How to make roads in inkarnate?

How to draw a river in detail with Inkarnate, the fantasy map program? Here are some tips!

After explaining how to use the various background and foreground levels and how to color water and soil, let's move on to something slightly more advanced! inkarnate (which we talked about here) has a lot of potential and, as you will see, it can be used both to draw maps on a very large scale, and smaller maps.

However, the small-scale maps, like that of a city and its surroundings, present difficulties other than large-scale ones. In fact, they require more details and greater attention to the naturalness of the details.

Today, in fact, I will explain how to draw a river on a small scale, always using Inkarnate!

It should also be specified that the map that we will outline in this article will be the basis for the more detailed one, in which we will explain how to create the map of a village.

The places that we will design will appear in our campaign for Pathfinder, The book of invasions, which we have presented here and whose setting we presented here. The book of invasions can be found on our Patreon!

First of all, we specify that, for this tutorial, we will use the paid version of Inkarnate, which allows you to make larger maps and has more tools.

Even before starting, it is important to define the levels of background e background: how much of your map will be covered with water and how much will it involve from the ground? In our case, having to draw only one river, we must expect a predominance of land over water. So, I would recommend filling the map with the background of earth, setting our "trowel" at the top left with the drop-down menu in add.

At this point, you must draw the river, which is obtained by subtracting the earth: always remaining on the icon of the trowel, choose subtract from the first drop-down menu.

However, now you have to choose whether to draw the river with a circle brush, or with a square or hexagonal one. Personally, I find it more comfortable to work, at least initially, with hexagonal brush: having a reference grid helps me maintain the proportions of the map.

To define the width of the river, and in general the scale of the drawing, it is important to set the size of your brush by adjusting its Size. Using the hexagonal grid, the size of the individual hexagons can also be useful for adjusting with the map scale: the smaller the hexagons, the more territory will be included in the map. To change the size of the hexagons, you must go to the penultimate icon on the left, that is the one that controls the grids.

To represent this river, we will need one medium scale. Then, in the upper bar that appears, set the Size at 55, which will give us medium-sized hexes.

At the center of the map, therefore, subtract hexes to form the river, returning to the trowel icon and selecting abstract. In this case, the river's path will see a sharp central curve, such that the river almost surrounds and makes an island a piece of land. We will then make this piece of land raised and host the gnomic village of An Inse, which looks almost like an island surrounded by a river.

Now that we have the path of the river, we must refine its banks and remove the woodiness of the hexagons from them. This process will take place in two parts: one of subtraction of background is one of insertion of background.

First, set the trowel to subtract, in shape circular and size relatively minute: Size 20/25 is optimal. In fact, we are outlining the bank of a river: it is not too linear and a little precision is needed, but we must not make it too rough banks (it is not a mountain stream!).

With your trowel, gently follow the edges of the hexagons, subtracting ground for smooth the corners. Apply a slight horizontal wobble to your mouse to make this smoothing slightly irregular - it's okay it's a plain river, but it's not even ruled out! If you have a little shaky and shaky hands, don't worry about the swing: you are already doing it very well!

After this step, you will have a river with irregular edges but, you will notice, with the very concave sides, as if the river had found very little resistance while munching them away with its current. This is good, but not too much: adding convex surfaces also gives the design more variety and realism.

Then, set the trowel to add, always circular in shape and with one size slightly less than what you used before: for example, I will drop it from 24 to 22. Now pass it on the parts of the banks that seem too straight or too gnawed and harmonize the line.

At this point, do you think you have added too much land and narrowed the river too much? No problem: re-set subtract and gnaw the bank again, then add soil and remove it again until everything seems coherent.

Remember that the river's course is determined by the obstacles it encounters. Consequently, if you make it curve around an obstacle along one side, make sure the other side follows the curve and widens to compensate.

Now, having made a river with many bends, we must enter the obstacles that give it this somewhat tormented course.

Going to the icon, on the left, of the gods tool (the one with the castle), select the element "Select object". In the long series of objects that will appear, towards the beginning you will find the cliff, ie the cliffs, the end of a vertical drop. These cliffs will help us to give the idea of ​​raised ground that acts as an obstacle to the river.

Select the cliffs that most they adapt to the shape you have chosen, then, after selecting them by clicking on the icon Select at the top, change its size by adjusting the size stairs. Remember that this measurement will also determine the height of your elevation gain; for this map I chose an average scale, 60%.

