The painted harlot of starmaps.
Here it is, by popular demand (and by popular I mean Dr. Rotwang kept asking): an Inkscape tutorial!
Today we’re going to start with some basics and make a simple-yet-awesome starmap in Inkscape, eventually working out way up to the more complicated stuff in later tutorials. By the time we’re through, I guarantee you’ll be making maps like a rank amateur!
Ready? Let’s get mapping.
1. Download Inkscape
This is the easy part. Inkscape is free, so go over to inkscape.org and grab yourself a copy and install it. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Seriously, we’re not going to get far without this step.
2. Read the Basic Tutorial
Start up the software. If you’re not already familiar with Inkscape, you should read the basic tutorial. Go to Help > Tutorials in the menu and pick Inkscape: Basic. Or you can go to the Inkscape web site and read the tutorial there, but I recommend using the software version, because you can actually manipulate the shapes in it and play around while reading.
Now, I know it might be annoying, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to do this. While I will be going over very basic stuff in this tutorial, Inkscape works differently than other graphical tools like Photoshop, and if you’re not familiar with how it works, you may be concocting a recipe for bitter rage. I speak from experience on this one. The tutorial is short and relatively painless, and you don’t need to worry about memorizing everything right away.
So play around a bit and then come back here. Again, I’ll wait. I’ve got coffee and a new Tangerine Dream box set to listen to, I’m not going anywhere.
3. Pick a Canvas
Okay, now that you’ve got the basics down (or have skipped the tutorial like a rogue maverick with your own brand of justice), it’s time to pick a canvas. Go to File > Document Properties or hit Ctrl-Shift-D.
Choose your canvas.
For purposes of this map, I’m going to go with US Letter and a landscape orientation. I’m also leaving border and border shadow on. You can pick whatever paper size works best for you. Now you can close this dialogue.
Oh yes, and before we go any further: save often. Inkscape is pretty stable, but accidents happen. Don’t risk losing your work.
4. Create Layers and Background
Layers are awesome, and you will find out just how awesome they are if you ever put together a huge project in Inkscape and forget to split it into layers. Then you will weep and dream of better days as you laboriously move a hundred elements around, sinking into an alcoholic haze as your youth slips away. Creating layers up front will save you lots of time and frustration.
Go to Layers > Layers in the menu or hit Ctrl-Shift-L. Click the plus sign to add some new layers, and double-click on their titles to rename them. This will be a simple map with just four layers, like so:
Now make sure the background layer is selected by clicking on it. We’re going to make a simple black background for the map. Click the rectangle tool on the toolbar (or hit F4) and drag a big rectangle across the canvas. If the color isn’t black, just click black on the color bar at the bottom. If you have a colored border on your rectangle, hold Shift and click the white square with an X through it on the color bar. That will get rid of it. Now we’ve got a big black background. Which represents space. Because this is a sci-fi blog. Look, I’m just trying to be thorough.
5. It’s Full of Stars
Now we’re going to create some stars. First, click the “Stars” layer on the layer sidebar. See, we did that for a reason!
Click the circle tool (or hit F5) and then pick a color (I’m going with good old bright yellow). While holding Ctrl-Shift, click and drag to create a circle.
Here’s why we’re holding the keys: Ctrl “snaps” the shape of the circle so you don’t end up creating an ellipsis. Shift draws from the center instead of the edge, which I personally find preferable. You can do it any way you like, of course.
I told every little star...
Now we have a single star. Well done indeed. But we’re going to need a lot more, so let’s cut and paste a bunch of them. While the star is selected (hit F1 and click it if it’s not selected), hit Ctrl-C to copy. Then move the cursor around the canvas and hit Ctrl-V anywhere you want to drop a star. Do this until you’re good and satisfied and have a few stars, but don’t make too much work for yourself.
6. Divide and Conquer
Now we’re going to divide the map up, using the line technique outlined in the “Collaborative Campaigning” chapter of Starblazer Adventures. This involves making some curved lines, which can be a bit tricky.
