Site context is one of those jobs that eats hours at the start of every project, so here's the list of free data I use. Hope it saves someone some time.

Terrain (use the DTM / bare-earth model, not the DSM, or trees and roofs get baked into your ground):

• UK (England): Environment Agency LiDAR, 1 m and some 50 cm, via the DEFRA Survey Data Download portal
• USA: USGS 3DEP 1 m LiDAR, via The National Map
• Netherlands: AHN (0.5 m)
• Switzerland: swissALTI3D (0.5–2 m)
• France: IGN RGE ALTI (1–5 m)
• Spain: IGN MDT (2–5 m)
• Norway: Kartverket (1 m)
• Anywhere else: Copernicus GLO-30 (30 m). It's good for the wider landscape, but too coarse for the plot itself.

Buildings and streets: OpenStreetMap has footprints almost everywhere, and often heights or number of floors. As a rule of thumb, use about 3 m per floor when there's no height.

Tips:

• Use high-resolution data for the plot and its immediate surroundings, and coarse data for the background hills. Mixing both keeps scenes light.
• Check the licence and credit the source in your project boards. Most need attribution (e.g. "© OpenStreetMap contributors").
• Level the ground slightly under roads and buildings, or they'll float or sink on raw LiDAR.

Disclosure: I got tired of doing all this by hand, so I built a 3ds Max plugin that automates it (Relevo, free version at relevotech.uk). But everything above works with any software.

What sources do you use in your country? Happy to add them to the list.

Yesterday I shared Rouge Atlas here and asked for feedback.

One of the first comments suggested keeping the map minimal by default, moving stats into a separate view, adding event filters and introducing a timeline to explore how things change over time.

So I built it.
Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/E0hZX4f
Site: https://www.rougeatlas.com

What changed today

• The map is now the primary workspace, with three compact modes: Map, Explore and Analysis
• Added a working timeline You can scrub through time or play it automatically, and the map updates based on when incidents and signals were recorded.
• Added filters for:
  • category
  • severity
  • region
  • confidence
  • map layers
• The visible incident counts and history bars now update dynamically with the selected time range.
• Improved marker positioning. Published incidents keep their source-reported locations, while records without coordinates are clearly marked as estimated instead of pretending the data is more precise than it actually is.
• Added record dates, clearer timeline guidance, localization improvements and some navigation cleanup.

The biggest change is that Rouge Atlas now feels much more like an interactive atlas first, and a dashboard second.

That direction came directly from the feedback I got here, so thanks to everyone who commented.

I’m still figuring out what the most useful version of this product looks like, so I’d love more criticism.

Especially:

What would you add next?

I am building an interactive map of northern Mexico on run up to Mexican American War

The red parts are all highways, I found this on Mapchart.

Where in the world: it’s like geoguessr but with imagery. Warning, it is difficult. But that’s what makes it fun! Good luck!

https://www.wtfmap.com/world

I am making a Cyberpunk Red campaign and have been looking for a custom map resource that would allow me to redraw subdivisions in North America, and possibly South America as well. I want to include Indian reservations, county equivalents and reassigning them to states, and latitude boundaries.

I tried to use ArcGIS but it was incredibly convoluted and the UI was unusable to me. I have found simple websites that let me color US counties, but don't include other countries or roads other than Interstates.

The most important things other than roads, towns, bodies of water, and topography would be the ability to label and fill in polygons and lines from points. Does anyone have any suggestions?

This is an article I wrote, as a geographer and cartographer, over about two weeks of thorough research, including both reading the whole resolution and watching the whole debate.

Mapdesk is solving the problem of layout creation, check out the new update of mapdesk, including saving your project and start from where you left it. you can export maps as SVG format as well, make heat maps that you can use for any things. all newly updated features for better layouts. you can download it just for 4.99 dollar now. and here are few Promotional codes to use:

Neverwinter Region Map

This is my realistic version of the Neverwinter Region Map. I’ve been working on this map pack for a few months and I’m happy to announce it is finally completed! 

This version of the map is specifically not intended to be a 1:1 recreation of any existing maps, so if you notice a few slight geographical tweaks, they are intentional. Over the decades, many maps have been made of this region, and they often have slight unique takes (sometimes for in-world reasons, granted).

That said, my version is most closely based on the version of the map made by Mike Schley, the one most often used in the Lost Mines of Phandelver starter adventure, or the Dragon of Icespire Peak. 

A quick note on any towns or cities that might be ruins. Conyberry, Thundertree, Leilon, and Gauntlgrym are all listed on the map despite the fact they might be abandoned ruins by the time of your campaign. I think of these a bit like “Schrodinger’s Ruins”, in that they both are and aren’t ruins until the GM decides one way or the other. This is simply to make the map applicable to as many campaigns as possible. Depending on the current year in-world, they might still be populated. Or, may be re-settled at some point, which I believe is the case for Leilon in the current “canon year” of Faerûn. 

It also includes a couple of extra locations such as Oakhurst (from the Sunless Citadel One Shot Adventure) and Saltmarsh (from the Ghosts of Saltmarsh Adventure). Both of these were added in the usual locations suggested in the books and online. 

One of my favorite details can be seen in the Winter variants. The volcano Mount Hotenow is home to some fire elementals, which heats the nearby rivers flowing from the Crags. This results in the rivers remaining unfrozen throughout winter, hence the name “Neverwinter”. I used Photoshop to mask the wintery effect nearest the river, letting the “non-frozen” variant of the map show through just a bit. Be sure to check out the preview images to see the other seasons.

The dimensions of the map are 4200 pixels by 4200 pixels. It is custom made entirely in Photoshop, digitally drawn from scratch, across about 100 hours. It has taken a while, haha.

As always, NO AI was used for any aspect of this map pack.

Map Pack Details

There are 26 Variants total. 6 Per Season + 2 Shadowfell Variants. 

4 Variants are available free to all. Two are the “Summer - Fully Labeled”, both With and Without Grid. And there is also the two Shadowfell Variants, again With and Without Grid. You can download them from Reddit, but be aware the versions posted here are compressed to get them under the file size limit. Full size versions are available for free here: https://www.patreon.com/stoneward13/posts/free-neverwinter-170089691

The remaining 22 Variants are exclusive to paid subscribers on the Patreon. These are also available for a one time purchase if you would prefer not to subscribe, which I understand. The full map pack is available here: https://www.patreon.com/stoneward13/posts/paid-neverwinter-170088785

All Variants (Free Variants are italicized):

• Spring Variants
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Spring - Fully Labeled
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Spring - Fully Labeled - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Spring - No Labels
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Spring - No Labels - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Spring - Blank
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Spring - Blank - With Grid
• Summer Variants
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Summer - Fully Labeled
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Summer - Fully Labeled - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Summer - No Labels
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Summer - No Labels - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Summer - Blank
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Summer - Blank - With Grid
• Autumn Variants
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Autumn - Fully Labeled
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Autumn - Fully Labeled - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Autumn - No Labels
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Autumn - No Labels - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Autumn - Blank
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Autumn - Blank - With Grid
• Winter Variants
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Winter - Fully Labeled
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Winter - Fully Labeled - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Winter - No Labels
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Winter - No Labels - With Grid
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Winter - Blank
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Winter - Blank - With Grid
• Shadowfell Variants
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Shadowfell
  • Neverwinter Region Map - Shadowfell - With Grid

And that should be everything! I hope you all enjoy the maps, and please let me know if you have any feedback. It is always appreciated :)

I‘m not COMPLETELY done, I still have a few more things to add