Terraining Tips

I suck at terraining!! So, what I thought would be useful to me, (as well as many others probably) would be some tips from good terrainiers, like do's and donts etc. And yeah... thats all I got to say.

Don't combind non-matching settings!
Don't place doodads in the wrong place (such as a grave stone in an open wood area, or something else bizzare unless it's a part of the plot, or a joke)
Do place doodads in the right place, such as different trees in the forest, ect ect.
Do place a lot of different things that actually are the same. (Trees, bushes, things that look good together, lodges?)
Do place different hights, this counts for EVERYTHING, nothing is really really flat at the time of Warcraft.
Do use different climats/enviorments in one map, no matter what it is.

Regards
Dead-Inside

Perhaps I'll write a terraining tutorial...


Anyways, heres a couple tips.

1 Start out very generall, and work your way down. This is like painting, its the exact same thing, only the viewer of your painting walks around in it, and can only see a small part at a time.

By starting out generall, I mean to start by outlining each area. Just sort of outline, in dirt, or grass, how big each little area will be. Like, this region will be water, this region will be mountains, this region will be forest, etc.

2 Then, "color them in". Put the terrain in each that belongs there, filling it up.

3 Add the cliffs. This does not mean raise/lower land, I mean actuall cliffs, walls, etc. Place them now, to the best of your ability.

4 Add any ramps if you need them.

5 Detail the texture on the ground by mixing it with another, or two. Plain ground usually looks boring. Unless its a desert, and its supposed to be this way, mix it up a bit. Forest grass should have at least 2 different textures of grass. Somewhat randomely make blotches of one, so that the grass fights over itself so to speak.

6 Raise/lower land. Raise and lower your land. Dont go too extreme here, unless you should. Be in controll, use all the tools. This is an important step, just as important as the textures. Make hills in hilly and foresty areas if applicable, raise mountains a little more, make ditches, lower your paths very slightly for the added effect, etc. Good looking terrain is rough, but not too rough. Go along with your textures here when applicable.

7 Place the doodads. Place trees in the forest, place doodads where you can, spice up the land. Don't go insane here, but definately place them, people love doodads, they see the doodad that took you 1 second to place, they don't see the trigger that took you 8 hours of blood, sweat, and caffiene to finish and debug. So spend a little effort here, think about it. Walk through it as if you were the user.

8 Touch up everything! Look back on each step, touch it up to your needs first, then, detail it again. Just overlook everything, making changes as necessary.


Thats pretty much how its done, of coarse you will bounce around the steps, just like painting, its not an exact procedure.

Good luck!

Well, i read all the other posts, and they have everything covered nicely. One thing, when your making cliffs and stuff multi levels high, keep it layered rather then just a flat straight up and down cliff. (hard for me to explain it)

Well the thing i recently found was that you can restrict/un-restrict water height levels. This is good for making realistic waterfalls rather then a high level area, with water inside, and a layer of dirt around it, and then just a waterfall soemwhere. This will actually cut down that outline of dirt, so it looks like water if actually falling down it :)

Thanks to all of you, I think these will help me a bit. Mech, I never knew that before, and since my waterfalls looked really bad, I made the water come out of a cave doodad at the top instead, it looks pretty cool but Ill have to try your way too.