To make our lives easier, we’re going to turn off the background for the time being. Click the little eye symbol next to the Background layer in the layer sidebar. Now we have yellow stars on a white field.
Pick the Lines layer on the sidebar.
Now pick the bezier curve tool from the toolbar. It’s the one right next to the freehand line tool. Trust me when I say you want no part of the freehand line tool right now.
Click on any star. This should start your line. Now move your cursor to the edge of the page and click again. This will create one “leg” of the line. If we wanted to, we could continue to click and make more legs. But we don’t want that. So now right-click to complete the line. Now you should have a simple line with a box at both ends.
This line is a bit skinny, so let’s thicken it up. Go to the Object menu > Fill and Stroke. Now go to the Stroke Style tab and bump the Width up to 3 or 4. The line should now be much thicker. You can see that we can make dotted or dashed lines if we really want to. Feel free to play around with that if you want.
So now we’re going to make a line for all the other stars, from each star to the edge of the canvas. You can just make more using the bezier tool, but I prefer to copy-and-paste. It saves time because you don’t have to resize and recolor the line with each new one you create.
Select the line, copy it, then paste it. Now hit F2 to select the line edit tool. The ends of the line should turn into little diamond shapes. Click and drag these diamond tips to move the ends of the line around. Move one end to a new star, and the other end to the edge of the page. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Note that if you click on the line itself, you will bend it into a very non-straight shape, possibly making your line resemble overcooked spaghetti. No need to panic. Just hit Ctrl-Z to undo it if you don’t like it.
Repeat this process till you have a line for each star going to the edge of the page. It should look something like this.
If you haven’t accidentally done so already, you can make the lines curvy by selecting them and dragging the lines themselves around. You don’t have to do this, but feel free to play around with it if you want.
Now that you’ve got lines going from every star to the edge of the canvas, let’s connect each star to two other stars, like it says in Starblazer Adventures. This is just more of the same: use the bezier tool or cut and past an existing straight line and move the ends around to connect up the stars. Make them curvy, or don’t. See if I care.
Don’t worry, it will start looking a lot better with the next step.
7. Rearrange Your Face
Now we’re going to put our background back in and change the line colors.
Here’s where layers come in handy. With the Lines layer still selected, hit F1 and then Ctrl-A, or Edit > Select All. This will select every line in the layer.
Now pick a color for all of them — a light one. I’m going with a paler yellow. Then SHIFT-CLICK the color you want to change the lines to. If you don’t hold Shift, you will just end up filling in the curves, which will look godawful. Inkscape treats lines like the borders on shapes; you have to hold Shift while picking the color.
Now that you’ve changed the line colors, let’s move the line layer down under the stars. Click the down arrow on the layer sidebar. The lines layer should now be under the star layer. Now click the eye on the background layer to make it visible again. Voila!
8. I Want to Text You Up
Now we’re going to add some labels to our map. In making my own maps, I use a variety of fonts, but here are some good free ones I use often: Babylon 5, Telegrafico, and Viper Squadron. But obviously, use whatever you like. I’m not the boss of you.
Switch to the Text layer.
Pick a star and press the T key or pick the text tool from the toolbar. Click next to the star and type a label. You may end up typing black letters on your black background, which is obviously none too productive. You can either make the background invisible, or just pick a color from the color bar to change the text color. I’m going with a light blue.
Now your piece of text can be manipulated, resized, rotated, moved around, whatever. Get as fancy as you like.
Now you can copy and paste your label for all the other stars and rename them using the text tool. I find copy-and-paste handy because it’s the easiest way to make all your labelst consistent in size and color.
Always remember that the F1 key is your friend if you’re having trouble selecting a new object. Go through and label all your stars. Have fun with it.
Best star names ever! Click for larger version.
Now you might end up with something like this. Except, hopefully, you have employed a bit more verisimilitude with your star names. Still, I think you will agree that Don’tooine is staggeringly clever.
9. Optional Finishing Touches
So this map, as it stands, is serviceable, but we’re going to do a couple of things to make it shiny. You can skip all this stuff if you want. I don’t want to keep you from your dinner or anything.
Glowy Spacelanes. Go to the lines layer. Now select all the lines on the line layer (Ctrl-A or Edit > Select All). Hit Ctrl-D to duplicate these lines. You now have a second set of lines, which should already be selected for you. Now go to the Fill and Stroke sidebar on the right. Nudge the Blur slider up to 2, or just enter 2 in the text field next to it. You should now have some shiny glowy lines! You can even ctrl-click on the color bar to change their color if you like. Pretty. Look at how clever you are.
Glowy Labels. Now we’re going to do the same for the star labels. Word to the wise: glow and blur effects tend to slow down the computer, especially when you zoom way in, so I’m going to show you how to turn them off when you need to. Go to the Layers sidebar and create a new layer above the text layer. Label it Text Glow.
Now go back to the Text layer and select all. Hit Ctrl-D to duplicate all the selected objects. Now hit Shift-PgUp or Layer > Move Selection to Layer Above. This will move all the text duplicates to the new layer directly above. Blur them as we did in the step above, except make the value about 0.5 to 1. Now you have a glowy text layer you can turn off and on when you need to.
Simple Background Gradient. A flat black background is so boring. Make all the layers except Background invisible. Select the big background rectangle we made way back at the beginning. Hit Ctrl-D to make a duplicate of this rectangle. Pick a new color for it — I’m going with dark blue. Now hit the G key or select the gradient tool from the toolbar. Click and drag from the top of the rectangle to about the middle. You should see a fancy gradient emerge. Feel free to play around with it.
The painted harlot of starmaps.
You can also use a starfield image as a background by simply dragging it into the Inkscape window, resizing, and playing with the opacity, but be careful, because unless the image is huge, the quality can really degrade when you export a large image.
10. Export
Hit Ctrl-Shift-E to open up the export dialog. Select “Page” for the export area. then pick our bitmap size. You can either pick your preferred size (I usually go with something like 1440 pixels wide), or pick 300 DPI and make a really big image suitable for printing. Click Export and Inkscape will make you a nice PNG file.
And that’s it! We have a nice, basic starmap. It won’t set the world on fire, but it’s a good start. Take a moment to bask in your own awesomeness.
I genuinely hope you’ve gotten some use out of this tutorial. If you liked it, or have any questions, please leave me a comment. Also, I’d love to see any maps you come up with.
Cheers, and happy mapping!
Here it is, by popular demand (and by popular I mean Dr. Rotwang kept asking): an Inkscape tutorial! Today we’re going to start with some basics and make a simple-yet-awesome starmap in Inkscape, eventually working out way up to the more complicated stuff in later tutorials.
So let’s make some maps!
1. Download Inkscape
This is the easy part. Inkscape is free, so go over to inkscape.org and grab yourself a copy and install it. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Seriously, we’re not going to get far without this step.
2. Read the Basic Tutorial
Start up the software. If you’re not already familiar with Inkscape, you should read the basic tutorial. Go to Help > Tutorials in the menu and pick Inkscape: Basic. Or you can go to the Inkscape web site and read the tutorial there, but I recommend using the software version, because you can actually manipulate the shapes in it and play around while reading.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to do this. While I will be going over very basic stuff in this tutorial, Inkscape works differently than other graphical tools like Photoshop, and if you’re not familiar with how it works, you are concocting a recipe for bitter rage. I speak from experience on this one. The tutorial is short and relatively painless, and you don’t need to worry about memorizing everything right away. So play around a bit and then come back here. Again, I’ll wait. I’ve got coffee and a new Tangerine Dream box set to listen to, I’m not going anywhere.
