eye opening. This is a blueprint for what it takes to do it correctly, often for very little reward. Also, apparently he is a contributor to Nethack. [0] https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2022/06/map-compasses-retrospective.html https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2022/06/map-compasses...
fingerlocks 3y ago
K.M. is probably the best designer I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with in 20 years. Great to see this on HN!
noxa 3y ago
beautiful - also recommend his novels: https://kmalexander.com/home/ https://kmalexander.com/home/
- mhd 3y ago
  Yeah, I read the first one a while ago and really enjoyed the world building. Guess someone who's really into mapping won't disappoint on that front.
dylan604 3y ago
I've seen this headline most of the day, but just now properly looked at the link. These are very nice, and not really sure what I was expecting, but they are much better than I anticipated. The internet still has pockets of cool things if you're willing to take off your floaties of siloed social platforms and venture into the deeper waters
- gazook89 3y ago
  On the other hand, this site is near the top of a link aggregator where you are seeing it for the first time.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    are you comparing a link aggregator to a walled garden of a social media platform? link aggregators are pretty much the last vestiges of the old internet. only, now, we get to comment about the links as well.
    - nosrepa 3y ago
      I suddenly miss del.icio.us
fennecfoxy 3y ago
Un/semi related I guess, but I've always found it pretty interesting how brushes are considered artistic, use of PS clone etc tools that "do the job for you" are still considered artistic. But use of SD etc is not artistic at all. Even faced with the idea of a model trained only on properly sourced works/even only generic photos of the real world, most people _still_ seem to balk at calling it art, or the person who uses such a model an "artist". That's some gatekeeping right there.

448 points by starkparker 3y ago

Looks like five new sets added since last time I visited that site a few years ago. Thanks for the reminder! Should get back to using a RSS reader to not miss updates from sites like that. Last time I tried it seemed to work quite well to import the Photoshop-brushes into Krita. I do not remember if it had built-in support for that or if there were extra steps, but a quick search shows there are several tutorials available on how to do it anyway. On the other hand the terrain images extracted from those maps are quite useful also as just images to copy-paste without setting up fancy brushes.

mock-possum 3y ago
Feedly’s fine for RSS btw
- gnatolf 3y ago
  I mostly agree. Every time they add a new feature (none of those have ever been useful to me) I am afraid they're going to take it further from what I use it for. Which is only RSS feed reader. To their credit - if you ignore all the little additions, the base functionality is remarkably identical over the last decade or so.
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    Yep that’s exactly my experience as well. I really am bracing myself for when they make categories a premium feature or put a limit on how many feeds I can have or something nasty like that… but meanwhile, they’re just fine.

perforator 3y ago

Looks amazing! What would be the best way for someone to start making maps with these with no prior experience?

sgbeal 3y ago
> with no prior experience? Grab the PNG bundles and copy/paste those into your graphics editor of choice.
- VikingCoder 3y ago
  Oh that I had time... I really wish I had the time to make a web-based map-drawing tool that would already know how to access all of these amazing CC0 and Public Domain assets... Seriously, honestly, if I were a billionaire, I'd be a patron of the arts like this, all the time, hiring people who want to make tools like this. /sigh/
  - johngossman 3y ago
    I have this bookmarked. I'm not sure if any of them meet your criteria, but... https://blog.reedsy.com/fantasy-map-generators/ https://blog.reedsy.com/fantasy-map-generators/ 15-year old me would probably fail out of school playing with these
  - catapart 3y ago
    Real question: What features do you think would be necessary for an MVP of what you're wanting built?
    - VikingCoder 3y ago
      It's hard to not take the M in MVP too seriously... But I have to take it seriously... I've broken into MVP 1, MVP 2, etc.. * I suspect HTML5 Canvas is the easiest tool that would get the job done - I mention this because in my mind, I know the limitations of Canvas, and I think they line up quite while with what I'm imagining. It's possible something else could be easier to start with, but might not be able to easily implement ALL of these features I've laid out... But I think it's possible to get started with just CSS. [1] * An open source and easily appended list of tile families and their descriptors (size of tiles, positions of them, etc.) and the link to their licensing * Let you pick a tile family * Let you select a tile as your current brush - every click places a tile --- * Select an eraser that deletes tiles that you click within * Pick the background to use (such as parchment [respect their licensing, too], or just solid colors) * Select a tool to move existing tiles by clicking within them, dragging them --- * A way to filter tile families (and backgrounds) by licensing ("show me only CC0", "show CC0 or CCBY3.0 etc.") * change the size of your image map * image map can be bigger than your browser window (with scrolling) --- * Change the size of the tiles you are about to paint * Change the color of the tiles you are about to paint * Change the opacity of the tiles you are about to paint * Change the rotation of the tiles you are about to paint --- * Pick a font, size, color, bold, italic * Type text * The Eraser can delete text * The Mover can move text --- * The Eraser can also drag through things to erase them * Turn on and off a grid to snap tiles to * Save as JSON button (x, y, tile id) * Load from JSON button * Save as Image button (otherwise people can use a screen scraper themselves) * The image is a PNG which has the JSON encoded in it as EXIF so it's easy to restore and continue [1] : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13526712/make-div-draggable-using-css https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13526712/make-div-dragga...

g5095 3y ago

DMs rejoice

breakfastduck 3y ago
Guilty pleasure. Whenever I DM a campaign I spend a significantly high percentage of my time preparing on making maps when I should be planning encounters... Map making and world building are fun.

johngossman 3y ago

Amidst so much dreck on the Internet, I like to cherish such gems.

thih9 3y ago
I guess this is a gem in large part because it is free and high quality work. I wish there was a way to demonetize the internet a bit; or to provide easier access to places that don’t always try to sell you something.

account-5 3y ago

This is excellent. I love(d) fantasy books maps. I loved trying to track where the characters were in the world's I was reading about. I used to draw my own for the books I was going to write, unfortunately my talents lay with drawing rather than writing...

