Map Builder

Inkarnate-style world maps: landmass with automatic coasts, biome painting clipped to land, assets and scatter, textured rivers, ambience and lights, export and use in play or publish to the Workshop.

Paint world, region or city maps the way the professional tools do: landmass with automatic coastlines, brush-painted biomes, scattered forests, rivers, labels, atmosphere and lights. It lives in Creations → Map Builder (in the classic skin the area is also called Creations).

Creating a map

Choose the size (in cells), the real scale (1 cell = X meters/km/miles) and the background:

  • Ocean: starts with the "Landmass" layer. You paint land over the sea and the coastline draws itself, as in a classic world map.
  • Parchment: free canvas on paper with no clipping (interior maps, regions without sea…).

The two terrain tools

  • Terrain (G) shapes the land. It paints and grows the landmass; right-click digs (gulfs, fjords, lakes). Its picker changes the base texture of the whole mass. The automatic coastline (ink line + shallow waters) is adjusted in the Layers panel, with its own colors and thicknesses.
  • Paint (B) adds textures. It paints biomes on top (sand, snow, forest…) in paint layers that are clipped to the land, so you can't stain the sea. The "Blend" mode makes smooth transitions between biomes.

Both share the brush settings: size ([ and ]), roughness (presets Smooth / Rough / Rocky; rough plates give real-looking coasts and map edges), opacity and texture scale. The flyout preview shows the exact stroke before you touch the canvas.

Layers

Right panel: reorder by dragging the grip, hide, lock, duplicate (with its paint), and on the active layer change texture, own color, pattern scale and coastline. The Background pseudo-layer (at the bottom) changes the sea at any time. Icons: waves = landmass, brush = paint layer.

Assets, shapes, rivers and text

  • Assets (A): ~2,000 color stamps (mountains, forests, cities, POIs, frames…), plus ink styles if you prefer a hand-drawn look. Place (choose the size in cells first; the ghost shows it) or Scatter (spray with radius, density and variation, good for forests). Favorites, search and uploading your own images.
  • Shapes (S): rectangle, ellipse or polygon with terrain or color fill.
  • Paths and rivers (R): trace points and the curve smooths itself. Path, road, trail or river, with real texture or flat color, and the vertices stay editable.
  • Text (T): atlas labels with font, halo and spacing.
  • Measure (M): distances in cells and in the real units of your scale.

Selecting and editing

With Move (V): click selects (handles to scale and rotate; Shift = 15°), dragging on empty space draws a multi-select marquee, Shift-click adds. Right-click opens the context menu: duplicate, flip, order, move to layer, lock, copy/cut/paste (Ctrl+C/X/V), delete. Arrow keys fine-tune the position and Delete removes. The Properties panel edits everything, including the HSL color adjustment of stamps.

Atmosphere and lights

Atmosphere panel: Night, Fog, Sepia, B/W or Storm with intensity. These also affect the export. Lights (L): light points with color, radius and intensity. With Night or Storm they cut real holes in the darkness (lit cities, volcanoes…).

Saving, exporting and playing

It autosaves (indicator at the top). From the top bar:

  • Export: WebP/PNG image at Maximum quality (renders at double resolution with antialiasing and saves lossless WebP), Native, High or Medium, or the editable project (.roliamap) as a backup with layers (you can re-import it from the gallery).
  • Use in game: creates a tactical map scene in your library (with your grid; you then add walls, fog and tokens in the VTT) or sets it as the world map of one of your campaigns (existing POIs are kept). Re-exporting updates the linked scene without duplicating it.
  • Workshop: publish it (free or priced) in the Maps category. Whoever acquires it gets an editable copy. You can also share it privately with the gallery button (link by code).

Folders and packs

In the gallery you can create folders ("Folder") and drag maps onto them. Open a folder to view it; from inside, "Publish pack" uploads the whole folder to the Workshop as a single product (with a collage cover, description and price). Whoever acquires a pack gets a copy of the folder with all its maps. In the Workshop, clicking a card opens the preview with the cover and the full description.

Shortcuts

V move · G terrain · B paint · E erase (hold E = temporary eraser; releasing it returns you to the previous tool, handy if your browser captures right-click for mouse gestures) · S shapes · A assets · R rivers/paths · T text · L lights · M measure · [ ] brush size · right-click = dig/erase (with brush) or context menu · Space or middle button = pan the view · wheel = zoom · on mobile, two fingers = zoom and pan · Ctrl+Z/Y undo/redo · Ctrl+C/X/V copy/cut/paste · Ctrl+D duplicate.

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