How to resize maps

[Mr Shoestring]

Hello,

as the title suggests, I'm looking to see if someone can help me with adjusting map sizes.

I got a map from a Patreon creator, but when I imported the map and put my player's characters on the map they are microscopic.

Can someone help me with figuring out if there's another solution once I import the image or what to do to make it so they take up the full square properly?

Thanks in advance.


(blue circled area is the player character)

[Zacchaeus]

How big is that map? And what size have you made the grid? Assuming that you placed the token correctly (by dragging from the CT) it seems that map is enormous. FGU automatically places a 50px grid on the map and tokens will size to that grid. If the map is huge then the grid will likely be too small and you'll need to redraw it to match the grid lines on the map. Placing the token after you've done that should get the correct result.

[LordEntrails]

Another way to think of it, in your original map, how many pixels per 5 foot square? Then after you import to FG, and before you add tokens, adjust your the grid to be that number of pixels. Then tokens and measuring will be as expected.

Grid should normally be someone around 50-100 pixels / 5 ft. If you are much higher than that, you may want to reduce the image size before importing. And much lower than that and the image will look very low resolution.

[Mr Shoestring]

Another way to think of it, in your original map, how many pixels per 5 foot square? Then after you import to FG, and before you add tokens, adjust your the grid to be that number of pixels. Then tokens and measuring will be as expected.

Grid should normally be someone around 50-100 pixels / 5 ft. If you are much higher than that, you may want to reduce the image size before importing. And much lower than that and the image will look very low resolution.


Looks like it's enormous 9.97mb and 4725 x 7087.

I'm sorry if i'm not understanding well.. but..

Is there anything I can really do? I have no idea how many feet are per inch. I tried reaching out to the patreon owner and no response when I also asked this question. It looks like he makes specific to roll20 and for printing purposes.

I tried 50 and 100 and still SUPER tiny.

Assuming without a lot of work these aren't usable for me?

[Mr Shoestring]

How big is that map? And what size have you made the grid? Assuming that you placed the token correctly (by dragging from the CT) it seems that map is enormous. FGU automatically places a 50px grid on the map and tokens will size to that grid. If the map is huge then the grid will likely be too small and you'll need to redraw it to match the grid lines on the map. Placing the token after you've done that should get the correct result.

It's really big. 4725 x 7087

Not sure if there's anything I can do. I tried 100 grid and it's still way too big :(

[LordEntrails]

So yea, that is very high resolution. Open the image in a image program, and see the grids that are all over? Each one of those ia a five foot square. Your image program should tell you roughly how many pixels that is. Either with a measuring tool or a cut or crop tool. A very rough estimate is something like 500 pixels per square. Once you know what that number is there are two things you can do;

1) Use it as is. Be warned though that this can slow FG down, especially when you share the image with all your players and if you create and enable LOS. Wen you do this, go into the image control panel > Grid and set the grid size (i.e. 500) and set it to visible to make sure you get it right and aligned to the visible grid in the image. Then make it invisible so it doesn't conflict with the grid in the image.
52848

2) Lower the resolution of the image. Rescale it to something like 945 x 1417. And then add it to FG and set the grid per instruction above. You can use any image program you are familiar with, or you can download this utilty a community member made that will help with the process and can also be used for images that the built in grids are not actually sqaure or an even number of pixels. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?19813-Map-Align-Utility-to-scale-and-align-map-to-grid

[Zacchaeus]

Use this utility to resize the map. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?19813-Map-Align-Utility-to-scale-and-align-map-to-grid

See the video linked near the bottom of the first post for how to use it.

[Trenloe]

I tried reaching out to the patreon owner and no response when I also asked this question. It looks like he makes specific to roll20 and for printing purposes.
The image you've downloaded looks like it 300 pixels per grid square which is print quality (if printing at one inch per grid square). They probably also do a VTT file - for Roll20 that is usually 70 pixels per grid square, but some cartographers use higher. So first step is to see if the Patreon has more VTT friendly images.

Which Patreon did you get it from?


It's really big. 4725 x 7087
If this is the only map size you have, this is twice the recommended maximum size for FGU. And looking at that map, it's about 15 x 25 squares (ignoring the black around it). So, if you can't find a VTT friendly version, do some rescaling of that image - working to 100 pixels per grid square should be good.

[kronovan]

If this is the only map size you have, this is twice the recommended maximum size for FGU.

While that may be a recommendation, I can say from experience that it's not too big. I've created some large maps in Campaign Cartographer that have been larger than 10 MB; though not much larger. For those even my players on slower, low bandwith connections never wait too long. I couldn't give an exact share-to-view time in seconds, but it's never long enough to disrupt gameplay or generate "where's the map?" comments. It no doubt depends a lot on the FGU host's connection speed, but I've read that recommendation before and wondered if it comes from a time when connection speeds on average were considerably slower?


