I want to make small-ish mountains for my map but they keep looking like blobby cones with a dusting of ice on top. Is there any advice or guides on how to make realistic-ish mountains? My mountains are small and are mainly intended to be used as aesthetic pathing blockers for air units. To get an idea for how big they are, look at mountains in Civ 5:
My general advice would be to use one of the noisier brushes (last 2) to build up a rough cone, getting steeper towards the center and shallower towards the edges, then paint snow or grass or whatever you want on the flatter parts of it and rock on the steeper parts. From my experimentation, this generally works out quite well.
If you want your mountains the size of the Civilization 5 mountains in terms of scale, you're not going to be able to make them look good. The SC2 terrain editor isn't made for terrain editing on such a small scale. Even if you use the smallest variant of the height and texture brushes to be really precise you're still going to end up with a small blob with ice on top. Normally I'd suggest using the height brush followed by plateau and then playing with the smooth, lower and raise tools, and I think that is probably still your best bet now.
To get more jagged-looking mountains I use a hard round brush, rather than a soft one. Just keep moving your cursor around and peaks will develop where it overlaps.
It might take a bit of practice to get decent results, but once you figure it out it's pretty quick.
Though... I'm not sure how well it would work on that scale. As terrain gets smaller it gets harder to make it look good, due to the size of the terrain grid.
I made a whole map and then realized you wanted small mountains. :D
Basically the same thing the other guys said but here's what i came up with. You can probably go smaller you just have to detail it more. Try a combo of sharpening up the top and then hitting it once with the smooth tool. Eventually you'll get a good point.
Thank you for all the advice. After reading it, I made an attempt:
However, I still think it has room to improve. My constraint is that I can't make the mountain wider or it will mess up pathing for spawns and other units, but I have more room in other areas.
Don't think there is a way to change it but you can try and find a really detailed texture by looking at some of the HoTS ones. I believe a couple are high resolution than some of the WoL ones. Then again that takes up one of those precious 8 slots in your terrain.
Thank you! Here is another one I improved after reading the advice in this thread (editor view):
I realized I don't really know what a volcano looks like. One thing I found helpful for mountains was taking the Haven tree doodad and shrinking it down so they look a bit more proportional on the mountains (no giant trees).
I would like to see Weekly Terraining Exercise in the future featuring small mountain ranges. They seem quite challenging to make. The screenshots are from a map called Empires of the Stormy Seas and you can find it on battle.net (NA) if you want to take a closer look at the mountains/terrain. I very very badly need advice!
You can actually improve the resolution of textures in the editor. Check the FAQ for more information. Also, there has been a WTE about mountain ranges, I think; check the general WTE thread.
I'd provide you with the links normally but I'm in a bit of a rush, sorry about that.
I agree about them being lower but I placed air-pathing blockers and it wouldn't make much sense if the air unit flying higher than the mountain can't pass over.
You could balance it out by reducing the flying height of your air units as well as decrease the height of the mountains. I believe you should be able to find a fitting height that looks natural, yet leaves air easily distinguishable to ground units.
If I can add my 2 cent, what makes the mountain looks weird is not (only) their heigh but the doodads on it. The trees are extremly huge in scale if you compare them to the mountain... I think I would place trees with x,y beeing like 40% and Z beeing 10%, so it would be a flat large tree. Also, maybe do the "texuvset" in the console to make texture smaller and a bit more detailled so you could polish even more the edges.
Woosh. Suddenly a forum skeleton posting out of boredom (anyone still know me? :P)
Something a bit more professional of an idea (it's basically a slightly crazy version of how it works for CE3/UE4):
Generate a landscape with the free version of world machine (www.world-machine.com) and use some exported SC2 textures for it to keep the artstyle.
Import the heightmap & texture into zBrush/Mudbox. From there make it a new mesh the scale of your level.
Place the asset in sc2 and resculpt the terrain plate to fit it in terms of movement height and then paint the blocking on it.
Then hide the terrain plate entirely, so you just got the collision (no idea if SC2 supports custom collision boxes yet :p)
Decorate it properly with scaling and...
...Tada, you just got dead-sexy terrain that's pretty unique in terms of SC2 and you got a nice civ-like map with unique and pretty promo shots you can spread on reddit, liquid, etc.
It's a bit of a learning curve obviously, but hey, nobody said you don't have to work for quality :)
I want to make small-ish mountains for my map but they keep looking like blobby cones with a dusting of ice on top. Is there any advice or guides on how to make realistic-ish mountains? My mountains are small and are mainly intended to be used as aesthetic pathing blockers for air units. To get an idea for how big they are, look at mountains in Civ 5:
I want to make my mountains like that but taller
@Stormahawk: Go
My general advice would be to use one of the noisier brushes (last 2) to build up a rough cone, getting steeper towards the center and shallower towards the edges, then paint snow or grass or whatever you want on the flatter parts of it and rock on the steeper parts. From my experimentation, this generally works out quite well.