JackFr 3y ago
> darwing rather than writing... Indeed! :-)
- account-5 3y ago
  Unfortunately my phone only corrects properly spelled words and leaves obviously incorrect words as is. But certainly an ironic and suitable mistake!

nonethewiser 3y ago

How would one use these brush sets?

whartung 3y ago
I have not looked at these specifically, but can give a simple example. You're probably familiar with how the maps look in Lord of the Rings. If you notice, the mountains have a look to them, a schematic representation of essentially triangles, perhaps done with a fine brush. It's not just two straight lines in a corner. So, anyway, one of the brushes in these sets might be those mountain icons. Then, when making your mountain range on your map, you select the "mountain top brush", and then "stamp" mountains in an area using the glyph. So, in that sense, it's not a "brush" per se, something that you actually use for brush strokes. Rather, its an iconography that you can place on your map. That's a trivial example of how these can be used. They may well be more sophisticated than that.
- ornornor 3y ago
  So it’s really more like a physical rubber stamp of sorts that you can scale up or down but that will otherwise always look the same? I also know very little about this and the “brush” denomination really confuses me.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Reading a bit more, I think “brush” is being used in the context of photoshop. Sounds like its a specific feature there.
  - crtified 3y ago
    In traditional painting, since hundreds or thousands of years ago, many drawing techniques relied heavily upon using different physical brushes. The properties of each different brush would make certain tasks easier for the painter. In more modern times, as computer-based drawing evolved, that same principle became a basic feature of drawing applications - that is, the ability to change between different (virtual) 'brushes', each with different characteristics, such as shape, but also intensity and other factors which make the artist's job both easier and more nuanced. In a way, your reduction of the idea to "a set of rubber stamps of sorts" is true, in the same way that a physical brush is equally "a stamp of sorts", if the artist chooses to use that brush in a suitably monotonous stamping action. But in digital art (as in physical art) the total picture is more about the skilful wielding of myriad tools and techniques, through multiple steps and recombinations. To bring in another analogy - every wood worker uses basically the same tools, the basic claw hammer shape hasn't changed in a long time, the basic screw drivers, drill bits, etc. The same set of rubber stamps, in a way. Is that a constraint upon creativity and uniqueness? Perhaps, but not meaningfully.

aaroninsf 3y ago

TIL in the context of tools for image editors like gimp, "brush set" is the term of art for "glyph set." I suppose you could "paint" with these but the intended use is "single-click stamping." Lovely work, reflective of both craft care and affection—but boy I do wish another term had been adopted :P

takk309 3y ago

I am kinda excited to integrate some of these sets into a real location map built in ArcGIS! It may not result in a spatially perfect map, but it will be way more fun to build and look at. I can see a good use case for public engagement type maps.

xipho 3y ago

Here Dragons Abound is another hidden gem in this vein: https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/ https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/

programd 3y ago
Indeed. The Here Dragons Abound author's blog post on the overhead of maintaining this very cool open source project for the benefit of others [0] is rather eye opening. This is a blueprint for what it takes to do it correctly, often for very little reward. Also, apparently he is a contributor to Nethack. [0] https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2022/06/map-compasses-retrospective.html https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/2022/06/map-compasses...

fingerlocks 3y ago

K.M. is probably the best designer I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with in 20 years. Great to see this on HN!

noxa 3y ago

beautiful - also recommend his novels: https://kmalexander.com/home/ https://kmalexander.com/home/

mhd 3y ago
Yeah, I read the first one a while ago and really enjoyed the world building. Guess someone who's really into mapping won't disappoint on that front.

dylan604 3y ago

I've seen this headline most of the day, but just now properly looked at the link. These are very nice, and not really sure what I was expecting, but they are much better than I anticipated. The internet still has pockets of cool things if you're willing to take off your floaties of siloed social platforms and venture into the deeper waters

gazook89 3y ago
On the other hand, this site is near the top of a link aggregator where you are seeing it for the first time.
- dylan604 3y ago
  are you comparing a link aggregator to a walled garden of a social media platform? link aggregators are pretty much the last vestiges of the old internet. only, now, we get to comment about the links as well.
  - nosrepa 3y ago
    I suddenly miss del.icio.us

fennecfoxy 3y ago

Un/semi related I guess, but I've always found it pretty interesting how brushes are considered artistic, use of PS clone etc tools that "do the job for you" are still considered artistic. But use of SD etc is not artistic at all. Even faced with the idea of a model trained only on properly sourced works/even only generic photos of the real world, most people _still_ seem to balk at calling it art, or the person who uses such a model an "artist". That's some gatekeeping right there.