I'm looking for more videos/tutorials/wiki links. Suggestions. Ideas for structure of page. Criticism and feedback is appreciated and wanted. Right now it just has a few links and my inspirational message. Please offer advice on the page or here in this thread.
If there's a topic you'd like covered, I'd be happy to contribute. Maybe I'll write up a "things I've learned about terraining" bit, if I can gather my thoughts on what I learned from Team Antioch?
Ok, I'll write something up. It's not going to be a tutorial, since I'm not pro enough to write authoritatively, but a collection of lessons people like Wargirl, Alevice, and SCBroodSC2 have taught me.
Cacho56 that tutorial makes my eyes bleed and is way to advance for your average person coming here!! I'm thinking our demographic (for the CCI) are PC-illiterate folks who just want to unzip, drop into the folders, open editor and hit play!!
I will put it in the "How to " section, but it will have the label "Super Advanced"
:)
When do we get to play your campaign?? Outsider's coop campaign was so much fun to play with my brother. I can't wait to play another one...especially with all the hype of the Coop on battlenet its time!!
It's not that hard to implement. It's long because I explain how it works.
Anyone can download the example pack attached in the tutorial and change the map names in the .bat file in order to make it work for his own campaign.
My campaign project is frozen atm. I have a couple of projects that I want to finish with the editor before going back to it, since I need to get some extra experience before reworking the mod and figuring out how to make a competent AI.
Yeah, bb code may be annoying for a lot of things, but it does that right (as long as you can remember it. I can't, so I have to look it up every time^^)
Here's my bit about terraining. I can't make pages on CCI, but if you mod me, it can be moved easily.
Lessons From my Betters
I would not describe myself as a great terrainer. However, through the process of working on The Antioch Chronicles, I’ve gotten to watch some really great terrainers at work, like Alevice, SCBroodSC2, and Wargirl. Watching them work has taught me a ton about what makes good terrain, as well as some basic techniques. I’m going to talk through some basic ideas first, and then show some examples from my work and the work of other people on Team Antioch.
Know Your Tools
The amount of stuff in the editor is completely daunting, and it’s a real pain to go digging through the assets when you’re looking for something. Luckily, SCBroodSC2 has done an amazing amount of work to build a library of doodads. You can download them from the assets page, or you can visit http://www.screference.op74.net/ for a web version with live search by name. I use this reference constantly when I’m building terrain.
It’s important to know the editor, as well. There are a ton of keyboard commands, way more than I could ever list here. As a small suggestion, open up the configure controls menu and find the following:
Selection Move (Click): will jump the doodad you have selected to the position of your mouse.
Selection Height (Up and Down): Moves the doodad up and down.
Selection Pitch (Drag): Change the doodad’s pitch.
Selection Roll (Drag): Change the doodad’s pitch.
Selection Rotate (Click): Make the doodad face your pointer.
Always Tell a Story
The most important thing to do when making map terrain is know what story you’re telling. The story is what you’ll use to guide all the decisions you make, so you need to get it set in your mind. This is important on a macro scale, across the entire map, but also for individual sections of your map, which leads us to…
Maps Are Made of Many Small Stories
In most cases when you work on your map, you’ll be building a complete story out of many smaller areas. This is an important thing to keep in mind, because it can get really daunting to try to build an entire map at once. If you instead build from a scaffolding of concepts, you’ll both build a better product and have an easier time doing so.
More Doodads is (Usually) Better
This is a hard balance to strike, but if you don’t place enough doodads, they tend to look out of place because they stick out so much. When you add more doodads, you can paint a more cohesive picture. This tends to be true for quite a while, as it’s hard to overstate the effect that detail work has on a player. It really takes quite a lot of doodads before the viewer will be oversaturated. One caveat, however, is that you can overtax a video card, especially if you have a lot of animated doodads.
Manipulate Doodads
The editor gives you some pretty great tools for working with doodads without having to open the data editor. To get access to them, just select a doodad and hit enter. Here’s a quick breakdown:
Height: Change the Z position of the doodad. Raising doodads up is often useful, but so is lowering them, since it lets you hide sections underground.
