Terrain Now a Days (Must See)

Alot of what I've noticed in terrains at this forum, along with terrain at other forums is:
There terrain is only focused on randomly placed objects.
Alot of the work, is made to look "natural" when in truth its just being lazy.
I'm not saying I havn't done this myself I'm just trying to make a point.
Work considered good when its randomly put together really fast shouldn't.
Theres like a trend started where now alot of people are folling this path.

People spend too much time making the SS look cool, and stuff, thats not terraining.
Skys, fogs, weather, there all in another area seperate. Having the "right" sky to make the SS look nice. More effort should be put into the terrain itself, i'd rather have people submit maps than screenshots so you can see if there map is actually sucky or not.

people work shouldnt be judges on how hard it was to make, but how good it looks, regardless of how much effort it took. if anything fog is more important than most people think. a good choise of fog and sky IS terraining. its not much work, but a good choise of fog can remove contrasting coulers on a map, and a good sky is essentail. theyre just the final touches.
you can tell the difference between spamming doodads and placing them for a natural look because things dont grown randomly. for example, in harsh environments plants will only get the chance to grow in sheltered ares, more things will grow around water, plants tend to grow in clumps not evenly over an entire spot.

Just because someone doesn't put a lot of time into something doesn't make it sloppy. I find that the less time I put into my work the better it looks. I have lots of terrain that I have spent several days working on but I will never show it because it looks horrible.

A trend I have been noticing is that lots of people (who after figuring out how) take every idea from the 'Tips of the Trade' thread and put them all into one map. Almost every new terrainer has a picture of a building with barrels for walls, in this building are tables used as floors, the building is then built beside(or in) a canyon which is a 90 degree drop. Going into this canyon somewhere, is a waterfall. All of this is surrounded by a forest of the night elf campaign screen trees, and then, to top it off, beams of light pouring down. None of which is properly executed.

By doing this, it looks sloppy, like something a more experienced terrainer could do in about five minutes. Mostly the terrain isn't something that someone thought of, but a bunch of techniques that someone read.

Bur, in certain areas of this forum, all people are looking for is awesome screenies (the weekly terrain for example). They just want to see how good you can make it look. When actually putting a terrain in an ACTUAL map that will be released to the public, then you should consider pathing say... Idk... Tree villages and such.
Also... My best art always flows together quickly. If I'm really feeling a terrain... Bam Bam... It's done. If it's not what I'm wanting to draw out at that time, then it'll take me 2 hours and look like something my dog did.

On the 'using only techniques' side. It depends, I use a lot of techniques, not ones that I read particularly. But there's a technique to every piece of terrain I make. It is not wether you USE the techniques or not... It's HOW you use them. ClosecI is right however, I have seen a lot of newbie map makers throwing together 'decent' terrains simply by using other people techniques. But their work is easily definable, it all generally looks the same somewhat like ClosecI mentioned. You can tell a real terrain from a new terrain, not by the techniques he does or doesn't use, but by the way he uses them (like I just said).

This, Bur (the top paragraph), is what I meant by my post on the WT thread.

Randomality can be a great, or terrible thing also. Gitlich was half right when he said things in nature arn't random. In ways they are, and in ways they arn't. There is no real pattern to how trees are in a forest (randomality) however the location of the forest is determined by climate, geography, etc... (non-randomality). A good terrainer can make his terrain look very close to that of the enviroment that is was modelled after.

I am afraid that I may have drug that out a bit, and made things slightly to wordy... So I'll stop here. Thank you for your time.

-MadBagOfHorses

Edit: Oh and Bur, not all of your OPINIONS are a must see. The title of this is misleading.

I don't see how arranging things to look random could in the end make them look worse... sounds like a personal problem to me.

I know that. I was trying to spark up an argument and try to get others to disagree and agree with me.

ShiningForce said he was gonna post up to agree with me, so I could have atleast 1 person agree with me but he didn't, but he was talking to me about how the SS he sees only appear good because of the sky and weather and fog that is in the shot, and he sees alot of "unpolished" work, or being half done, which I can say I agree with in some SS.

In the screen shots I have added recently, I couldn't enable the sky to be viewed while in the WE. The map that the terrain I took shots of was on a 480X480 map. This can only be made using the WEU enhancer before you even open WEU. Also the area in the WE that you enable yourself to view the sky while in is in the same part that the edit map and camera bounds are in. If you go to this tab at all (even in the place to turn the sky on) than hit ok, than it gives you en error message something like "the largest size allowed is XXXXXX" where you are using one much larger. So your only option is to hit cancel instead of ok, meaning that the sky was not turned on.

For future screen shot on the WT thread (and most likely on all others) I will make the terrains in a smaller map, where I CAN enable the sky.

-MadBagOfHorses

Oh and having people agree with you doesn't make you more or less right. Simply means that more people think the same way that you do.

You brought up a good point. I tried adding fog and sky under Map Options on a 480x480 map I am making (my new Roleplaying Map terrain), and it gave me an error, saying the maximum size is 256x256. I decided "What the hell, forget it", and I just continued on. It looks great. I take a lot of my screen shots (from that map) from the sky, instead of looking from the ground view, so that sky isn't needed, and you get a better look at the ground, and what all my work really is.

From what I gather from the WT thread, I think bur's major beef is that people don't path their maps. Well, I don't want to spend my time pathing an incredibly complex map (my old tree village comes to mind. God that was horrible) that I'm not even gonna play. I put it up for download so that IF someone does want to play it, they can path it themselves. I know I sound like a selfish bastard, but really, think about it. I do this for FUN. I don't want somebody coming along, ask me to path this incredibly awesome-looking, complex map, and then just give it to them with a promise of being credited. Woo hoo. This is why I don't take requests, don't join projects, and don't path my maps. I am not serious about modding. Someone wants a terrain from me? Go ahead. They can download what I've put up and path the things themselves.

And about the current argument, I think that you guys are arguing about the definition of terraining. There are two ways to look at it. You can look at it literally and concern yourself only with the terrain and doodad palettes, or you can look at it... not... literally (I don't know what the word is). I think that bur is taking terraining literally and thinking on technical terms, whether the map is playable, what techniques to use, etc. I personally think of it as playing god. You create a world basically, what the world looks like, the vegetation, the climate, the inhabitants. You can even create a story by maybe placing an ancient monolith somewhere and then when you show that, people will think, "whoa what happened here?". So in the end, you can improve your technical skills and be a great asset to projects, or you can become more creative with your terrain and tell a story.

EDIT by the way, did anyone notice that the Weekly Terraining Forum also stands for What The Fuck? Just thought I'd mention that. Gave me giggles.

I was the target of a notion of submission see.

Say what? Goddamn.. ten character limit...

I think Bur was implying that we are all against him. I would have to counter that with, there are no sides here. Only opinions.

-MadBagOfHorses