Awesome terraining techniques

Vary your tiles. Also about doodads, a lot of doodads isn't always a good thing. Good doodad placement can be better than just a whole mass of doodads. For example, if it's a jungle you're terraining, then environment doodads around the bases of trees and rocks will look a lot better than putting the doodads on the largest spread and then just painting the ground with it. In this pic, it's a frozen land, so I used only a few doodads. Conveys a sense of emptiness. Hell it's frozen of course the place is empty. I think I used maybe 12 doodads in this shot.

One technique is to start with raiseing/lowering/smoothing then once you got it to what you like start with the tile textures. once you got it to what you like again. Look over your map, make some modifcations too make it better and then plan out where everything is gonna be. After that begin to add tree's...Now for a realalistic effect i like to then select all the tree's then double click on one tree. **** I cant remember what it's called now but you raise it to 120.00 to make the tree's bigger/tall. Now once you got that done start placing environment doodads around your map, then props and if you like add structures props and then after that add in w/e you need such as a human encapment or a orc settlement. Overall you will need to try this a few times to get the feel. Dont depend on this too much to create a realalistc map. try to useing your imagination as much as possible and don't be too scared try out new things to make the map different in which not many people would think of.

Overall try it out and see if it works.

I don't think you can say "10.000 doodads are too much" or "1.000" doodads aren't enough. It always depends on the mapsize. A good way of calculating how much doodads are OK, is dividing the amount of doodads with the map-size. For example 10.000÷192÷192. You should get values like 0,25 or 0,4. You know that the amount of doodads is OK, when you are between 0,15 and 0,35. Most blizzard-maps are in this range, some ar even below 0,15. If you have 0,5 or 0,6 the map sometimes looks like you tried to make a new Graphic-Demo or you simply held down the left mouse Button. And if you have 0,1 or below, it will most likely look like there are details missing.
Some examples of good Doodad-Placing: The Orc-Campaign-Mine is at 0,12 but it doesn't look as if it has no details. The fourth Human Level (the AoS one) is at 0,07 and I didn't notice the lack of Doodads.

To make a good map, you first have to know what you want in it. It halps much to paint raw on a paper where everything should be! If you also don't write down your ideas and your basics for the map, you could after some time forget the basics and when you have done your map, you'll realize that you haven't done what you wanted to do or your map will be totally imbalanced. If you now start with terraining your map, you can do this like JaGuaR said or you could start with one place of the map, terraform it, place doodads (trees, houses, environment, etc.) and units if you want. After you have done your first place, you should terrain from this point out. (I hope you understood what I tried to explain).
For example:
________________
|City, first place, |-------->terraining from
|where you start-|-------->where you began
|to terraining ----| ------->away
""""""""""""""""""""
You shouldn't make another place anywhere in the map after you've done your first place because when you want to connect these two places it acould be that you haven't enough free place between the places to terrain what you wanted to do.
Understood?

PS: I know I suck in explaining :bgrun:

thats good advice but wut if u dont have any cities

well it was just an example, you can also begin withsomething else like a place in the jungle or in the woods or somewhere. Perhaps you begin with where the player starts and then go on.

men, u kick *** !!!! you've mastered the art of terrain-making....
well done, each and every one of you has some GREAT stuff....

one note about that doodad ratio over maps : not every one likes to have 20k doodads i a map...try, experiment and develop your own, genuine terraining talent/skill ..... be different :)

ok, i won't be ordering terrains from you, but if u need triggs or custom units/spells, call me :)

Heres mine from my current project Naval Destruction

it was in WE and its my first try at terraining anything anywhere near pretty so i thot i might show it off :ggani:

beauties...

heres mine, its a screenie of my first serious attempt at a map...

of course, its where all noobs tend to start...HELMS DEEP:ggani:

this is based on the movie scene where Haldir and the Galadhrim come to the aid of Theoden and the Rohirrim just before the battle...

aaand with weather and rain added

How you make those walls? hey are amassing it really looks good ike the mountains and this things please tell me! ???0_o :ggani: :D ://// :foot: :bgrun: emote_confused emote_sweat 8)) :( :gsmile: :mtk:

In the "Editing Tools" forum theres a sticky by Draco called "Higher Terrain" or something like that. Do what he says to do in that forum.

Then in WE make a tall elevation of ground and use the "Plateu" thing on it. Then tile it.

BolideLich, how did you get that angle in the WE?

In the editor, you can rotate your camera by holding CTRL and the right mouse button. Zoom in/out with the scroll wheel. Hold CTRL and use the scroll wheel to increase or decrease the polygon pop-up distance. Click with the right mouse button and drag to move the map North/South/East/West.

is there any way to Put a sky?? a blue sky or something???

Press "K" on your keyboard to show a sky. You can change which sky you want under File>Preferences>Visual tab.