Pictorial Map Building

[Mad Russian]

This is the point where I save my map. I will name it with a name that means something to me so that I can easily call it up when I need it.

I start all my maps with Hsg, then add the map size, which in this case is a 2km map so I put the number 2. Then what this map is about, which in this case is where Korner won the Knight's Cross.

My map name then becomes:

Hsg2kckorner.

You only want to capitalize the first letter of the maps name. There can be no spaces in the name.

Once I've typed in the map name I select build map which is the small crossed hammers just to the right of the map name. When you put your mouse of the hammers symbol it says build the map. That's what I will do now.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

MM wants to know if this is a final build or not. It will ask if you want to do a Mega Texture build. If this is a final build the answer is yes. In this case we are doing a preliminary build and the answer is no.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Once MM has combined the height map and the terrain map it will give you the completed map that you named. When it's done it will show the statistics for the map features. MM does this every time you save the map.

As you can see there is nothing on this map. It shows that it took all of 24.9 seconds to create this map. It will take longer in subsequent saves as I put more textures and structures on the map. This is mostly open terrain though so it won't have a lot even when it's completed.

When the map has been created and saved it asks if you want to look at the map in SceneEditor. This is a program that will open automatically if you say yes and show you the elevation of the map and the locations of all structures and textures.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

If you said you wanted to look at the map in SceneEditor then it would open and in this case our map looks like this.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

That's all there is to creating a map. You can also import either the height map, the terrain map or both from another source.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

It's now time to think of doing texturing on your map. Every color on this map can be assigned a texture. You have quite a few colors.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

To know specifically what colors have been assigned to this map you can go to the bottom of the terrain panel and check the Terrain Color drop down menu.

In this case MM created 8 colors on this map. I'll change that before I'm through.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Note that MM can be particular about some things. Particularly when it's loading a map from your files.

If you tell MM to load a map DO NOT DO ANYTHING UNTIL IT IS LOADED!!!!!!

If you do ANYTHING while that map is loading you will get this error message.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Here is an example of what that can look like.

From this......

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

To this.....

Good Hunting.

MR

[thewood1]

I was confused about what you meant by buttons with "sunglasses" on them.  Do you mean the small buttons at the top of the left hand panel.  I think that is a tiny map of the world, not sunglasses.

[Mad Russian]

They are small depictions of the world but they look like sunglasses to me. But since that was confusing I went back and edited it to read Global.

Here are the buttons. They are in the upper left corner. The H/Map and T/Map buttons.

Good Hunting.

MR

[thewood1]

I couldn't tell because I had my sunglasses on.

[Mad Russian]

LOL...yeah, me too.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Hopefully that is much clearer now. If there are any other questions ask at any time.

In the meantime this map is just getting started.  I've invested after research, about 10 minutes so far.

Now comes the fun part. Texturing the map.

I always start with roads on my maps.

The first thing I need to do is identify the type of road it is. Whether it's a hard top road, and in the 1940's there were fewer of those than you can imagine, a dirt road or a farm track.

To do that I'll take several pictures of the area from a wide perspective down to a more specific perspective.

The wide perspective gives me place names of nearby towns that can be put on the map as labels showing which towns are along those roads. It gives me which roads on the map that MM generated are what types and it shows me what the general terrain layout looks like.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Here is the picture I'll archive to show my the overall area. The first thing that shows up is that highway 5 running east-west is the main road between Muncheberg and Berlin is the main road in the area.

While Strausberg is on a main road that road runs north-south not east-west. So all the roads on my map be dirt.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Going down another level I look at the road coming out of Strausberg to see if my initial assessment of the roads was correct.

There are no main roads coming out of Strausberg going east.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Now I'll move the scale down another level and start to look at the general terrain.

Finally I see what road does connect Strausberg with Bollersdorf. L34 which is another label I'll put on my map.

There are patches of woods in the area but most of those aren't close enough to Bollersdord to be on the map.

There may be a village/hamlet just to the west of Bollersdorf at Oberbarnim. It shows up on the GE map before Bollersdorf does. That is one terrain feature I'll be looking for as I go down in scale.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

GE doesn't show anything but a name for Oberbarnim. I'll have to check other sources to see what is there or where exactly Oberbarnim is in relation to Bollersdorf.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

I'm ready to start putting in the roads now. But since this is a tutorial I'll take a moment and go over Paint.net here. This is the paint program I use to edit my maps with.

To make this as simple as possible I'll go over the basic features I use. The program is simple enough but I want those of you that have never used a paint program of any kind to use this one within 5 minutes of opening it up.

Here is the basic editing screen and the two toolbar menus I use.

Good Hunting.

MR