c.p.'s mapping adventures

[art128]

Nice map! Looks a bit challenging but should give some good opportunity to build.

[Simcoug]

Cowboy country... love it 

[c.p.]

So I've come up with a new feature to include with my map uploads: a topographic map that can be printed out, used for planning, etc.  While no one was looking, I re-uploaded several of my previously released maps with the new topo maps.  In addition, I've got some new maps to upload.  I also started restoring the lost pictures in this thread, and put up pictures showing the new topo maps for some of the regions.

Here's a map I thought I uploaded a few years ago, but I guess not.  It's another real-life Alaskan terrain, lying at the mouth of the Noatak River, about 200 miles north of Nome.  The size is 10 x 10 large cities.





And here's the topo map (the LEX version of the map is higher resolution, so it's a lot clearer).  The contour interval is 10 meters (50 meters for the darker contours).  In addition, there is a blue dashed contour at 2.5 meters above water level, and brown dashed contours at 5 and 15 meters above water level:


Detail of Noatak River:


For printing these maps, I've found they print better if they are lightened quite a bit first.  This particular region is pretty big.  I printed it out in color at 11"x 17" (actually 11"x 11"), and it's OK at that size, but bigger would be better.

[Simmer2]

Great idea Brian!

Love the map

Simmer2

[c.p.]

Thanks Nick

So I uploaded another real-life Alaskan map, Alsek Bay, based on the Alsek River area in southeastern Alaska, about 250 km northwest of Juneau.  Size is 9 x 7 large cities.  Get it Here.



I also included a topographic map with the upload. Here is a reduced version:


Detail of Dry Bay:


Marsh/wetland detail (this is the same resolution as the uploaded map):


The contours for the topographic map are 20 meters (100 meters for the darker contours), with additional dashed contours at 270 and 290 meters (20 and 40 meters above water level.)  Also, there is a dotted blue contour at 253 meters (3 meters above water level), and a dotted brown contour at 256 meters (6 meters above water level).  I printed the full map out at 11"x 17", and the contours are all visible at that scale, but the dotted ones are a little hard to see.

[mattb325]

Awesome! It looks like I'll have to start a "proper" region for these beauties  . The thing I like most about your maps is that they are incredibly realistic and they are also a mix of large, medium and small tiles. 

[c.p.]

Thanks Matt   Yeah, I usually prefer the small and medium size cities.  If I were to play these regions, I'd probably break down some of the large cities into medium size before starting the region.  (Extremely easy to do in SC4Mapper 2013.)  The large ones can be a bit much for one sitting, and that makes them less fun and more of a chore, IMO.

So, I finished updating my previous map uploads (with new .SC4M files and topographic maps), and restored the pictures to most of my previous posts in this thread.  Also, I uploaded another new map, based on the Cheboygan, Michigan area.  Get it here.



Topo map (reduced):


The contours for this map are 5 meters (25 meters for the darker contours), and a dotted blue contour at 253 meters (3 meters above water level).

[Simcoug]

I love the idea of a topographic map!  I wanted to do that ages ago for one of my regions and never figured out a simple way to make it work.  How did you go about it?   

[c.p.]

Thanks Matt, good to see you here

So here's my process for making the topographic maps.  I don't know if it's the simplest possible process, but it only takes 10 or 15 minutes, once you've done a few of them.  You will need a free program, QGIS. Download QGIS Here

In TERRAFORMER or MAPPER

Start by saving overhead picture of the region in Terraformer or SC4Mapper, and export the region as a 16bit png.
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PHOTO-EDITING SOFTWARE, such as PHOTOSHOP

Flip the 16 bit png vertically and save.  (If you don't have graphics software that can handle 16 bit grayscale don't worry about it, this step is optional.

Lighten/brighten the overhead picture (quite a lot) and save.  Take note of the dimensions (in pixels) of this picture. You will need this info later.
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In QGIS Desktop:

(Note: I use version 2.14.20)

New Project
Raster>Extraction>Contour

For "Input File", select the 16 bit png previously saved (preferably flipped, if you were able to do that).

For "Output File for Contour Lines" I put something like Cheboygan100 (no extension, I don't think it actually saves a file).

For "Interval between Contour Lines", enter 10x the actual interval you want.  So if you want a 10m interval, enter 100.

Provide an attribute name for the contours such as inter100, idx500, Wat2500, wtlnd2530, etc.

Check the box next to "Load onto Canvas when Finished".

Hit OK, and just hit OK at the Coordinate System Reference Selector dialogue, (which is irrelevant for these purposes.)

Then, while the Contour dialogue is still showing, run through these steps again for the darker contours (with an interval of 500 if that's what you want), and again for whatever other contours you may want on the map.  So for example, if you wanted a single contour at 5 meters above water level, run it with "Interval Between Contour Lines" of 2550 (which will actually create a contour every 255 meters, but later you can delete any contours at 510m, 765m, etc.).

When you have all the contours you will be needing, click OK through all the dialogue boxes until you get to the screen showing the contours.

(Note the contours come in flipped, but hopefully you already flipped the 16bit png, in which case they are already correct).

The contours are probably crappy colors that won't work for your map, so:
Right click on layer entry on left and select "Properties".
In the Properties dialogue, in the upper right, change the width to something like 0.13 for lighter contours and 0.23 for darker contours.  You can also change the color of the contours here and the line type (for example, to dashed).

If you are creating a 255m contour, as in the example above, right-click on that layer, then click Open Attribute Table, toggle the edit tools to enable (the little pencil on the left). The right column is the elevations.  Click the heading for that column to reorder reorder them by elevation, then it is easy to select the elevations you don't want, (in this case all the contour elevations other than 2550) and delete contours by pressing the delete button in the table dialogue.  Then hit the little pencil again to toggle off the edit tools.  Save when it asks you to.

When you have the contours the way you want them, Save project.

Then:  Raster>Georeferencer

Open Raster (Choose the lightened overhead picture of the region previously saved).

"Add Point" at lower left and upper right. For starters, you only have to pick these points approximately on screen. Enter map coordinates of 0,0 for the lower left, and total pixels of region x (horizontally), total pixels of region y (vertically), when it asks for the upper right x and y.  Then, in the little table near the bottom, Enter numbers in the  Source X and Source Y columns as follows:
first line:
Source X = 1, Source Y = (total height of region in pixels - 1) x -1
second line:
Source X = total width of region in pixels - 1, Source Y =  -1.

If this doesn't work, try 0, 0 for the first line, and total pixels X, total pixels Y for the second line.

File>Start Georeferencing.  Might have to do this twice to get it to work.

Just OK through any transformation settings that pop up.

File>Close Georeferencer

Ignore hourglass cursor when it asks for Coordinate system, and just hit OK.

If all went well, there should be an entry in the layer stack for the overhead picture.  Drag that entry to the bottom of the stack so it doesn't hide the contours.

If it looks good, save the project.
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QGIS (continued)

New Print Composer (Ctrl+P)  (Name can be the region name).

In the Composition tab on the right, Set paper size to custom, set units to inches, and set size to 0.01 times the number of pixels in picture.  Set Quality to 200 dpi.

Layout>Add Map   Pick corners approximately, and then drag corners of map box to corners of canvas, (they should snap exactly to corners of canvas).

In "Item Properties" tab on the right, "Extents" section, set map to canvas extent, then, in the following order: set X min to 0.00, Y max to the number of vertical pixels of the region, X max to number of horizontal pixels of the region, and Y min to 0.

Do not change the "position and size" settings under "general options".

If it looks good on-screen, export as image.