Terraining, What does it really mean?

Me and my friend have gotten into an argument about the meaning of the word terrainer, and terraining in wc3 mapping. He says terraining does not include doodads, I said it does. What do you guys think?

Well, terrain in English means the formation of the land. So that would not include "doodads" except for maybe rocks. Also, the terrain palette allows you to only put down tile and water and raise and lower the ground. All thats being said, when someone is a WC3 terrainer, we talk about the terrain and doodad palettes. It's kind of conflicting, but for map making, I would say that you're right.

It means you're lazy. Anyone can terrain, why restrict yourself to such a minor part of mapping?

terraining in wc3 means doodads included

Aye, when you talk about what a mapper is doing, it's not necisarily about what object types he is placing, because technical object types and terrain can be used together for VERY specific purposes.

Thus, terraining in wc3 can even include triggers, if you ACTUALLY control a significant portion of the base terrain with trigger-induced modifications. But in most cases that would be just plain weird if it goes beyond controlling certain destructables.

It should also be noted that 'Terraining' is not the correct name for what people do and its a name, like 'Skinning' which seems to be unique to WCIII.

The correct term is 'Level Design' and involves the placement of terrain, doodads, items and units. Map specific regions and triggers are also included.

'Skinning' is definitely not unique to WC3. All game modding uses this term for making and wrapping textures. I know that's it's not really correct, but it used for countless other game mods.

If you call yourself level designer when talking about wc3 you might aswell add semi-pro in front of it.

I think that teraining is the creation of the game atmosphire.
that means duddads, land formation,the sky's skin and look and eny other aspect that let you feel the area.
I think this is one of the most important and fun aspects of the game....

i was under the impression that skinning was a rigging term and texturing was the unwrapping/texturing of models. i dunno, lots of terms.

Thank you for the clarification. However level design is not what we are talking about. We are not talking about unit placement (which in this specific instance would be a matter of game balance rather then atmosphere).

Spot on. Skinning is actually the process of attaching the mesh to the bones, and it's quite challenging. Just wanted to clarify once again.

skinning is as TDR says, but can be applied to organic model textures, since organic things usually have skin so we cann it skinning too. But the correct way is texturing. But who cares of the different, its just about giving vertices color :P

Terraining in wc3 will mean to create the landscape and enviroment. So it includes doodads and critters. But not controllable units or events.