Rotation: Spin the doodad around its vertical axis.
Pitch: Tilt the doodad forward and back.
Roll: Tilt the doodad side to side.
Scale: Make your doodad bigger or smaller. It’s important to note that you can do this asymmetrically, which lets you deform doodads, which can be very useful.
Custom Color: Otherwise known as tinting, this lets you apply a color to the doodad. Changing the HDR Multiplier makes the color more intense.
Combine Doodads
Sometimes Blizzard just doesn’t have a doodad you need. In that case, you can often combine multiple doodads together to achieve your desired effect. It’s generally a good idea to think about the components of the thing you want and then finding doodads to make each of those. And remember that you can manipulate the appearance of your doodads.
Roll Your Own Doodads
You’re not limited to just the doodads that Blizzard gives you. In fact, every model in the game can be made into a doodad, which has a lot of possibilities. To make a new doodad, I recommend copying a simple one and changing the art. Here’s my process in video, with written guide below:
Open up the data editor and go to the actor tab.
Search “force field wall” (this is my favorite, but you can start from whatever you want).
Duplicate the actor by right clicking and selecting duplicate. Only duplicate the actor, not the model attached to it.
Modify the actor and rename it to whatever you want (in this case “Stationary Marine”)
Go to the art tab, hit choose under model, and select your desired model.
Go to the events tab and remove the create sound emitter event.
You can also change the animation if you want. Usually “Stand” is fine, but some models you’ll need to use others (like “Turbo” for scout missiles). You can find the names of animations in the cutscene editor.
Examples
I’m going to post just a couple examples here that illustrate some of the principals I’ve discussed. Like I said at the beginning, I won’t claim to be an expert, but I hope they’re helpful.
Protoss Table (Manipulating and Combining)
This is just a small example. I needed something for a bunch of heroes to stand around. This table is made from a deformed Starship Container elevated off the ground and four very small Starship Protoss Wallposts (hallfway underground). Then I dropped a Ship Displays doodad on top.
Vespene Leak (Telling a Story, Manipulating, Roll Your Own)
Here’s a bigger example. This Nexus is under attack, and badly damaged. There are tons of different little scenes that illustrate this, but I’m going to focus here. This is a small story to show about leaking vespene. I’ve hidden terrain cells and edged them with Xel'naga Plating so that we can look beneath the floor, where there’s a super-sized Starship Wing Piece, some tinted Pipes Ground Big, and some homemade Probe doodads floating below. To top it all off, I've tinted some fog clouds green to represent the gas itself.
On another note, this section comes from a map created by SCBroodSC2, I only did this bit of detail and a few others. If you want to see a master at work, watch this video he recorded of his process, it's simple incredible.
This is great! Very nice summary. If I was ask to add commentary on this, like my opinion and stuff.... I'd say... do not over-try doing something and leave room for imperfections. Nothing is perfect. Take your time doing the best you can and just keep going and polishing overtime. If you try to do everything at once, like Lucid said, you will simply discourage yourself and rush the terrain. It takes time to do something like this. For example, the video Lucid posted are in x10 speed, so every 6 secs, its one minute that passed. I spent the whole day on that terrain, it was awesome, I was inspired, but it was not finished. At that time, I handed the terrain to Wargirl which continued the terrain even more and hand after hand, the terrain became even better and better.
When I say, leave room for imperfections, it's more like leave room for originality. When doing a terrain that is created by many people, you have to accept what the others did and continue from that instead of modifying, moving away or even removing what they did. I tends to give myself small challenge when something added doesn't feel correct to me; I'll build around it in such a way that it will now feels right.
The ground texture is big part of the overall quality of the terrain. This and the cliffs are like the container of all the doodads and stories. If your map only uses one texture, it will be boring, even with a massive amount of doodads. Doing texture play like I did in the videos above is the kind of stuff that takes alot of time to do but is very effective. When you cannot easily count how many textures were used, it means your job was well done. Using all the tools to merge, polish, add, remove, ... the texture is a must.
