The Wars of Warcraft: The First War - Real Terrain Previews

Im not sure if this goes under Terrain or Models since this is terrain modeled in Gmax, so I'll leave that up to a mod.
This is the this thread for the Real Terrain Previews. These will also be found in The Wars of Warcraft: The First War Project Thread (see signature).
This is the Southwestern Part of the map, it has the Deadmines, a set of Unnamed mtns, and the end of the river and where it leads into the Great Sea.
Once finished and textured, this will be used as the terrain for The Wars of Warcraft: The First War project.
It has 1679 polygons so far. I know it's kinda high, but nothing compared to the amount of polygons WC3 terrain has (120x120=14400 polygons) So it's comparatively low. But has the benefit that I can scale it down so it can fit on smaller maps.
Give me feedback.
BTW; I know that real terrain is possible because I've done it before.

But ingame there will still be a tarrein generated even if it's hidden by the model.
Though i like the idea it can offer more possibilities.
Is it made for game phase or cinematic?

Its for actually game play, not cinematics, but I like to use this because it makes some things look better. Also I can scale down things to fit on smaller maps which load faster. I could theoretically use this method to scale down the entire world of warcraft to a epic / large sized map without losing to much detail... theoretically.
So I could use this on a small/ medium map which has relatively few terrain polygons to render, loads faster, and would, if created right, look better. And I have more options when texturing the terrain.

Or you could also just use this method as a way to add more polies to the terrain, making it smoother and better! :D

well, you forget one thing...
although the cam will only be on a part of the terrain warcraft's engine will render the whole terrain.
because the engine does not render the actual screen, but the models which are (at least with one edge) on the screen...
thus you will get warcraft to lagg as hell, not more!
(possible solution would be dividing the terrain into little parts and set them together in we afterwards...)

I plan to break it down into segments and handle it that way! I already thought of most of the problems. Though thanks, I didnt plan on breaking it down for that reason

Moved to the modeling & animation forum, because it's not wc3 terraining, it's a model, and it's unfinished. The gallery is a showcase of finished stuff.

Okay, I wasn't too sure. thanks for moving it.

I may say that its shaping up but its gonna lag like hell and high-polies make wc3 go crazy

no it's not. As he said, it will have less polys than the wc3 terrain. If you alpha out the wc3 terrain there should be no problem.

ah, (correct me if im wrong) im pretty sure that with doodads and stuff it loads the whole thing, or not at all. so either ur gonna enter the map and have a very boxy sight radius or ur gonna see the whole map. so yeah...

they do but im breaking the terrain into smaller pieces

Alphaing something makes things invisible, but does not remove the polies at all.

Still, it won't make a lag, he's only using 1679 polies up to now which is what 3 pitlords are(in fact, 3 pitlords have more polies than that), and putting 10 pitlords doesn't lag. And anyways he's going to break it into smaller pieces, so in fact you'd only see one piece or 2, which wouldn't be so bad, the rest will be hidden until you see them, and then the other would be hidden.

but doesnt it skip right over alpha'd 'parts' and skip the rendering process for them therefore speeding it up right?

well, he has only a few polies up till now, but doesnt he want to model fitting trees, houses which are different from one another and so on?
that'll make the plycount explode...

and i wouldnt think about the polycount of the terrain of wc3 (not your model's)
its not that much...(every rectangle is made out of two polies, which makes, lets say you got approximatly 100 rectangles on your screen, 200 polies, which isnt that much!)