For this week's WTE, we've got a stupidly simple theme: "Grasslands". Though it is practically what you start off with when creating any new map (in the right tileset), I realized we've never done a terrain like this before. The objective of the WTE is to create some kind of simple 'Grasslands' area. Whether this be rolling hills or a field on the edge of a forest is up to you, as long as there's grass.
Hmm, maybe ill do like an abandoned shack in the midst or something.
Com' on. You think it's boring? Find a way to make your Grassland EPIC. Be original. Think, try, explore ways you've never done before. WTE is not only about creating a terrain, it's about discovering new ways of doing things. ;)
Sidenote, I did not even see WTE172 pass! Like.. just, skipped a week totally in my mind.
Quite impressive ;) The only think is I find it hard to see the walls of the cave as walls. You used the global lighting which makes the lighting affect all doodads pretty much. When you look at the sunrays in diagonal going to the floor, you wonder why the plants on the top right has such lighting... I feel like the door's light is perfect, but the interior light should be a bit darker... And I feel like those old rocks statue in bot right should not reflect that much light... What do you think?
yea I agree with the bottom right statue reflecting too much light, and I guess if I flared the camera angle up a tad and added a bit of a ceiling then it would be more convincing it was a cave, so i guess it is more of a crevice in between some rocks than an actual cave.
Edit: To make it look more like a cave, i made the doodads of the cave a bit darker, and put some large rocks over it so odd bits of light would not sneak in. Thanks for the tips :)
Here is the file if anyone wants to take a look, or fool around with the lighting, maybe even add to or expand on the idea.
Sorry, no high detail doodading or edgy lighting here. Just some test terrain for an unfinished melee map in my campaign. I'm still figuring out brushwork and I need to replace most of the rock models in the game before I add any of those, so it's pretty minimalistic right now.
I may not have a final rendition available by the end of this WTE, but I will eventually post some more terrain anyways, since I'm looking for feedback on how to improve.
I located all of the doodads in tera, so it's just a matter of converting them over, now. :3
/edit
Alright, got in some test rocks, just started figuring out what to do with 'em.
Here are some more intermediates. Not sure this rock textures fits this particular terrain well, since it's a different color than the cliffs. But complications with texture swapping means I won't be bothering importing new types until I have their physics volumes and such sorted out, to reduce workload in having to go back and redo stuff later on.
The map is quite large, so a detail pass on the whole thing will be a fair length of time, especially as I will probably be moving soon.
I'm loving this Iskatu, you're a terrainer to my heart - everything's by the book. Amazing use of focal points in the terrain - it's melee viable but still nice on the eye. I especially love that third screenshot, I quite like how you've handled the cliffs with the rocks there. I only have two possible points of improvements:
A) The foliage. I've never liked it used in its standard settings. Blizzard does it too in their maps, but it feels too... non-natural or non-random to me. There's a certain pattern to it I seem to unconsciously pick up on and makes the whole thing feel crowded and chaotic to me, yet still in a way that you wouldn't encounter in real nature. I'd suggest removing all the foliage painting and then painting smaller areas of foliage on some spots along the grass and next to cliffs. You'd need to do this by feeling, but you'd be able to manually spread it out rather than having a million plans randomly plastered over the map.
B) This is really kind of an offside point, especially for a melee map, but something I feel like I'm missing is an 'attention grabber'. If you look around at some of the better terrains out there (on Blizzard maps, but also on the more popular maps and well done melee maps), most of them have one or two bigger things in an area that stand out. A big abandoned building, or a big rock arch, or some kind of fiery volcano - you name it. Your map, though masterfully made, is generally still just 'rocks and jungle'. The high trees are the only doodads that kind of break the repetitiveness, and I don't think they do enough. That said, I should note that you have to be careful in how you approach something like this - especially melee maps need plays to be able to easily focus on their army instead of the terrain, so the eye-catchers need to be very very subtle. They need to be there where you're actively looking at the terrain so you don't miss anything, but they must not take over the vision of players who are trying to play melee.
Glad you like it. I'm a terrain chobo and still very young into the editor in general, so it's good to see it's not all for nothing. I prefer a more by-the-book approach until I get more accustomed to terraining and what's possible with the doodads, before I attempt something very exotic (I'm planning entirely custom tilesets, but I need to know what I want out of them first before I try it).
A.) I agree, the foliage is something that is a bit offputting and I wasn't really sure why. I think you put words to the thoughts I had fairly clearly. Once I get a more stable idea of where the "game area" will be so to say, I will start handing painting out the foliage. This is particular a problem with these maps now because I raised the UV density for the textures and it seems to also increase foliage density. Nice for some spots, but not for everything.
B.) I'm hoping I can find some "complex" doodads that will fill this gap in my search for new models. But generally I get what you are talking about and I have a few ideas I can bring these sort of details into the maps. In particular, I'm hoping I can create some custom waterfalls with distortion effects and such that look more realistic than the stock ones. I think the way the water blends with the rocks in 3-4 is also great for this kind of thing.
