Creating maps in InkScapePart 2: Water, Infrastructure and CitiesWe continue at were we finished last time. Up to now, we only have a landmass. In this part, we're going to add water (seas, rivers) as wel as cities and infrastructure.
WaterFirst, we'll add some water. We start with the sea. Because the example map is an island, this land is surrounded by sea. You can achieve this very easily:
- Create a new layer called "Sea". This is the second most bottom layer (the bottom layer is the base map).
- Select the Rectangle-tool and make it as big as the entire page.
- Color the rectangle blue, preferably a light, unsaturated colour.
- Presto! Your sea is ready!
TIP 1:When using the rectangle tool, a task bar appears at the top of the screen where you can modify the exact size of the rectangle:
TIP 2:When using the regular selection tool, the following task bar appears at the top of the screen. With this task bar, you can move, resize objects precisely. You can also easily mirror or turn objects 90 degrees:
We continue with rivers:
- Hide the layers "Sea" and "Land". We will keep these layers hidden for a while. Otherwise we can't see the base map.
- Create a new layer called "Riviers". This layer is place on top of the "Land" layer.
- Make a river with either the Free Hand or Node Draw tool.
TIP 3:You can modify the paths later with help of Node-tool. You can move nodes, add or remove nodes or change node type to make curved lines. Because I can't explain well how to do so, I advise you to experiment with this tool. It's quite easy to control it yourself.
- Assign a good line colour and thickness to the rivers and disable the fill colour. It looks nice when the rivers have the same colour as the sea.
- Repeat these steps until you've drawn all rivers on the map.
CitiesIt's time to add cities!
- Create a new layer called "City Symbols". For now, this will be the top-most layer.
- Use the Circle and/or Rectangle-tool to make the symbols and place them on the appropriate spots.
- Give the symbols proper colours. I often use a red fill for large cities and black for smaller towns
TIP 4:Hold the CTRL-key pressed to give the rectangle or circle an integer proportion (1:1, 1:2, 1:3, enz.). Useful for making perfect squares or circles.
TIP 5:First create the symbols for every city class (often from small to large) and simply copy these for all cities with the corresponding class.
- Create a new layer called "City Names". For now, this will be the top-most layer.
- Use the Text-tool to add names. "Text Boxes" will appear, where you can write names in. You can change the contents later again with the text tool at any given moment (behold one of the many advantages of vector images!). At the top of the screen, a task bar appears where you can modify font type, size, spacing, line distance and other properties:
TIP 6: Use different font sizes and capital letter (or not) for different city classes.
TIP 7: Copy-pasting Text Boxes is very useful to inherit its properties.
TIP 8: Advanced users can add an extra background layer to add an extra contrast to the placenames to make them better readable.
- Place the text boxes at their corresponding city symbols, in such a way that they are properly readable. You can move it elsewhere later when necessary.
- Repeat these steps until you've given all cities a name.
TIP 9: This method also works for naming rivers, lakes and seas.
TIP 10: If you want to add developed area, do this in the same way as you created your land mass. Create a new layer called "Built-up Area" and arrange it in between the layers "Land" and "Rivers".[/list]
Infrastructure:We're now ready to put in main infrastructure. Making infrastructure looks similar to making rivers. However, I apply an useful trick to make the lines look better really fast.:
- Create two or three layers (depending on colour scheme and style) for the motorways. Call these layers "Motorway_0", "Motorway_1", etc. These layers are arranged just above the "Rivers"-layer. Order these layers that the highest indexed layer is on top.
- Create two or three layers for main roads. Call these "MainRoads_0", "MainRoads_1", etc. Note that "MainRoads_0" is arranged just beneath "Motorway_0", "MainRoads_1" just below "Motorways_1", etc.
- Repeat this for other road classes.
- Create one or two layers Called "Railroads_#". These are arranged on top of the topmost "Motorway layer"Maak voor de Spoorwegen één of twee lagen aan (afhankelijk van het kleurenschema en stijl dat je kiest) en noem deze "Spoor_0", "Spoor_1" enzovoort.
- Select the layer "Motorways_0" and draw all motorways. All layers indexed with 0, I'll call them base layers.
- Repeat the steps for all other road classes.
- Make the lines thick and .
- Now here's the trick: select one of the base layers and select everything from that layer (CTRL+A). Then copy this layer (CTRL+C), select the corresponding layer above this layer (i.e. "Motorways_1") and paste in place (CTRL+SHIFT+V). Make this line thinner and give it another colour (and possibly another striping pattern.
- Repeat this until you've filled every layer for every infrastructure type.
- Presto, you have multi-layered infrastructure lines!
For inspiration, here are some colour schemes you could use for your infrastructure (text is in dutch, sorry about that):
The result for now will look like this (small detail: I also added a border and area names):
Stay tuned for Part 3
Best,
Maarten
Poll