3. Pick a Canvas
Okay, now that you’ve got the basics down (or have skipped the tutorial like a rogue maverick with his own brand of justice), it’s time to pick a canvas. Go to File > Document Properties or hit Ctrl-Shift-D. For purposes of this map, I’m going to go with US Letter and a landscape orientation. I’m also leaving border and border shadow on. You can pick whatever paper size works best for you. Now you can close this dialogue.
Oh yes, and before we go any further: save often. Inkscape is pretty stable, but accidents happen. Don’t risk losing your work.
4. Create Layers and Background
Layers are awesome, and you will find out just how awesome they are if you ever put together a huge project in Inkscape and forget to split it into layers. Then you will weep and dream of better days as you laboriously move a hundred elements around. Creating layers up front will save you lots of time and frustration.
Go to Layers > Layers in the menu or hit Ctrl-Shift-L. Click the plus sign to add some new layers, and double-click on their titles to rename them. This will be a simple map with just four layers, like so:
Now make sure the background layer is selected. We’re going to make a simple black background for the map. Click the rectangle tool on the toolbar (or hit F4) and drag a big rectangle across the canvas. If the color isn’t black, just click black on the color bar at the bottom. If you have a colored border on your rectangle, hold shift and click the white square with an X through it on the color bar. That will get rid of it.
5. Stars
Now we’re going to create some stars. First, click the “Stars” layer on the layer sidebar. See, we did that for a reason.
Click the circle tool (or hit F5) and then pick a color (I’m going with good old bright yellow). While holding Ctrl-Shift, click and drag to create a circle. Here’s why we’re holding the keys: Ctrl “snaps” the shape of the circle so you don’t end up creating an ellipsis. Shift draws from the center instead of the edge, which I personally find preferable. You can do it any way you like, of course.
Now we have a single star. Well done indeed. But we’re going to need a lot more, so let’s cut and paste a bunch of them. While the star is selected (hit F1 and click it if it’s not selected), hit Ctrl-C to copy. Then move the cursor around the canvas and hit Ctrl-V anywhere you want to drop a star. Do this until you’re good and satisfied.
6. Divide and Conquer
Now we’re going to divide the map up, using the line technique outlined in the “Collaborative Campaigning” chapter of Starblazer Adventures. This involves making some curved lines, which can be a bit tricky.
To make our lives easier, we’re going to turn off the background for the time being. Click the little eye symbol next to the Background layer in the layer sidebar. Now we have yellow stars on a white field. Pick the Lines layer on the sidebar.
Now pick the bezier curve tool from the toolbar. It’s the one right next to the freehand line tool. Trust me when I say you want no part of the freehand line tool right now.
Click on any star. This should start your line. Now move your cursor to the edge of the page and click again. This will create one “leg” of the line. If we wanted to, we could continue to click and make more legs. But we don’t want that. So now right-click to complete the line. Now you should have a simple line with a box at both ends.
This line is a bit skinny, so let’s thicken it up. Go to the Object menu > Fill and Stroke. Now go to the Stroke Style tab and bump the Width up to 4. The line should now be much thicker. You can see that we can make dotted or dashed lines if we really want to. Feel free to play around with that if you want.
So now we’re going to make a line for all the other stars, from the star to the edge of the page. You can just make more using the bezier tool, but I prefer to copy-and-paste. Select the line, copy it, then paste it. Now hit F2 to select the line edit tool. The ends of the line should turn into little diamond shapes. Click and drag these diamond tips to move the ends of the line around. Note that if you click on the line itself, you will bend it into a very non-straight shape. No need to panic. Just hit Ctrl-Z to undo it if you don’t like it.
Repeat this process till you have a line for each star going to the edge of the page. It should look something like this.
If you haven’t already, you can make the lines curvy by selecting them and dragging the lines themselves around. You don’t have to do this, but feel free to play around with it if you like.