Place all the cliffs along the edge of your obstacle, not worrying too much if the edges do not always coincide perfectly. Add soil where it is needed and remove it where it is in excess. In some cases, try to keep some ground under the cliff to create a small beach.

Now let's move on to soil and river coloring. Theoretically, the river would also be fine in its structure, but adding some particular shade of color will also give it more realism. The grid will not be needed for this task, so you can also remove it by going to the grid icon and setting the opacity to zero.

Since this map will be the base for a city in our Irish countryside, we will go to the brush icon and, keeping the already selected background, we will take the brightest green in the palette (BIOME-04), coloring the whole map like this.

At this point, to make the different consistency of the rocky slopes from the rest, we select the BIOME-02 palette, a slightly more subdued greenish color. Keeping a Softness it's a Opacity of 1, we trace the edges of the gradients. To make them instead lower banks and, supposedly, muddy, you can use a more earthy palette, like the LAND-04, taking care to diversify the thickness of the sides. To quickly outline the small area of beach that we had set before, we can use the color LAND-05, with an Opacity medium, to give it a yellow complexion.

At this point, we can also add some details to the color of the river water by selecting background in the first drop-down menu.

First, select a dark blue (OCEAN-01-BLUE-05-SL) and, decreasing the Opacity to about 0,25, trace the center of the river. This will add depth to the watercourse. To increase this depth, we will go to by contrast lighten the edges of the river, where the water is supposed to be lower. Keeping the same Opacity, select a light blue (OCEAN-01-BLUE-01-SL) and trace the edges of the river, on both sides.

At this point, our river is over and we can move on to the rest of the map!

What are the best techniques for drawing the roads in inkarnate, the program to draw fantasy maps? Here are some tips!

Here we are with a new tutorial on inkarnate! After explaining the basics of backgrounds and colors, How to draw a river and how to create magical compositions with the "Ice" package, let's move on to another topic!

Quite simply, today I will explain how to draw the streets and, more precisely, how to use them as base for a small village in the next tutorial. If you chew English well and want to be pampered by the voice of But to you, here's his video-tutorial on the same topic (minus cities).

As usual, if you have questions about the tutorials or need a specific tutorial, write us!

Broadly speaking, drawing roads is easier than drawing rivers, as you don't need to play with them background e background. Quite simply, drawing the streets is about draw colored lines for yours background (unless you want to draw roads on the water of the background!).

First you have to choose the colore of your way. This will depend on the matter from which the path is composed. For example, the cobblestones will need a gray, whereas a dirt road will be of various shades of brown, depending on the type of Plot of which it is composed.

In addition, you will also have to play on how sharp i are borders of your road, that is, on how blurred the boundaries of the colored line you are about to draw. In general, personally I do not recommend you to draw roads with too sharp boundaries, as they very much give the impression of a scribble done in Paint. But in short, they are tastes, so in case experiment!

For this map we will use the same drawing that we used to make the river tutorial. Indeed, in the end this map will host two villages and will be used for our campaign Pathfinder, The book of invasions, set in a Irish setting.

The maps will be uploaded to ours Patreon and will be freely downloadable. The campaign de The book of invasionsinstead, it will be available to those who support us Seekers with a pledge of 3 $ a month. Here you will find the Campaign presentations, free!

But let's go back to the tutorial! Since we are drawing a city map of medium-civilized people, we can think that the inhabitants have covered in cobbled paving at least their main roads.

Next, we will take a light gray color, which in the palette looks like OCEAN-01-GRAY-02-SL, since it was meant for the ocean. But we will borrow it on the streets, because yes. By setting Opacity 1 (the road must not be transparent!) e Softness 0,5 (to give a slight sense of gradient to the edges), let's draw the base of the road. Regarding the thickness of the line, since we are drawing a relatively small village and seen from above, we have opted for a Size 12, which gives us the opportunity to draw a not unnaturally wide road.

Now, whoever wants can simply go on like this, drawing all the roads with a single color. But we want to exaggerate here, so let's go into details!

By enlarging the view with the zoom, that is the icon of the magnifying glass at the bottom left, decrease the Size to 8. Then, increase the Softness andOpacity at 0,7. At this point, choose a darker gray from the palette; in our case, we chose theOCEAN-01-GRAY-04-SL, which is a darker shade than the base of the road.