Sometimes when you want to create a terrain, it's because you are extremely inspired by something else, such as a picture. I'll give you a tip here; you will never be able to create the picture you are looking at in the editor. Although, it can be similar. Use pictures to inspire yourself and give you ideas, but not as a "I must recreat this exacly because it's so cool" you will not be able to. A good example that Lucid could have shared but I'll as an addition, it's another timelapse of me recreating a protoss structure based on a picture. It was quite hard, but it was really fun to make and the result is just incredible...from the inside.
Omg!!! This is so awesome Lucid and ScBrood!! I'll PM Terhnonator to get you all on the list so you can help out a little more!! If you got the time that is...I mean you have already done so much.
Also, everyone please check out the Current version of the CCI!! I need some more feedback on layout and spellcheck and if things are making sense.
This is really cool. I would totally be willing to give my help wherever I can. I'm the kind of person that will do very detailled feedback, suggestions, ideas, feelings, etc. and go through different perspective to see from someone else eye. I carry with me alot of knowledge about terraining and always wished to share it. So feel free to ask if you need help for something; "how to do good texturing" "how to use 16 textures" "how to find original ideas" "how to..." you know that kind of stuff.
I've been kicking around for the last 3 years. I was trying to make a campaign called Abandonment, but I just never had the time after work, school and family commitments to really make something worthwhile. In the end, I still loved playing campaigns and sorta decided well if I can't make one, then at least I can support and promote the CCI and those who do make campaigns! Onward!
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Hey folks,
Things have slightly calmed down for me this week. Yay!
I am trying to update the CCI page and I started making a [theme music]
How to make your own Custom Campaign: Advice, Tutorials, Walkthroughs and Videos on how to make your own Custom Campaigns
Please check out at:
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/custom-campaign-initiative/pages/how-to-create-your-own-custom-campaign/
Super long title.
It appears on the front page of the CCI too
I'm looking for more videos/tutorials/wiki links. Suggestions. Ideas for structure of page. Criticism and feedback is appreciated and wanted. Right now it just has a few links and my inspirational message. Please offer advice on the page or here in this thread.
Thanks!!
Our first newsletter has some useful tidbits, for sure: http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/team-antiochs-new-project/pages/chaotic-thoughts-1-we-might-require-more-vespene-gas/ . Definitely don't miss SCBroodSC2's timelapse video in the comments! At some point, we're going to release a newsletter about our version control system, as well. Finally, we covered a fair amount of stuff in our interview with Jay: .
If there's a topic you'd like covered, I'd be happy to contribute. Maybe I'll write up a "things I've learned about terraining" bit, if I can gather my thoughts on what I learned from Team Antioch?
Awesome the interview stuff is great to have!!
Terraining Tutorial is always great especially a more modern one
Ok, I'll write something up. It's not going to be a tutorial, since I'm not pro enough to write authoritatively, but a collection of lessons people like Wargirl, Alevice, and SCBroodSC2 have taught me.
We are in need of a dedicated "Installing Custom Campaigns on a Mac" Tutorial. Video is great, but can do pics and text as well!!
I've just finished updating my campaign installer tutorial if you want to add it to your list. It's just for windows though.
Check out my kitbashes! Custom Campaign Initiative: Lots of great Custom Campaigns!! Check out and Support!!
@Hockleberry: Go
Oh, this I can take care of, too. I'll try to make some time this weekend.
Cacho56 that tutorial makes my eyes bleed and is way to advance for your average person coming here!! I'm thinking our demographic (for the CCI) are PC-illiterate folks who just want to unzip, drop into the folders, open editor and hit play!!
I will put it in the "How to " section, but it will have the label "Super Advanced"
:)
When do we get to play your campaign?? Outsider's coop campaign was so much fun to play with my brother. I can't wait to play another one...especially with all the hype of the Coop on battlenet its time!!
@Hockleberry: Go
It's not that hard to implement. It's long because I explain how it works.
Anyone can download the example pack attached in the tutorial and change the map names in the .bat file in order to make it work for his own campaign.
My campaign project is frozen atm. I have a couple of projects that I want to finish with the editor before going back to it, since I need to get some extra experience before reworking the mod and figuring out how to make a competent AI.
