Making Fictional Freeways Maps

[Anthony_JK]

I'm thinking about creating a fantasy freeway map for Louisiana and particular cities like the ones in the Fictional Freeways subforum. Where's the best place to copy the map templates to create these maps, and what's the best software apps to use??


Anthony

[Quillz]

You could try using ArcMap.

[Dr Frankenstein]

Hmm, I just draw them on paper then scan and draw over them using a vector program.

[froggie]

You could try using ArcMap.

Which is my realm (and what I've been doing with all sorts of transportation ideas, not just roads), though I'd hazard a bet the number of people on this forum who have access to ArcMap is in the single digits.

Similar to Dr. Frankenstein's idea, get a graphic of a map by whatever means and then use a vector graphics program (Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro, Inkscape, etc etc) to draw away...

[Anthony_JK]

Yeah....ArcMap is just a bit above my budget right about now. 

What if I screenshot an image from Google Maps or Google Earth, then used something like The GIMP or Photoshop to layer above it?? Or...would that run into copyright issues??


Anthony

[agentsteel53]

you can probably fudge the copyright issues if you're using it non-commercially.  i.e. Google would have much bigger fish to fry.

[froggie]

Strictly speaking, you'd run into copyright issues with Google Maps.  Google Earth is less clear-cut, since a lot of their imagery is in the public domain, having come from USGS or USDA (Dept of Agriculture).

Now, if you were to grab a free GIS viewer (such as ArcExplorer) or open source program (like QGIS), you could grab the public domain road shapefiles and do as you please, then touch it up in Inkscape/Gimp/Photoshop/whatever-graphics-program-you-got...

[Dr Frankenstein]

I grabbed public domain shapefiles for QC here. The issue I'm running into is filtering them (not super-hard with ArcExplorer, but the program crashes frequently), and finding a way to crop then export them to a format that I can use in a vector program like Illustrator or Inkscape.