With these settings, retrace the center of the road that you have drawn with a darker, but more nuanced line, so as to give the road a darker center and edges.

Don't worry about being too precise, but if your flickering little hands bring you too close to the light edges, later redraw the edges. Using Size 3 and the initial light gray palette, retrace the edge to rebuild it. I tell you because I had to do it at least a couple of times: thanks shaking hands!

Even if we are in a relatively civilized place, not all the streets in the village will be cobbled, so let's see how to deal with the dirt roads. In fact, in this case we will have to use different colors to imitate the different materials of the track.

After drawing a main road, which follows the river, let's see how to draw a smaller road, which goes north, that is, towards a swamp. In fact, although the marshes are excellent hunting areas and their land can be used for burying and storing food, they are not exactly a popular holiday destination. So, it is reasonable to think that there will be a road leading to the swamp, but also that it will be small and not used too much.

Always with Softness 0.5 e Opacity 1, but Size 10 (it is smaller than the main road) choose a relatively light brown from the palette, such as the LAND-04, then trace the road. Here the way to the marsh starts from the main road and follows the path of the river.

At this point, if you want, you can always draw the center of the road with a darker color, such as the POLITICAL-07, setting Size 6, and Softness e Opacity at 0,7. To make the track more irregular, go back to LAND-04 and retrace the edges of the road, so as to make the center narrower and more irregular, such as the muddy center of a dirt road.

At this point, we can try give even more personality to our path. In fact, when it moves away from the inhabited center, the way to the swamp will become less frequent: maybe near the village someone used to cross it to reach the fields or good fishing areas on the river. But few like to stray too far from civilization.

So probably at this point nature will have regained part of the road, covering it with grass and making it even more bumpy and narrower.

Recover the background color, in this case the Biome-04, and with Size 3, Softness 0,7 e Opacity 0.85, eat away pieces of the road. Before, follow the edge to make it narrower and irregular. Then, follow it in zigzag, making your little hands tremble even more to give a sense of irregularity.

Thus, you will have your hunter's path, irregular and honestly difficult to follow, for those who do not know or are not trained. Your players may have to make a nice Survival roll, in my opinion!

That's all for today! With these tips you can draw all the roads you want, and next time we will talk about how to draw a village starting from its streets!

First thing you need to decide is HOW you will execute the mapping. Are you an artist, good with hand-drawn stuff? This can work however I should warn you that if you intend to use cartography along with content creation like publishing on the DMsGuild, I believe it can get tricky as hand-drawn maps take a huge amount of time. If you want to focus solely on cartography, then it’s much more viable.

My recommendation is using a mapping software. There are plenty you can pick, some I don’t even know about. I have tried a few: Dungeon Painter Studio (DPS), Wonderdraft (WD), DungeonDraft (DD) and Inkarnate Pro. I also studied a bit about Campaign Cartographer 3 (CC3) to assess its business viability.

DPS is a bit limited and even though my first published adventure used dungeon maps made by it, I later replaced those maps by DD maps. WD is meant purely for regional maps. DD is a really cool and good tool for battlemaps. CC3 is a very complete, robust and complex tool, hence it has an extremely steep learning curve. In addition, try to find CC3 maps on Google and you’ll have difficulties to lay your eyes on many badass maps.

In my opinion, no tool beats Inkarnate. The reasons are many. With Inkarnate Pro, you can create ALL kinds of maps: world/regional, city, battlemaps, scene and landscapes. It’s very easy to use and learn, and provides thousands of assets out-of-the-box. It used to have a main downside which is getting less and less relevant: its recognizable style. However, Inkarnate now counts with 7 styles that can bring a lot of variety and life to your maps. The real major downside for many people is that it costs USD 25 a year on a subscription model, which can be expensive if you’re aiming for home use. For business use? It’s very little and you’ll get you USD 25 back very fast. My suggestion: subscribe to a month for USD 5 and access the tool.

PS: I don’t receive any money from Inkarnate to say those things. I say them because the software is great.

Now that you’re subscribed to Inkarnate, time to get to work. You could watch tutorials if that’s your thing, but I learned by making maps. You first need to decide the style:

Next come the Resolution. I’d go for 2k always, and then use the HD Export to get 4k or 8k maps when exporting the JPG. You also need to select the Aspect Ratio, which depends on the map you have in mind.

