Hex Cartographer

Bring Your Fantasy Worlds to Life

Hex Cartographer is a visual hex map editor for Obsidian. Create detailed fantasy world maps with colored hex tiles, hand-crafted SVG symbols, rivers, roads, borders, and text annotations — all stored as plain text in your vault.

Your finished maps can be printed or exported as high-resolution PNG/JPEG images — perfect for RPG game masters, fantasy authors, and worldbuilders.

Example Map

Symbols Library

Editor

Flexible Coordinate System

Activate numbering to see hex locations

Switch between numbering modes

Choose a coordinate position for the hexes and color

Features

Hex Grid Editor

• Infinite scrollable hex grid canvas
• Paint hexes with custom colors and palettes
• Color eyedropper to pick colors from the map
• Fill tool for quick area painting
• Pattern stamp tool to apply repeating tile layouts
• Change map orientation to get flat top hexagons instead of pointy top
• Flexible coordinate system with multiple modes

Symbols & Terrain

• 25+ hand-crafted SVG symbols across 4 groups: Extras, Vegetation, Mountains, Buildings
• Symbols inherit the active master color for full flexibility
• Right-click to switch between symbol variants

Rivers, Roads & Borders

• Draw rivers and roads by placing waypoints
• Adjustable line width and dash patterns
• Rivers taper naturally at dead ends
• Draw border regions with customizable styles
• Toggle border visibility on/off

Text Annotations

• Place text labels anywhere on the map
• Customize font size, color, bold, and italic
• Link text to other notes in your Obsidian vault

Export & Print

• Export maps as high-resolution PNG or JPEG
• Optionally crop bitmaps to map borders
• Print directly from the three-dot menu
• On mobile, exports are saved next to the map file

Full Mobile Support

• Touch-optimized: tap to place, swipe to draw
• Two-finger pinch to zoom, two-finger drag to pan
• Long-press on tool buttons for variant selection

Installation

1. Open Obsidian Settings
2. Go to Community Plugins and disable Restricted Mode
3. Click Browse and search for Hex Cartographer
4. Click Install, then Enable

Manual Installation

1. Download main.js, styles.css, and manifest.json from the latest release
2. Create a folder hex-cartographer in your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory
3. Place the downloaded files inside
4. Restart Obsidian and enable the plugin

A note on the main branch

main is the development branch and may contain unfinished work. Its manifest.json is not kept in step with the published version number, so Obsidian treats a copy taken from main as if it were the last release — it offers no update, and reinstalling silently puts the released version back in its place. Maps you created in the meantime will then tell you that they need a newer plugin version.

Always take the files from Releases.

Getting Started

1. Right-click a folder in the file explorer and select Create new Hex Cartographer Map
2. Toggle Edit Mode to start drawing
3. Select a color from the palette and click hexes to paint terrain
4. Switch tool groups in the toolbar to place symbols, draw paths, or add text
5. Use Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y to undo and redo

Controls

Languages

Hex Cartographer supports 11 languages. The language is automatically detected from your Obsidian settings.

German, English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, French, Portuguese, Korean, Spanish, Polish, Italian

License

This plugin is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.