Now that you’ve got lines going from every star to the edge of the canvas, let’s connect each star to two other stars, like it says in the book. This is just more of the same: use the bezier tool or cut and past an existing straight line and move the ends around to connect up the stars. At the end, it might end up looking something like this:
Don’t worry, it will start looking a lot better with the next step.
7. Rearrange Your Face
Here’s where layers come in handy. With the Lines layer still selected, hit F1 and then Ctrl-A, or Edit > Select All. This will select every line in the layer. Now pick a color for all of them — a light one. I’m going with a paler yellow. Then SHIFT-CLICK the color you want to change the lines to. If you don’t hold Shift, you will just end up filling in the curves, which will look godawful. Inkscape treats lines like the borders on shapes; you have to hold Shift while picking the color.
Now that you’ve changed the line colors, let’s move the line layer down under the stars. Click the down arrow on the layer sidebar. The lines layer should now be under the star layer. Now click the eye on the background layer to make it visible again. Voila!
8. Text You Up
Now we’re going to add some labels to our map. In making my own maps, I use a variety of fonts, but here are some good free ones I use often: Babylon 5, Telegrafico, and Viper Squadron.
Switch to the Text layer.
Pick a star and press the T key or pick the text tool from the toolbar. Click next to the star and type a label. You may end up typing black letters on your black background. Don’t panic, just pick a color from the color bar and the text will change color. Now it can be manipulated, resized, rotated, moved around, whatever. Get as fancy as you like.
Now you can copy and paste your label for all the other stars and rename them using the text tool. (Always remember that the F1 key is your friend if you’re having trouble selecting a new object). Go through and label all your stars. Have fun with it.
Now you might end up with something like this. Except, hopefully, you have employed a bit more cleverness and care with your star names.
9. Optional Finishing Touches
So this map, as it stands, is serviceable, but we’re going to do a couple of things to make it shiny.
Glowy Spacelanes. Go to the lines layer. Now select all the lines on the line layer (Ctrl-A or Edit > Select All). Hit Ctrl-D to duplicate these lines. You now have a second set of lines, which should now be selected for you. Now go to the Fill and Stroke sidebar on the right. Nudge the Blur slider up to 2, or just enter 2 in the text field next to it. You should now have some shiny glowy lines! You can even ctrl-click on the color bar to change their color if you like.
Glowy Labels. Now we’re going to do the same for the star labels. Glow and blur effects tend to slow down the computer, so I’m going to show you how to turn them off when you need to. Go to the Layers sidebar and create a new layer above the text layer. Label it Text Glows.
Now go back to the text layer and select all. Hit Ctrl-D to duplicate all the selected objects. Now hit Shift-PgUp or Layer > Move Selection to Layer Above. This will move all the text duplicates to a new layer. Blur them as we did in the step above, except make the value about 0.5 to 1. Now you have a glowy layer you can turn off and on when you need to.
Simple Background Gradient. A flat black background is so boring. Make all the layers except Background invisible. Select the big background rectangle we made way back at the beginning. Hit Ctrl-D to make a duplicate of this rectangle. Pick a new color for it — I’m going with dark blue. Now hit the G key or select the gradient tool from the toolbar. Click and drag from the top of the rectangle to about the middle. You should see a fancy gradient emerge. Feel free to play around with it.
You can also use a starfield image as a background by simply dragging it into the Inkscape window, resizing, and playing with the opacity, but be careful, because unless the image is huge, the quality can really degrade when you export a large image.
10. Export
Hit Ctrl-Shift-E to open up the export dialog. Select “Page” for the export area. then pick our bitmap size. You can either pick your preferred size (I usually go with something like 1440 pixels wide), or pick 300 DPI and make a really big image suitable for printing. Click Export and Inkscape will make you a nice PNG file.
And that’s it! We have a nice, basic starmap. It won’t set the world on fire, but it’s a good start.
I hope you’ve gotten some use out of this tutorial. If you liked it, or have any questions, please feel free to leave me a comment. Also, I’d love to see any maps you come up with. Cheers, and happy mapping!
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