Brandon's Wargaming Blog......and other stuff

Recently I have been having a conversation via email with another wargame designer regarding the drawing of wargame maps. He has provided some wonderful insight into the process he uses and I asked him where he gets his blank hex grid he uses for most maps. He sent me the file he uses and mentioned that there had to be an easier way to make hexes for a wargame map than using a scanned image or something similar, specifically using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. This got me thinking; in the past I have just created my hex grids the ‘hard way’ by drawing a hexagon and then duplicating it into a small grid, then duplicating that small grid until I had the size desired. There are a few problems with this, one of them being hex drift. This occurs when you don’t get the hexes exactly lined up with one another and the tiny misalignment gets magnified the more it is repeated. Sure there is a way to resolve this by setting up a rather complex series of guides and grids, but it is a pain.

The tutorial below is very image heavy….just a warning ;) Also, this isn’t the only way to do it, it is just the way I have found to make it quick every time I need a hex grid.  The initial setup is a pain, but for future use it will save time.  

Most of last night and a good part of this morning was spent finding out a way to easily make a hex grid in Adobe Illustrator. I chose Illustrator because of its scaling abilities and ease of use, and also it is much easier to take an image and move it into Photoshop than it is the other way around. The process in Illustrator involves creating a new repeatable seamless pattern and using the ‘Swatches’ toolbar to apply this pattern to an object. By using a pattern on an object, in this case a rectangle set to the size of the map you need you can get a seamless grid that can be scaled to accommodate any size hex you need.

This is the first tutorial I have done, so please bear with me and forgive any blunders. I am using Adobe Illustrator CS3, but I think the process should be similar for any version dating back to 8 if I remember correctly. Please comment and correct me if I am wrong. I am also assuming that by attempting use this tutorial that you have some basic knowledge or understanding of Adobe Illustrator as I will leave out some generic explanations of tools and such.

Create a new print document in Illustrator. The size doesn’t matter at this point but you will want to set the units to inches.

Select the ‘Polygon Tool’ by clicking and holding the ‘Square Tool’ button. A pop-out of the different shape tools should be visible now.

After this click anywhere on the screen an a dialog box will appear looking like the one below. For a standard 1/2” counter game the hex needs to be roughly 5/8” from flat side to flat side. The problem with Illustrator is that it measures from the point to another point. The measurement I use for the radius is .3625.

After you have entered the value, hit enter or click ‘Ok’ and you should have something like this.

You don’t really need a solid hex, you want an outline,. So delete the fill and add an outline using the small color selector. It should look like this.

Next you need to set your stroke weight for the hex to 1pt.

This is where is starts to get a little tricky. You need to duplicate the hex and move it so it is aligned as below. This is made easier by pressing ‘ctrl + Y’ or ‘command + Y’ if you are on a Mac. (I use a PC so for the rest of the tutorial I will be using ‘ctrl’ as it is easier.) This gives you ‘outline mode’ which shows you the actual vector lines that Illustrator is using. Align them as closely as possible as this is important to the tiling of the pattern. It may help to zoom in as much as you can.

Once you have done this you can switch back from outline mode by pressing ‘ctrl+Y’ again. Select both hexes using the selection tool by dragging a box around them. Now you need to get the hexes to a state where you can trim pieces off of them. In order to do this you need to ‘create outlines’ from the 1pt stroke you have given the hexes. With both of the hexes still selected click on the ‘Objects’ menu at the top and then select ‘Path’ and then finally ‘Outline Stroke’.

Notice now when the hexes are selected the edges of the stroke are highlighted, not the center line of the stroke. This has essentially created a polygon shape out of the outline. When selected the hexes should look like this.

Now you need to create a solid shape from the two hexagons. This will make it easier to trim. Make sure both of the hexes are still selected and go to the ‘Pathfinder’ palate. Hold down the ‘alt’ key and press the first button on the left. This button is called ‘add shape to area’. I call it the combine tool and it looks like this.

For me the following was the tricky part as I had to figure out the best way to trim everything so when it was tiled it would look correct. Hopefully this saves you a bit of time if you follow what I am doing precisely.

Next, select the square/polygon tool and make a square on the screen a bit larger than the hex itself. Then place the box over the top of the hex (it might make it easier to select a different color and place it to where it covers exactly half of the side of the hex, like so:

Do the same thing for the other side of the right hex. Then place a box over the left most edge of the left hex covering to the point where the outer diagonal moves upward. You can see it better in the two pictures below.

Now, select all three of the boxes and combine them using the method above from combining the hexes.

Once that is done you need to select the new shape and the hexes and in the ‘Pathfinder’ palate ‘alt-click’ the second button, which is the ‘subtract from shape’ button.

This should give you a result like this.

There is one final thing we need to do before proceeding. There needs to be a way for the line to the left to join the bottom of the hex. To do this you need to duplicate the new shape and move it over to where it lines up exactly to the left of the current object. Like this:

Select both shapes and combine them as before to make one new shape. Next we need to create some boxes over the left most and right most parts of the original shape so it looks like this.

As you can see I left a bit of the left most hex and cut off a bit of the right side. This will allow for seamless tiling as a tile can only be used on a square grid. By doing this it allows the hexes to be formed on a square grid. I know it looks a bit weird right now but it works, trust me ;) Here is a detail of how I aligned the boxes.

Once you have them aligned, select each box and subtract it from the hex shape using the method stated above. Your end result should look like this.

If your shape looks like that, then you have done well and are past the hard part. The next thing to do is to select the shape and click on the ‘Edit’ menu and then click on ‘Define Pattern’.

This brings up the ‘New Swatch’ dialog. Just name it something appropriate and then click ‘Ok’.

Unless you have the ‘Swatches’ palate open, nothing appears to happen. Don’t worry, something did happen. Open the ‘Swatches’ palate by clicking the ‘Windows’ menu and then selecting ‘Swatches’

Once the Swatches palate opens, you will see a tiny box with the little shape in it. Lets try it out! Create a new box shape and make it 12x18” or so. While the box is selected click on the hex swatch and see what happens. It should look like this!

For now that is where I will stop. Hopefully tomorrow or the next day I will go further by showing you how to scale the grid, rotate the grid and also how to effectively use the grid and get it ready for print. Here are a couple examples of different styles of grids you can make using this method. Enjoy.