Once done, a blank map will load, fill with water. Please note that when selection the watercolor or battlemap styles, it may not look like water, but it is. You need to add land if your map had land. The left hand side menus are pretty self explanatory so I recommend starting to mess around with them. Add land, apply a texture with it and get a feel of the tool.

Create a few maps and try to get feedback on them to see what can be improved. Unless you have an artistic talent, your first maps won’t be masterpieces. And it’s alright. Practice will make each map better. Don’t worry, I have some tips for you to speed up this process.

Once you start having maps you’re proud of, share them away on social media. Here are some great places to do so:

Besides, I’d post the maps on a specific Pinterest board and share that one too. Feel free to use Instagram, Twitter, Discord or other places you are inserted in and may have a following.

The reason why this helps is that it will start spread your maps around and start having eyes on your maps. Maybe at some point someone will want to commission you like it happen with me.

Step 4: Put Maps in your Products

When publishing TTRPG products, use your new skills to support the products with your maps. This will bring added value to your product, helping with indirect sales. In addition, you can separate the maps and sell them separately. Don’t seek perfection. Aim for high-quality maps but without necessarily perfect maps, unless your product has only one map.

Step 5: Take Commissions

At some point, commissions make come into play. Take them! It’s good to mix flat-rates with royalties. I’d recommend putting more efforts on those maps than the ones you put in your products.

I’ll share some useful stuff I learned in the last 12 months which is when my cartography journey started. Hope that some or many help you 🙂

When painting natural ground (grass, earth, water, etc), blend different textures. Pick one to be your main texture, paint the whole area with it and then select a second one, reduce its opacity to maybe 50 to 60% and paint some bits of the land to make it look more natural.

Leave this tool be used specifically in world maps if you need to make commercial roads. If you’re on smaller maps, use textures to represent paths. First, paint a larger, lighter earth road, then reduce the size of the brush and paint a darker tone of earth. It’ll look much better!

Start your map with the bigger assets and features and once done, you’ll realize that the map will still look rather empty. Add details! For wilderness maps, add plants, flowers, rocks, big and small. In buildings, add small tables with flowers, rugs, wall decorations, etc. When adding wilderness details, make sure the Randomize Rotation cube icon is set (yellow).

Use the grid when creating battle maps and remember this: a square has usually 5 feet. If you place a bed that occupies 2 squares, that makes it a 10-foot long bed. Is your bed at home that big? If you place a kitchen chair that takes half a square… Is this the chair size you get at home? If your tavern walls occupy a third of a square, think: do the bar at your city has such thick walls? Compare your object sizes with real ones to get a feel of scaling.

Light makes a lot of difference. You can add light on its own but use the “light” assets. But you can also create additional impact by using the shadow texture at 50% opacity inside a building and then use lightning on torches and candles, or sunlight. To create wilderness night versions, you can paint the FG (foreground) and BG (background) with 50% opacity shadow and can select all objects and reduce their brightness to 50 or 60%. After that, add whatever light that makes sense.

Many objects have a “Customize Object Shadow” button (S) when you select them. You can tweak and change the direction of their shadow based on the light source you placed on the map. Very useful. Besides, you can create shadows will the shadow textures and highly improve the map quality with interesting shadow effects.

Each asset and texture has a “Filters” feature which allow you to tweak Hue, Saturation, Brightness and Contrast. You can use this to change a rug from red to blue, for instance. You can do so before placing the asset, or after you did. It’s very versatile. So in the light case above, you could add colored light.

You’re using a wooden floor texture and each square is filled with only 3 boards, meaning that this may be a bit oversized? All textures have some very useful features to help you with that. Under “Advanced Settings”, “Placement”, you’ll find Size, Rotation, Offset axis. Reduce the size to get a more close to reality wooden floor.

If an asset if almost perfect but has something additional that you don’t want, you can place the asset, flatten it to FG or BG and then paint it away. But from then onwards, you cannot select that asset anymore as it became part of the texture. This can be useful to remove the base of a statue, for example.

Unless your going for a big regional or world map, when going for a body of water with the Mask tool, use the circle brush option, but the edgy one. At close range, the edgy version will look very unnatural. Make your own coast manually with the circle brush.

Here’s a video with most of these tips: