Figured I should give it it's own thread, instead of putting it into the WTE, since it's somewhat helpful in general for people who are interested in Terrain work. Since I didn't really do any decent commentary on it at all, I don't want to put it into the Tutorial section. This really is something for advanced people who understand what is going on, not beginners :)
Just to give you a quick idea of the workflow I used here:
Defined a POI from the idea I had and set up a camera for the specific view I wanted. In this case the giant Zerg in a cave, with a giant tree log next to it. While it creates some problems with scale between the other trees and this one, it still works pretty well for this picture. I could've added a giant tree or two to fix this though, but ultimately decided not to do it, as it would reduce the unique visuals.
I began blocking out the basic mountainside behind the cavern and started to mess around with ideas on what I could do with the area in general (waterfall and river next to the cave, as a source of water) and added the cliffside assets
Spend over 20m building a god damn waterfall
After finsihing up the waterfall and river, as well as doing a quick retexture of the area, I began hiding potential problematic visuals (2d sprite plants from the cave)
Adding the basic trees, adjusting textures and such for the top of the mountain. While you don't see much of it, it still decided to give it a bit more attention in case I moved the camera around. Also fixed the flat area on the ground.
I added a tree in the lower corner of the screen according to the camera to give it more depth and the illusion that there is some more forest around it, before doing a retexture of the ground and doing a lot of the more basic detailwork like vines.
From here it's a ton of detail work with asset. Thankfully Zerus isn't very stressful with this, as you can pretty much random everything together due to complimentary colors and asset structures.
I decided to put one more small detail before the cave and added the backdrop behind the tree before doing some small final corrections with weather and some small details that didn't seem quite right.
And finally here is the video to go along with all this text. It might have some pixel issues sometimes for quick movement, I went back and reduced it to 4 Bit instead of 16 Bit. But it cut the size by 1/4th so the upload didn't take 5h again. Sound issues around 15-17m, prepare your ears for it.
I hope this was somewhat helpful for a few of you for future works. I might do another video or two regarding other terrain sets and types of terrain works and workflows and this time include what I do in the editor instead of being a idiot that has fraps set only to recording the editor view.
And as a reward for watching/reading, here is a baby bunny!
The only thing I can see that you could have done better was tint the waterfalls a bit so that they blend more with the murky greens and browns. As they are now, they stand out a lot when you first glance at the picture and seem ever so slightly out of place. Green water doesn't turn white just because it's falling.
I'm in a dilemma. Technically removing videos of cute bunnies is a bannable offense on Mapster, but I would like to check out your time lapse - always need to see how other Terrainers work. I seem to have more of a Bob Rossian-approach myself where I just throw down some shit and it ends up looking well together.
On another note; does anybody recognize that music in the bunny video? It becomes especially prevalent in the last 10 seconds or so. Is it me or is that music from Heroes of Might & Magic 3?
@Dragoneles: Go
Ye, the waterfall assets in SC2 are awful. The problem here is that I did not notice it until afterwards myself :P The water is actually adjusted to be whitish and fit the waterfall, but due to the fog it suddenly became green again. I corrected it later, but it's not in the video as well, so I left it as is for the sake of the video.
Also this only took 1 hour and was just for shit and giggle because I had an idea. If this was actually a product to sell (or hosted on bnet) I would actually spend 3 months on it and work as much detail into it as possible in multiple passings of the terrain.
But for the sake of it, here is a green one. You will notice that it's actually worse for the entire picture. Because there is no contrast. I really wanted the waterfall and river to be a different color for the sake of composition here ;)
@Mozared: Go
I will try to reupload it as soon as possible. The bunny can stay at the very end as a treat for watching. So it's not removed and you are in no dilemma! :P
Figured I should give it it's own thread, instead of putting it into the WTE, since it's somewhat helpful in general for people who are interested in Terrain work. Since I didn't really do any decent commentary on it at all, I don't want to put it into the Tutorial section. This really is something for advanced people who understand what is going on, not beginners :)
Just to give you a quick idea of the workflow I used here:
And finally here is the video to go along with all this text. It might have some pixel issues sometimes for quick movement, I went back and reduced it to 4 Bit instead of 16 Bit. But it cut the size by 1/4th so the upload didn't take 5h again. Sound issues around 15-17m, prepare your ears for it.
I hope this was somewhat helpful for a few of you for future works. I might do another video or two regarding other terrain sets and types of terrain works and workflows and this time include what I do in the editor instead of being a idiot that has fraps set only to recording the editor view.
And as a reward for watching/reading, here is a baby bunny!
The only thing I can see that you could have done better was tint the waterfalls a bit so that they blend more with the murky greens and browns. As they are now, they stand out a lot when you first glance at the picture and seem ever so slightly out of place. Green water doesn't turn white just because it's falling.
I'm in a dilemma. Technically removing videos of cute bunnies is a bannable offense on Mapster, but I would like to check out your time lapse - always need to see how other Terrainers work. I seem to have more of a Bob Rossian-approach myself where I just throw down some shit and it ends up looking well together.
On another note; does anybody recognize that music in the bunny video? It becomes especially prevalent in the last 10 seconds or so. Is it me or is that music from Heroes of Might & Magic 3?
@Dragoneles: Go Ye, the waterfall assets in SC2 are awful. The problem here is that I did not notice it until afterwards myself :P The water is actually adjusted to be whitish and fit the waterfall, but due to the fog it suddenly became green again. I corrected it later, but it's not in the video as well, so I left it as is for the sake of the video.
Also this only took 1 hour and was just for shit and giggle because I had an idea. If this was actually a product to sell (or hosted on bnet) I would actually spend 3 months on it and work as much detail into it as possible in multiple passings of the terrain.
But for the sake of it, here is a green one. You will notice that it's actually worse for the entire picture. Because there is no contrast. I really wanted the waterfall and river to be a different color for the sake of composition here ;)
@Mozared: Go I will try to reupload it as soon as possible. The bunny can stay at the very end as a treat for watching. So it's not removed and you are in no dilemma! :P
Video is processed and up! Enjoy! :)
Very nice, It really shows how much deliberation goes into every part of the work.
As opposed to my style...
Hi! Great Work. Can you upload this map somewhere? And/Or make few pictures for wallpapers for example :)