Available to the Grandmaster subscription tier and above. Upgrade here.
On World Anvil you have a wide range of map pins you can use to spruce up your maps. But as a Grandmaster, you can use custom pins for even more customizability. For example, you could use them to display country flags on your map, or simply to make your pins better fit the visual theme of your world. Here's how to do it:
- Create an image for the map pin. Custom pins are not scaled down, so create it in the exact scale you want it displayed on the map.
- Upload it as a regular image to your world. Remember its name.
- In the top menu bar, click on Studio and select Map Pins.
- Click the the "Create a new Map Pin" button on the right.
- Give the marker a title. On the "Pin Image" drop-down, look for the pin image by its name.
After saving, the pin will be available for you to use in any of your maps! The feature has deeper layers of customization, so keep reading if you'd like to learn about the advanced options.
Advanced options
This is an explanation of all fields in the pin creation interface, from top to bottom:
- Title: the name of the pin. You will use this name to search for the pin when you want to use it, but it won't be visible to your readers.
- Tags (optional): a list of words that you can use to search for the pin when adding it to a map. You can separate them with commas or spaces.
- Theme (optional): legacy field that currently has no functionaly. You can safely leave it empty.
- Pin image: an image you have uploaded to your world.
- Pin shadow image (optional): you can use this if you want the pin to have a shadow in a different image. The shadow will not be automatically displaced, so you should leave empty transparent space around the shadow (depending on which direction you want it to drop to).
- Anchor and pop up points (optional): these four fields control the behavior of the pin. See the next section for an exaplantion.
- World (optional): if you assign your pin to a world, it will become available to that world's co-authors. Even if you assign a world, it will still be available in all worlds for you.
What are anchor and pop-up points?
These settings control how the pin behaves:
- The anchor point is the pixel of the pin that is in contact with the map. When the map is resized, the pins keep the same size, so by setting this value you can ensure that the point of contact will always be in the same place. In most cases, the X point will half of the total pin's width and the Y point will be the pin's total height.
- The popup point refers to the point of the pin that is in contact with the popup's arrow. Usually, you'll want this at the top center area of the pin, which is represented by X being half of the pin's total width and Y being 0.
