Spring Valley in the Day theme: the whole city and its water on warm paper

Maps of your Cities: Skylines cities · version 1.0

A map for the city you built.

Every avenue you drew, every neighbourhood that grew along the river. Vellum turns your save into a map you can explore, read and keep, and that makes you want to go back and keep building.

Free and open source · Windows, macOS and Linux · also on Microsoft Store

Spring Valley · Day theme · Credit: SgtHK · Steam Workshop

02 · Real maps

Real cities, from people who play.

This is how real saves look when you open them in Vellum: coasts, islands, bridges and avenues someone raised by hand, one stretch at a time.

03 · Layer by layer

Turn on only what tells your story.

Terrain, base map, roads, buildings, forests, districts and transit. Start with the water and keep adding until the city reads on its own. And when a layer asks for more, open it: every layer has its own options panel.

Costa Tijuca in the Day theme, every layer, transit lines included
Costa Tijuca · Day theme
Credit: MatBarbosa · Steam Workshop
  • 01 Terrain and water
  • 02 Roads
  • 03 Buildings
  • 04 Forests
  • 05 Districts
  • 06 Transit
Options of the Roads layer: the real panel of the app

In other layers: hypsometric relief and contour lines, buildings by zone, forests as circles or a heat map, district fills.

04 · Themes

The same city, at another hour.

Five themes included. Day, the paper you know; Transit, to read your transport; and three inherited from CSL Map View for anyone who missed their old map. None of them yours?

Make your own .vellumstyle: the schema is public(opens in a new tab)

Costa Tijuca in the Day theme, every layer, transit lines included
Costa Tijuca in the Transit theme: the transit lines in colour over the dark city
Costa Tijuca · drag to compareCredit: MatBarbosa · Steam Workshop

Left side

  • DayDay
  • TransitTransit
  • ClassicClassic
  • GrayscaleGrayscale
  • Grayscale + WaterGrayscale + Water

inherited from CSL Map View: Classic · Grayscale · Grayscale + Water

Right side

  • DayDay
  • TransitTransit
  • ClassicClassic
  • GrayscaleGrayscale
  • Grayscale + WaterGrayscale + Water

inherited from CSL Map View: Classic · Grayscale · Grayscale + Water

05 · Night

Lights out.

With the Transit theme the city goes dark and your lines remain, in the colours you gave them in the game. Turn on "Dim other layers" and the rest of the map fades over a dark background while only your lines stay in full colour.

What the setting looks like in the app: Dim other layers.
Costa Tijuca in the Transit theme: the transit lines in colour over the dark city
Costa Tijuca · Transit
Costa Tijuca in Transit with "Dim other layers": the rest of the map fades over a dark background and only the lines stay in full colour
+ dim other layers

06 · Schematic view

Your network, drawn like a metro map.

Open the schematic view and Vellum redraws every line at 45° angles, like the maps that hang on station platforms. The tangle of the city becomes a diagram you understand at a glance, with your stations and your colours.

The transit network of Costa Tijuca in the schematic view: lines at 0°, 45° and 90° with their stations labelled
Costa Tijuca · schematic view · Day theme
Credit: MatBarbosa · Steam Workshop
  • Octilinear

    Only 0°, 45° and 90°

    Every segment settles on the grid, with the turns at the stations.

  • Stations

    One node per station

    The platforms of a station collapse into one, with rail first.

  • Labels

    Names that don't collide

    Stops are labelled without overlapping. Click one to open its card.

  • Camera

    Moves like the map

    Smooth zoom and panning, just like the geographic view.

07 · Districts and places

Ask the map what's there.

Your neighbourhoods appear with their name, their boundary and a fill by specialization, or as markers if you prefer. With a city exported by Vellum Bridge, streets carry their names too.

Click a district, a park or a building and its card opens: population, households, jobs and specializations.

Pepper Lake at neighbourhood zoom: named districts with their boundary and fill, and street names
Pepper Lake · districts and streets · Day theme
Credit: takkerue · Steam Workshop
The real place card of the app, with sample data

Card of the sample district Harbor Heights: population, area, type and a bar with households and jobs by sector.

08 · For people who tell their city

Explain your city without fighting the camera.

Costa Tijuca full screen in clean mode: the map without any interface
Costa Tijuca · clean mode (H): the map without the interface
Credit: MatBarbosa · Steam Workshop
  • In the video

    A map that reads in two seconds

    Show where each zone is and what you're building. Export as PNG up to 4× or as SVG to edit it.

  • On stream

    Vellum on another screen

    Leave it open while you play. H hides the interface and leaves only the map.

  • To share

    Your name in the corner

    White, dark or transparent background, and your name in the map marginalia. Ready for Reddit, Steam or the video thumbnail.

09 · Print

What your map would look like printed.

When you export, Vellum can add the marginalia of a real chart: the name of your city, your name, the legend of roads and lines, the scale bar and the north arrow. Export a 4× PNG and take it to print.

Costa Tijuca exported with its marginalia in the bottom left corner: city name, author, road and line legends, scale bar and north arrow
Credit: MatBarbosa · Steam Workshop

Costa Tijuca

Day theme · 4× PNG · marginalia bottom left

Identity
city name · author
Legends
road hierarchy · transit lines and modes · elevation
Aids
scale bar · orientation
Information
map summary · data source and limits
Corner
any of the four
Background
white · dark · transparent

What you see in the panel is what the app exports (DM Mono, the colours of the theme). The texts change with every city.

10 · On your system

At home on every desktop.

The map is the same; the window takes on the look of your system with its own styles, without depending on it.

  • Vellum on Windows with Pepper Lake, the sidebar and a place card open
    This is Windowsin the style of Mica and Acrylic
  • Vellum on macOS with Pepper Lake, the sidebar and a place card open
    This is macOSin the style of Liquid Glass
  • Vellum on Linux with Pepper Lake, the sidebar and a place card open
    This is Linuxplain paper

11 · Download

Your city is waiting.

Free and open source. Pick your system and in a couple of minutes you're looking at your map.

All downloads on GitHub Releases

And in the game

Vellum Bridge

Without Bridge, Vellum has nothing to draw. It's the mod that exports your city from Cities: Skylines with a button or Ctrl + Shift + E. Offline and read-only.

Get Vellum Bridge on Steam Workshop(opens in a new tab)

No Workshop? Manual install

Coming from CSL Map View? Vellum opens your .cslmap files too.