@Stormahawk: Go
If you want your mountains the size of the Civilization 5 mountains in terms of scale, you're not going to be able to make them look good. The SC2 terrain editor isn't made for terrain editing on such a small scale. Even if you use the smallest variant of the height and texture brushes to be really precise you're still going to end up with a small blob with ice on top. Normally I'd suggest using the height brush followed by plateau and then playing with the smooth, lower and raise tools, and I think that is probably still your best bet now.
To get more jagged-looking mountains I use a hard round brush, rather than a soft one. Just keep moving your cursor around and peaks will develop where it overlaps.
It might take a bit of practice to get decent results, but once you figure it out it's pretty quick.
Though... I'm not sure how well it would work on that scale. As terrain gets smaller it gets harder to make it look good, due to the size of the terrain grid.
I made a whole map and then realized you wanted small mountains. :D
Basically the same thing the other guys said but here's what i came up with. You can probably go smaller you just have to detail it more. Try a combo of sharpening up the top and then hitting it once with the smooth tool. Eventually you'll get a good point.
Edit: I'll just add pics of the big ones too.
I did some ugly mountains awhile back
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Thank you for all the advice. After reading it, I made an attempt:
However, I still think it has room to improve. My constraint is that I can't make the mountain wider or it will mess up pathing for spawns and other units, but I have more room in other areas.
@Stormahawk: Go
that looks pretty good! P.
Marie T. Freeman If you're too busy to give your neighbor a helping hand, then you're just too darned busy. https://www.facebook.com/wargirlmaps.maps
Spread the love join DISCORD
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Thanks! Here is the editor view of the mountain-lump:
I think one issue is that if you stretch the terrain, the textures will stretch too. Is there a way to disable that or is it hardcoded in?
edit: I have to make my mountains tall enough to convincingly be a visual air-pathing blocker as well.
@Stormahawk: Go
Don't think there is a way to change it but you can try and find a really detailed texture by looking at some of the HoTS ones. I believe a couple are high resolution than some of the WoL ones. Then again that takes up one of those precious 8 slots in your terrain.
Mountain looks really nice though.
@GhostNova91: Go
Thank you! Here is another one I improved after reading the advice in this thread (editor view):
I realized I don't really know what a volcano looks like. One thing I found helpful for mountains was taking the Haven tree doodad and shrinking it down so they look a bit more proportional on the mountains (no giant trees).
I would like to see Weekly Terraining Exercise in the future featuring small mountain ranges. They seem quite challenging to make. The screenshots are from a map called Empires of the Stormy Seas and you can find it on battle.net (NA) if you want to take a closer look at the mountains/terrain. I very very badly need advice!
You can actually improve the resolution of textures in the editor. Check the FAQ for more information. Also, there has been a WTE about mountain ranges, I think; check the general WTE thread.
I'd provide you with the links normally but I'm in a bit of a rush, sorry about that.
I'd personally recommend making them lower. They just look completely unnatural at that height.
I agree about them being lower but I placed air-pathing blockers and it wouldn't make much sense if the air unit flying higher than the mountain can't pass over.
@Stormahawk: Go
You could balance it out by reducing the flying height of your air units as well as decrease the height of the mountains. I believe you should be able to find a fitting height that looks natural, yet leaves air easily distinguishable to ground units.
@Stormahawk: Go
If I can add my 2 cent, what makes the mountain looks weird is not (only) their heigh but the doodads on it. The trees are extremly huge in scale if you compare them to the mountain... I think I would place trees with x,y beeing like 40% and Z beeing 10%, so it would be a flat large tree. Also, maybe do the "texuvset" in the console to make texture smaller and a bit more detailled so you could polish even more the edges.
Working on projects:
I didn't know about the texuvset in console. Thanks! I will try this out.
Woosh. Suddenly a forum skeleton posting out of boredom (anyone still know me? :P)
Something a bit more professional of an idea (it's basically a slightly crazy version of how it works for CE3/UE4):
...Tada, you just got dead-sexy terrain that's pretty unique in terms of SC2 and you got a nice civ-like map with unique and pretty promo shots you can spread on reddit, liquid, etc.
It's a bit of a learning curve obviously, but hey, nobody said you don't have to work for quality :)
omigosh its gorandor, hiiiiiiiiii gorandor!