Hey guys, I'm back with another great tutorial for you! This time I'll be covering how to create a map template doodad. Basically, this is a plane with a custom texture applied to it that's the size of your map bounds. The texture is an outline of your map's cliffs, which you can then use as tracing paper when blocking out your terrain. Sounds a bit simple doesn't it? Why would you want to use this?
This technique makes it easy for you to create complex symmetrical designs that you can scale to fit whichever map size you want. Want a circular layout for your terrain? No problem. Want a perfectly symmetrical melee map? No problem. Want to get crazy and have repeated elements that use rotational symmetry, like a pentagram? Absolutely no problem. All the guesswork of blocking out complex designs by eyeballing it and all the wasted hours of calculating placement on the grid is now gone, and you're free to create your terrain in a much faster, more natural way.
Here's a youtube video to explain the process to you:
I've also got an archive for you all with some example files. If you're lazy, you can essentially start with these every time, but it will still require a bit of tweaking to use with your designs.
To get the most out of this technique, you can also take screenshots while viewing the entire map to iterate on your template design. In one of my example below, this is exactly what I did, starting off with the largest and most important elements and working my way down to all the small repeated details around the map. You can also go as far as to create footprint and weapon range sized objects for placement within Illustrator, allowing you to test out building placement and choke point effectiveness during your design process.
Going even farther than that; given that Illustrator images are vector based, you can even print out your concept designs at whatever size you want for review by a team. For an extreme example: an esports team discussing strategy for a melee map could print out a poster sized version or an overhead transparency with which they could draw directly on using dry erase markers, illustrating strategies to each other without having to fire up the game and have everyone crowd around a screen. Much like in football, a coach could draw lines and symbols to convey strategies and plans. The uses here are really far reaching, and it''s only really limited by your imagination and time investment.
If you use this technique, I would greatly appreciate it if you credited me, especially if you try for that extreme example I gave you! I hope it helps to speed up your terraining process like it did for me, and I'd love to see your creative uses of the technique, so please post screenshots/video of your work here! Thanks for reading/watching, and good luck / have fun with your map making!
PS: Here's some example work I've done with this technique.
Not really. I usually knock out a sketch of a map in about 15 minutes while I'm bored in class. I cover most of the process of converting it in about 10 minutes there in the video, and as for doing all the lines, it really depends how detailed your map is in terms of cliffs. It usually takes me 15-20 minutes to outline a whole half of a map, after which I can just copy paste and rotate it.
Now if you take the work I did on Homunculus for example; that was designed from the get-go to be extremely complex. The first draft of the design took about.... 10 minutes tops. Subsequent iterations took considerably more time, but really it was just more lines, playing with the width tool, converting strokes to outlines, selecting all my shapes, and combining them with the shape builder tool. That prolly took me 30-45mins per iteration, but, once I had one section done, I could copy and paste it around the rest of the design quite easily. What took the longest, actually, was then going back and adding in all the trees around the map. It was a lot faster and more accurate than if I had tried to guesstimate it, but really, think about that. Sure I spent like 2-3 hours adding in the trees around the whole 256x256 map. But how long would that have taken me by eyeballing it? Probably ten times as long at the least.
For melee maps, I've had a design knocked out and ready for initial testing in under 3 hours. From there it's usually all detail work and the game play is mostly nailed down already. That didn't used to be the case when designing a map like that from scratch. Usually I'd have to tweak the size of the different locations around the map to all be roughly equal and that would take hours of work. Not so much the case anymore.
Hey guys, I'm back with another great tutorial for you! This time I'll be covering how to create a map template doodad. Basically, this is a plane with a custom texture applied to it that's the size of your map bounds. The texture is an outline of your map's cliffs, which you can then use as tracing paper when blocking out your terrain. Sounds a bit simple doesn't it? Why would you want to use this?
This technique makes it easy for you to create complex symmetrical designs that you can scale to fit whichever map size you want. Want a circular layout for your terrain? No problem. Want a perfectly symmetrical melee map? No problem. Want to get crazy and have repeated elements that use rotational symmetry, like a pentagram? Absolutely no problem. All the guesswork of blocking out complex designs by eyeballing it and all the wasted hours of calculating placement on the grid is now gone, and you're free to create your terrain in a much faster, more natural way.
Here's a youtube video to explain the process to you:
I've also got an archive for you all with some example files. If you're lazy, you can essentially start with these every time, but it will still require a bit of tweaking to use with your designs.
http://www.miritica.net/docs/SC2-Map-Template.rar
To get the most out of this technique, you can also take screenshots while viewing the entire map to iterate on your template design. In one of my example below, this is exactly what I did, starting off with the largest and most important elements and working my way down to all the small repeated details around the map. You can also go as far as to create footprint and weapon range sized objects for placement within Illustrator, allowing you to test out building placement and choke point effectiveness during your design process.
Going even farther than that; given that Illustrator images are vector based, you can even print out your concept designs at whatever size you want for review by a team. For an extreme example: an esports team discussing strategy for a melee map could print out a poster sized version or an overhead transparency with which they could draw directly on using dry erase markers, illustrating strategies to each other without having to fire up the game and have everyone crowd around a screen. Much like in football, a coach could draw lines and symbols to convey strategies and plans. The uses here are really far reaching, and it''s only really limited by your imagination and time investment.
If you use this technique, I would greatly appreciate it if you credited me, especially if you try for that extreme example I gave you! I hope it helps to speed up your terraining process like it did for me, and I'd love to see your creative uses of the technique, so please post screenshots/video of your work here! Thanks for reading/watching, and good luck / have fun with your map making!
PS: Here's some example work I've done with this technique.
Some screencasts of the technique in use:
http://www.twitch.tv/ansrath/b/299355762 http://www.twitch.tv/ansrath/b/299362871
Gnomon 01 - Working Title - (1v1 Melee Map):
Close Quarters (WIP 1v1 Melee Map):
Homonculus (WIP Custom Map):
Looks realy pollished map making, but I guess it takes quite a while to draw everything from the template.
Not really. I usually knock out a sketch of a map in about 15 minutes while I'm bored in class. I cover most of the process of converting it in about 10 minutes there in the video, and as for doing all the lines, it really depends how detailed your map is in terms of cliffs. It usually takes me 15-20 minutes to outline a whole half of a map, after which I can just copy paste and rotate it.
Now if you take the work I did on Homunculus for example; that was designed from the get-go to be extremely complex. The first draft of the design took about.... 10 minutes tops. Subsequent iterations took considerably more time, but really it was just more lines, playing with the width tool, converting strokes to outlines, selecting all my shapes, and combining them with the shape builder tool. That prolly took me 30-45mins per iteration, but, once I had one section done, I could copy and paste it around the rest of the design quite easily. What took the longest, actually, was then going back and adding in all the trees around the map. It was a lot faster and more accurate than if I had tried to guesstimate it, but really, think about that. Sure I spent like 2-3 hours adding in the trees around the whole 256x256 map. But how long would that have taken me by eyeballing it? Probably ten times as long at the least.
For melee maps, I've had a design knocked out and ready for initial testing in under 3 hours. From there it's usually all detail work and the game play is mostly nailed down already. That didn't used to be the case when designing a map like that from scratch. Usually I'd have to tweak the size of the different locations around the map to all be roughly equal and that would take hours of work. Not so much the case anymore.
That is disgustingly sick(awesome!) The star/homunculus maps are awesome...