Tokens and Maps

[Whisper]

Elric has an awesome website with an outstanding amount of tokens for use, however, being a noob to online roleplaying of this sort, the maps I've got have a grid system already in place that do not fit most of the tokens.

My question is this...

What program(s) are best to resize a map to fit the tokens or to resize the tokens to fit the map? Any of these programs free? (Guess it's two questions)

It just seems an important aspect of the online game and what my players have the most fun with is the tactical portion of combat in terms of movement, facing, etc. Without scaling a map to fit tokens or the reverse, the functionality of combat is hindered imo. Basically looking to simulate some of the DM/Player interaction that happens face to face with a 5' grid map and minatures.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

[richvalle]

Try Gimp. Its a free graphical program.

Here is what I like to do:

Find a picture that you/a player likes for their character and download it. You can now share that picture when introducing the character. Resize it to... 60x60 pixles? to be a portrait (someone else can say for sure). Then resize it again to 50x50 and you can use it as a token.

Note: the 50x50 size fits dundjinni maps perfectly. Someone else has stated they like to use a default size of 100x100. You'll have to see what works best for you.

Hope that helps.

rv

[Cantstanzya]

From what I've seen 50x50 is pretty much the standard. Works good for me.

[Crusader]

Resize it to... 60x60 pixles? to be a portrait (someone else can say for sure).

Yeah, I can - it's 63x63 for portraits.

[kalmarjan]

It will be interesting to see what the standard will be once the image zooming comes into effect. Right now I use 25 x 25 px, because the maps that I use are too large for the 50 x 50. If I keep with that standard, I have to break the map into chunks, which sucks when I have to go naming tokens.

[Whisper]

So basically everyone uses Dunjinni or Gimp to resize pics?

My angle would be to have maps downloaded from .pdf files. I was told you can scan or copy the maps into .jpg files and place them in the images file for use. The problem as I kinda described above is the scaling of the map.

By the recent posts then Dunjinni or Gimp would help me out with the scaling issue then? Gotta remember, I R A NooB when it comes to this stuff!

[Ilwan]

here is the documentation for scaling in Gimp:

https://docs.gimp.org/en/ch04s04s04.html

[Whisper]

Awesome. Will have to try it out.

[kalmarjan]

This one is a little long, but it represents accuracy in Photoshop.

What I do is use the measure tool.
I measure the width of one square (Which is usually 5 ')
I divide the desired pixel size (50 px) by this measurement to get the decimal number. Then I multiply it by 100, CTRL-C the amount and go to image size. (CRTL+ALT+I) I link the two amounts, then plug in the percentage, change the drop down box to percentage, and hit enter.

This will scale your map accurately.

So, Measure tool ->
Calculator 50/number of the measurement X 100
CTRL+C
Switch to photoshop
CTRL+ALT+I
Link the width and height
CNRL+V the calculation
Change the drop down box from pixels to percent.
Hit okay
save the picture.

This will help you if you have this program, as you can cut a JPEG or GIFF from the PDF right into PS if you like, and edit it on the fly.
Hope this helps.

Cheers,

[Whisper]

Thanks for the excellent advice.

First off, Gimp works real well. Suprisingly well and easy to download, install and fairly intuitive to use (at least for me). I spent about 1/2 hour getting familiar and feel comfortable with most applications needed to scale or otherwise modify for Fantasy Grounds.

Kalmarjan's method of scaling works very well even for Gimp and not photoshop. It's tried, tested and works well. A few more tries for practice and I can scale very quickly. THANK YOU Kal!!

As a matter of fact, I was able to start creating my own tokens with Gimp. Simply amazing and fun.

I think my last piece of the puzzle is a dungeon creation system. I know CC2 and Dunjinni are out there. Anyone know of any free versions for simple creation of taverns, houses, etc? I am not looking for 3d or anything too fancy for what I need.

Thanks all for the help to date. You are helping make my campaign a reality.