Creating a 1inch Battlemap With GIMP

Creating a 1” Grid Battlemap with GIMP. By Richard Mouton

This tutorial creates a template that can be used to create Battlemaps for tabletop gaming with a 1” gridded overlay. I am using GIMP v2.6.3 running on Windows XP.

Create a new image with a dpi of 100. Change the Image Size to inches and input the dimensions of your battlemap. Click on the Advanced Options to change the dpi.

Turn on the visual grid and ruler. This will help make sure that everything is keeping in line. Image-> Configure Image Grid. Set the Spacing to 100x100pixels or 1in. Changing the Foreground color to something other than black will help it stand out from the actual drawn grid lines.

Create 3 new layers and set to Opacity of each as follows: Grid-Highlight (40), Grid-Shadow (40), Grid-Black (70). If the Layer dialog box is not on use Ctrl-L to open it. Click the New Layer icon or go to Layer->New Layer pulldown. Click Transparency on Layer Fill Type. After the layer is created select is in the Layers dialog and slide the Opacity bar to the desired setting. It doesn’t matter if it is exact.

To get an idea of how to grid is progressing click on the Background layer and use the Bucket Fill Tool to fill it with the slate pattern.

To place the grids use the grid filter. With the layer Grid-Black current, Go to Filters->Render->Pattern->Grid to open the dialog box. Set the Width to 1, the Spacing to 1 inch, and to Offset to 0. Use black as the color.

To quickly recall filters last used key in Shift+Ctrl+F or go to Filters pulldown.

Next make the Grid-Shadow layer current and reopen the grid command. For this grid only change the Offset to 99.

Now select the Grid-Highlight layer and re-open the grid dialog box. Change the offset to 1 and change the color to white.

Turn off the red visual grid and the image should look something like this.

You now have a grid overlay that will apply a 3d chiseled look over the map background. To allow for options make another layer that combines the 3 grid layers. To do this turn off the Background layer by picking the icon, then right click in the Layers dialog and pick “New from Visible” This will create a new layer called Visible. Rename the layer by right clicking it and picking Edit Layer Attributes. There are now 4 layers for controlling how a grid appears in the image. Only turn on the combined Grid layer or turn off the combined and turn on the 3 separate Grid layers. The reason to keep them separate is for better flexibility. Depending on the background image, the black grid may be too harsh a contrast. Gray, Brown, or other colors or adjusting the layer Opacity may achieve better results.

Here are a couple of examples.