Check out my kitbashes! Custom Campaign Initiative: Lots of great Custom Campaigns!! Check out and Support!!
I posted in the comment thread, but here's the Mac walkthrough:
Here is an idea
How to add custom music now that mp3 no longer works.
Import to map, create sound, create triggers to play the music etc.
My projects : The Hammer of Dawn, Noir : Automata, Noir : Evolution, Noir : Ascension, Hammer of Dawn Revamp
Many awesome projects : Custom Campaign Initiative
Something for the community : A Small Letter of Thanks, SC2mapster Classic Skin - Alevice
@EDHRIANO: Go
We need a video tutorial or could write-up with images. It's for newbies!
@LucidIguana: Go
How do you embed youtube videos in bbcode??
<<youtube _gXDy4M4Jc8>>
the random characters are part of the URL. e.g.
@OutsiderXE: Go
Wow!! That is amazing!
Yeah, bb code may be annoying for a lot of things, but it does that right (as long as you can remember it. I can't, so I have to look it up every time^^)
Here's my bit about terraining. I can't make pages on CCI, but if you mod me, it can be moved easily.
Lessons From my Betters
I would not describe myself as a great terrainer. However, through the process of working on The Antioch Chronicles, I’ve gotten to watch some really great terrainers at work, like Alevice, SCBroodSC2, and Wargirl. Watching them work has taught me a ton about what makes good terrain, as well as some basic techniques. I’m going to talk through some basic ideas first, and then show some examples from my work and the work of other people on Team Antioch.
Know Your Tools
The amount of stuff in the editor is completely daunting, and it’s a real pain to go digging through the assets when you’re looking for something. Luckily, SCBroodSC2 has done an amazing amount of work to build a library of doodads. You can download them from the assets page, or you can visit http://www.screference.op74.net/ for a web version with live search by name. I use this reference constantly when I’m building terrain.
It’s important to know the editor, as well. There are a ton of keyboard commands, way more than I could ever list here. As a small suggestion, open up the configure controls menu and find the following:
Always Tell a Story
The most important thing to do when making map terrain is know what story you’re telling. The story is what you’ll use to guide all the decisions you make, so you need to get it set in your mind. This is important on a macro scale, across the entire map, but also for individual sections of your map, which leads us to…
Maps Are Made of Many Small Stories
In most cases when you work on your map, you’ll be building a complete story out of many smaller areas. This is an important thing to keep in mind, because it can get really daunting to try to build an entire map at once. If you instead build from a scaffolding of concepts, you’ll both build a better product and have an easier time doing so.
More Doodads is (Usually) Better
This is a hard balance to strike, but if you don’t place enough doodads, they tend to look out of place because they stick out so much. When you add more doodads, you can paint a more cohesive picture. This tends to be true for quite a while, as it’s hard to overstate the effect that detail work has on a player. It really takes quite a lot of doodads before the viewer will be oversaturated. One caveat, however, is that you can overtax a video card, especially if you have a lot of animated doodads.
Manipulate Doodads
The editor gives you some pretty great tools for working with doodads without having to open the data editor. To get access to them, just select a doodad and hit enter. Here’s a quick breakdown:
Combine Doodads
Sometimes Blizzard just doesn’t have a doodad you need. In that case, you can often combine multiple doodads together to achieve your desired effect. It’s generally a good idea to think about the components of the thing you want and then finding doodads to make each of those. And remember that you can manipulate the appearance of your doodads.
Roll Your Own Doodads
You’re not limited to just the doodads that Blizzard gives you. In fact, every model in the game can be made into a doodad, which has a lot of possibilities. To make a new doodad, I recommend copying a simple one and changing the art. Here’s my process in video, with written guide below:
Examples
I’m going to post just a couple examples here that illustrate some of the principals I’ve discussed. Like I said at the beginning, I won’t claim to be an expert, but I hope they’re helpful.
Protoss Table (Manipulating and Combining)
This is just a small example. I needed something for a bunch of heroes to stand around. This table is made from a deformed Starship Container elevated off the ground and four very small Starship Protoss Wallposts (hallfway underground). Then I dropped a Ship Displays doodad on top.
