How To Draw A Heat Map In Gimp

Ramirez Wharleas · Tuesday, March 29, 2022

This brusque tutorial will use only bones Gimp skills and give you a map of the form of those classic TSR maps of the 80s such as The Palace of the Silver Princess, that can exist found for gratis hither. I will try to go along it as simple and straightforward as possible. If there are any steps - however small - that are unclear please say and I volition better the text.
Throughout this I volition exist using gimp version 2.4 - go to www.gimp.org to get hold of the latest stable (2.4.10) release.

In this mail service we'll get through the post-obit steps:
1. Open a new canvas of the right size
2. Set up Gimps grid to be the right scale for the map
three. Import a new pattern (simply ever needs to be done once)
4. Utilize the new pattern to lay a grid over the canvas to make our graph newspaper groundwork.

Then there are very few steps and they should exist pretty straightforward. If you lot want to encounter the result of this section of the tutorial, skip to the bottom of the mail service.

Before we start we need to determine what size the sheet is going to be. This depends on two things - how big the map is in numbers of squares and how many pixels each of those squares will accept upwardly. Here I apply 50px squares and a canvas of 1000px by 1000px. This means that there are 1000/50=20 squares to a side so its a pretty small map. I've chosen 50px because it's a practiced resolution for virtual tabletop programmes which are the area I play D&D in.

To become a larger map you can get to a larger overall canvass - ie a 2000px by 2000px map will concur 40 50px squares to a side which should hold a decent sized dungeon. The alternative is to go to smaller squares. If I had chosen a 25px square so I'd get xl to a side on my 1000 by 1000px canvas. This second selection has the advantage of keeping the filesize down. On the other hand, all the resources I'll postal service hither volition be sized to 50px

So that's enough talk about this. You should now accept decided on the size of your sail. I have 1000px by 1000px. Create a new canvas (File->New). In the post-obit dialogue, make certain the measurements are in pixels that your width and height are both fix to the value y'all take chosen.

You at present have a blank white square!

Gimp has a grid built in. It'due south invisible at the moment and then go to View->Show Grid. Note the View menu is in the window with the canvas on it, rather than the window with the tool palette on it. Nosotros'll be using the canvas menus for everything except for opening a new file (and that's already washed).

Now with the filigree showing you should accept a load of cross-hairs across your white canvass. These volition probably be at the default Gimp spacing of 32 pixels - which yous don't want.

To change this become to Prototype->Configure Filigree... and set the grid spacing to your called value. Here I set it to 50px. You lot should now accept something that looks like this:

This filigree just works equally a guide for the Gimp tools - information technology won't show upward in the final version. However that's no proficient for usa as we will be needing a grid to grade the ground of our map. We need to draw in a grid, but don't worry, you won't need to draw out every line past hand. We'll use a design fill.

This adjacent footstep is a little tricky but yous but accept to do it one time. I've got a couple of pattern (.pat) files that allow me to create a grid of any size with great ease. They are included in this zip file:
gridPatterns.zip

Download this zilch file and unzip it in the post-obit directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\<userName>\.gimp-2.4\patterns\

Now make sure that you accept the patterns dialogue open somewhere (by default Gimp will open this in the combined layers and patterns dialogue). If you tin't run into it, go to Dialogs->Patterns or use ctrl-shift-P. That will bring it up, or highlight it if it is already open. Now at the bottom of the palettes dialogue is a pair of circling arrows. This allows you to refresh the seelction of patterns. The button is hither:

Hit this and the palette will exist updated with the new patterns yous have but added. Your palette should at present look like this:

The new patterns are there and ready to apply. You lot volition never take to practise this once more - those patterns will always be there (unless you delete the files from the directory at a later date). One will give a black filigree and the other volition give a TSR blue grid. I'll use blue throughout for that added nostalgia cistron. Click on the blueprint you desire.

Now, click on the window with your canvas in it. Go to Select->All or striking ctrl-A to select the whole canvas. Now become to Edit->Fill with pattern, or hit ctrl-;. You will now have a lovely blue filigree that fits beautifully over the Gimp filigree we ready! This will form the ground for the map. It should look something like this:

Correct, best to save information technology here. Save it in Gimp'south native format - .xcf - as this maintains all of the information. And so call it something like classicDungeon.xcf and you lot are good to become.