Not sure if there's anything I can do. I tried 100 grid and it's still way too big :(

For any map for which you're unsure of the DPI per grid units, always count the number of grid units along the shortest dimension. Then divide the number of pixels along that dimension by the number of grid units. It's tricky for your map, because the grid is on a layer below the outer earth boundary. It's hard to be accurate from a screen capture, but to my eye it looks to be just shy of 16; probably 15-3/4. That fits because 4725 / 15.75 is 300, which is a common dpi resolution for game maps. So I'd recommend trying a 300 grid.

You can also set a grid manually on any map image. Just right-click on your map image and choose Layers > Set Grid from the pop-up radial menu. That will change the pointer to a cross hair, which can be left-clicked on the boundary crossing of 4 units/squares and with the left button held down, dragged until the white lines align with the existing grid. To make it easier and more accurate, use your mouse wheel to zoom your map in until only a few grid units fill the image window. As well, be aware that using that approach places a white grid over your maps exiting grid. To turn that off, you need to access Grid settings and click the color picker under Tint to display the Pick Grid Color box. That box has for sliders, the bottom "A" slider controls transparency and dragging it all the way to the left will hide the new grid.

Note, that if the white grid won't align properly with your maps existing grid, that's because the original map's grid wasn't created correctly. Afraid there's isn't much you can do about that; just set the grid as best you can and live with the fact that for some parts of the map, tokens won't place or line line up perfectly.

[Zacchaeus]

Note, that if the white grid won't align properly with your maps existing grid, that's because the original map's grid wasn't created correctly. Afraid there's isn't much you can do about that; just set the grid as best you can and live with the fact that for some parts of the map, tokens won't place or line line up perfectly.

You can use the utility that I linked in post #7 to resize the map so that it will align with any grid size you want.

[Trenloe]

... but I've read that recommendation before and wondered if it comes from a time when connection speeds on average were considerably slower?
The recommendation I'm referring to is for Unity of 16 million pixels and is recent. This is four times the FG Classic recommendation of 4 million pixels - with a 1MB size recommendation to reduce share time to players. Whereas many users can run images larger than 16 million pixels, the recommendation is there for a few reasons - mostly performance related, but also memory use

[kronovan]

You can use the utility that I linked in post #7 to resize the map so that it will align with any grid size you want.

Well...I've downloaded and installed that application before, but after exploring a bit it gave me the impression it was for placing grids on maps that don't already have them. What I was referring to are maps that already have grids on them, but aren't uniform enough (as in equal ratio for grid unit height and width) for the FGU grid to align with them. I didn't notice any tool in Map Align that lets you remove an existing grid and insert a new one. I know it'll let you create a non-uniform grid by tweaking the height and width controls. I only tried it briefly though, so it's possible I missed something. Or am I misunderstanding the tool's full potential, in that it allows you to export just a grid dimension that you can then import into FGU for that image? If so, how is that even done?

It could be a moot point though, in that the maps I've seen that have non-uniform grids, are so irregular that even the most sophisticated graphics tool probably couldn't do anything to correct them.

[kronovan]

The recommendation I'm referring to is for Unity of 16 million pixels and is recent. This is four times the FG Classic recommendation of 4 million pixels - with a 1MB size recommendation to reduce share time to players. Whereas many users can run images larger than 16 million pixels, the recommendation is there for a few reasons - mostly performance related, but also memory use

16 million pixels fits with what I consider my max size for VTT maps; 11''x17" at 300 pixels. Any of my VTT maps that will be larger than that in print inches, I render at a lower DPI. My 11x17, 300 dpi maps end up being much larger than 4 MB though, even when rendered to JPEGs; usually 10 MB+. That I believe is in part due to the complexity that detailed symbols and polygons add, as well as color info. What mapping tool out there makes a 16 million pixel map that's only 4 MB? I've always read that 1 pixel takes 1 byte of storage at a minimum.

[LordEntrails]

The tool linked by Mr Z and myself is designed for images that have a baked in grid, and that the grid is not always square, regular or grids with an integer number of pixels per square. Yes, if the grid is very irregular, then yes their is little that one can do about it.

For instance, some published maps get tweaked when the layout is done. Such that the image is not scaled proportionally so tat a map might end up with a grid that is 50 pixels horizontally, but 52.221 pixels vertically. The tools can make the image square again, plus is can rescale it so that the grids are a regular number of pixels per square. Such 50 x 50.