Vespene Leak (Telling a Story, Manipulating, Roll Your Own)
Here’s a bigger example. This Nexus is under attack, and badly damaged. There are tons of different little scenes that illustrate this, but I’m going to focus here. This is a small story to show about leaking vespene. I’ve hidden terrain cells and edged them with Xel'naga Plating so that we can look beneath the floor, where there’s a super-sized Starship Wing Piece, some tinted Pipes Ground Big, and some homemade Probe doodads floating below. To top it all off, I've tinted some fog clouds green to represent the gas itself.
On another note, this section comes from a map created by SCBroodSC2, I only did this bit of detail and a few others. If you want to see a master at work, watch this video he recorded of his process, it's simple incredible.
@LucidIguana: Go
This is great! Very nice summary. If I was ask to add commentary on this, like my opinion and stuff.... I'd say... do not over-try doing something and leave room for imperfections. Nothing is perfect. Take your time doing the best you can and just keep going and polishing overtime. If you try to do everything at once, like Lucid said, you will simply discourage yourself and rush the terrain. It takes time to do something like this. For example, the video Lucid posted are in x10 speed, so every 6 secs, its one minute that passed. I spent the whole day on that terrain, it was awesome, I was inspired, but it was not finished. At that time, I handed the terrain to Wargirl which continued the terrain even more and hand after hand, the terrain became even better and better.
When I say, leave room for imperfections, it's more like leave room for originality. When doing a terrain that is created by many people, you have to accept what the others did and continue from that instead of modifying, moving away or even removing what they did. I tends to give myself small challenge when something added doesn't feel correct to me; I'll build around it in such a way that it will now feels right.
The ground texture is big part of the overall quality of the terrain. This and the cliffs are like the container of all the doodads and stories. If your map only uses one texture, it will be boring, even with a massive amount of doodads. Doing texture play like I did in the videos above is the kind of stuff that takes alot of time to do but is very effective. When you cannot easily count how many textures were used, it means your job was well done. Using all the tools to merge, polish, add, remove, ... the texture is a must.
Sometimes when you want to create a terrain, it's because you are extremely inspired by something else, such as a picture. I'll give you a tip here; you will never be able to create the picture you are looking at in the editor. Although, it can be similar. Use pictures to inspire yourself and give you ideas, but not as a "I must recreat this exacly because it's so cool" you will not be able to. A good example that Lucid could have shared but I'll as an addition, it's another timelapse of me recreating a protoss structure based on a picture. It was quite hard, but it was really fun to make and the result is just incredible...from the inside.
If anyone wants more tips or ideas just PM. ;)
Working on projects:
Omg!!! This is so awesome Lucid and ScBrood!! I'll PM Terhnonator to get you all on the list so you can help out a little more!! If you got the time that is...I mean you have already done so much.
Also, everyone please check out the Current version of the CCI!! I need some more feedback on layout and spellcheck and if things are making sense.
@Hockleberry: Go
This is really cool. I would totally be willing to give my help wherever I can. I'm the kind of person that will do very detailled feedback, suggestions, ideas, feelings, etc. and go through different perspective to see from someone else eye. I carry with me alot of knowledge about terraining and always wished to share it. So feel free to ask if you need help for something; "how to do good texturing" "how to use 16 textures" "how to find original ideas" "how to..." you know that kind of stuff.
As an example of how detailled I can go when looking at a terrain, take a look at this post about Wargirl's epic terrain. http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/development/terrain/116667-weekly-terraining-exercise-242-combat-training/?page=2#p21
See ya soon.
Just wondering Hockleberry, I don't recall your name at all, where are you most active on mapster?
Working on projects:
@Scbroodsc2: Go
I've been kicking around for the last 3 years. I was trying to make a campaign called Abandonment, but I just never had the time after work, school and family commitments to really make something worthwhile. In the end, I still loved playing campaigns and sorta decided well if I can't make one, then at least I can support and promote the CCI and those who do make campaigns! Onward!