[Trenloe]

16 million pixels fits with what I consider my max size for VTT maps; 11''x17" at 300 pixels. Any of my VTT maps that will be larger than that in print inches, I render at a lower DPI. My 11x17, 300 dpi maps end up being much larger than 4 MB though, even when rendered to JPEGs; usually 10 MB+.
There isn't a specific recommendation on image file size for FG Unity - the 1MB I mentioned was the recommendation for FG Classic to keep image share times to an acceptable level in FG Classic. Recommended image guidelines for FG Unity can be found in the Wiki here: https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FGCP/pages/2037547009/Developer+Guidelines


That I believe is in part due to the complexity that detailed symbols and polygons add, as well as color info. What mapping tool out there makes a 16 million pixel map that's only 4 MB? I've always read that 1 pixel takes 1 byte of storage at a minimum.
There are different things that affect image file size - colors per pixel, type of image file compression, image complexity, etc., etc.. 1 pixel could be represented by less than one equivalent byte on average (for example, if Run Length Encoding is used for lossless compression and there are a number of pixels of the same color together) whereas in most instances the maximum is usually 3 bytes per pixel - giving 16 million colors per pixel (although it is possible to go higher than 24-bits per pixel images), but then compression (lossy or lossless) will usually reduce the overall average bytes per pixel.

Most graphical applications will be able to produce a good quality 16 million pixel map at less than 4MB. Here's an example of one of Ryan Wolfe's excellent 0 Hour Armada SciFi ship maps - as you can see, it's actually over 25 millions pixels, but is 2.1MB in file size.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=52915

[Zacchaeus]

Well...I've downloaded and installed that application before, but after exploring a bit it gave me the impression it was for placing grids on maps that don't already have them. What I was referring to are maps that already have grids on them, but aren't uniform enough (as in equal ratio for grid unit height and width) for the FGU grid to align with them. I didn't notice any tool in Map Align that lets you remove an existing grid and insert a new one. I know it'll let you create a non-uniform grid by tweaking the height and width controls. I only tried it briefly though, so it's possible I missed something. Or am I misunderstanding the tool's full potential, in that it allows you to export just a grid dimension that you can then import into FGU for that image? If so, how is that even done?

It could be a moot point though, in that the maps I've seen that have non-uniform grids, are so irregular that even the most sophisticated graphics tool probably couldn't do anything to correct them.

The purpose of the tool is to resize a map - which already has a baked in grid on it - so that a Fantasy Grounds grid will align with that grid. I've used it for years on every product I've developed.

It isn't there to remove an existing grid, so yes you have completely misunderstood the purpose of the tool.

The tool was written for Classic which only allowed a square grid so it perhaps has less relevance for Unity now that you can manipulate the grid size to decimal points with different x and y sizes. However it's still a quick and easy way to resize a map if you don't have access to something like Photoshop.

[kronovan]

The purpose of the tool is to resize a map - which already has a baked in grid on it - so that a Fantasy Grounds grid will align with that grid. I've used it for years on every product I've developed.

It isn't there to remove an existing grid, so yes you have completely misunderstood the purpose of the tool.

Yep, in my initial review of it I missed that it will rescale the overall dimensions, either padding or expanding the outer bounds. I can see now where it would be a useful tool to arrive at an even, square grid in a map where it originally isn't.

I find grids most problematic the odd time I convert a a PDF page to JPEG and crop out the map. I find it works about half the time -kudos to the layout folks that manage to do it right- but is irregular for the other 50%. I'm not sure Map Align could have handled those latter maps, but next time I'll give it a try. My tool for mapping is Campaign Cartographer, which always gives me properly dimensioned square or hex grids if I want them. The majority of my campaign maps are custom builds in CC, so I haven't had to resize often.

[kronovan]

There are different things that affect image file size - colors per pixel, type of image file compression, image complexity, etc., etc.. 1 pixel could be represented by less than one equivalent byte on average (for example, if Run Length Encoding is used for lossless compression and there are a number of pixels of the same color together) whereas in most instances the maximum is usually 3 bytes per pixel - giving 16 million colors per pixel (although it is possible to go higher than 24-bits per pixel images), but then compression (lossy or lossless) will usually reduce the overall average bytes per pixel.

Most graphical applications will be able to produce a good quality 16 million pixel map at less than 4MB. Here's an example of one of Ryan Wolfe's excellent 0 Hour Armada SciFi ship maps - as you can see, it's actually over 25 millions pixels, but is 2.1MB in file size.

That's good info, many thanks for posting it. I rarely make maps with a solid color background, but for sure when I have they render much smaller.