Hope to have some more screenshots in the future.
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Weekly Terraining Exercise #173
Hello again folks!
For this week's WTE, we've got a stupidly simple theme: "Grasslands". Though it is practically what you start off with when creating any new map (in the right tileset), I realized we've never done a terrain like this before. The objective of the WTE is to create some kind of simple 'Grasslands' area. Whether this be rolling hills or a field on the edge of a forest is up to you, as long as there's grass.
Good luck, and have fun!
Everyone: have fun! The Global Information/Idea thread for Terraining Exercises can be found here: http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/development/terrain/14658-terraining-exercises-global-information-idea-thread/
yawn boring
Hmm, maybe ill do like an abandoned shack in the midst or something.
Com' on. You think it's boring? Find a way to make your Grassland EPIC. Be original. Think, try, explore ways you've never done before. WTE is not only about creating a terrain, it's about discovering new ways of doing things. ;)
Sidenote, I did not even see WTE172 pass! Like.. just, skipped a week totally in my mind.
Working on projects:
Within the grassy hills of Bel' Shir, I am sure a cave such as this one exists. It was nice to make a calm and picturesque terrain.
I tried to capture the effect of the eyes still adjusting to the light after being in the small cave or temple for a long time.
@joecab: Go
Quite impressive ;) The only think is I find it hard to see the walls of the cave as walls. You used the global lighting which makes the lighting affect all doodads pretty much. When you look at the sunrays in diagonal going to the floor, you wonder why the plants on the top right has such lighting... I feel like the door's light is perfect, but the interior light should be a bit darker... And I feel like those old rocks statue in bot right should not reflect that much light... What do you think?
Working on projects:
@Scbroodsc2: Go
yea I agree with the bottom right statue reflecting too much light, and I guess if I flared the camera angle up a tad and added a bit of a ceiling then it would be more convincing it was a cave, so i guess it is more of a crevice in between some rocks than an actual cave.
Edit: To make it look more like a cave, i made the doodads of the cave a bit darker, and put some large rocks over it so odd bits of light would not sneak in. Thanks for the tips :)
Here is the file if anyone wants to take a look, or fool around with the lighting, maybe even add to or expand on the idea.
Sorry, no high detail doodading or edgy lighting here. Just some test terrain for an unfinished melee map in my campaign. I'm still figuring out brushwork and I need to replace most of the rock models in the game before I add any of those, so it's pretty minimalistic right now.
All trees and no rocks makes Moz a sad boy.
Waiting for the final rendition :D
I may not have a final rendition available by the end of this WTE, but I will eventually post some more terrain anyways, since I'm looking for feedback on how to improve.
I located all of the doodads in tera, so it's just a matter of converting them over, now. :3
/edit
Alright, got in some test rocks, just started figuring out what to do with 'em.
@IskatuMesk: Go
I feel like moving there, come give us the final rendition P.
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Here are some more intermediates. Not sure this rock textures fits this particular terrain well, since it's a different color than the cliffs. But complications with texture swapping means I won't be bothering importing new types until I have their physics volumes and such sorted out, to reduce workload in having to go back and redo stuff later on.
The map is quite large, so a detail pass on the whole thing will be a fair length of time, especially as I will probably be moving soon.
@IskatuMesk: Go
I'm loving this Iskatu, you're a terrainer to my heart - everything's by the book. Amazing use of focal points in the terrain - it's melee viable but still nice on the eye. I especially love that third screenshot, I quite like how you've handled the cliffs with the rocks there. I only have two possible points of improvements:
A) The foliage. I've never liked it used in its standard settings. Blizzard does it too in their maps, but it feels too... non-natural or non-random to me. There's a certain pattern to it I seem to unconsciously pick up on and makes the whole thing feel crowded and chaotic to me, yet still in a way that you wouldn't encounter in real nature. I'd suggest removing all the foliage painting and then painting smaller areas of foliage on some spots along the grass and next to cliffs. You'd need to do this by feeling, but you'd be able to manually spread it out rather than having a million plans randomly plastered over the map.
B) This is really kind of an offside point, especially for a melee map, but something I feel like I'm missing is an 'attention grabber'. If you look around at some of the better terrains out there (on Blizzard maps, but also on the more popular maps and well done melee maps), most of them have one or two bigger things in an area that stand out. A big abandoned building, or a big rock arch, or some kind of fiery volcano - you name it. Your map, though masterfully made, is generally still just 'rocks and jungle'. The high trees are the only doodads that kind of break the repetitiveness, and I don't think they do enough. That said, I should note that you have to be careful in how you approach something like this - especially melee maps need plays to be able to easily focus on their army instead of the terrain, so the eye-catchers need to be very very subtle. They need to be there where you're actively looking at the terrain so you don't miss anything, but they must not take over the vision of players who are trying to play melee.
Either way, great stuff so far!
@Mozared: Go
Glad you like it. I'm a terrain chobo and still very young into the editor in general, so it's good to see it's not all for nothing. I prefer a more by-the-book approach until I get more accustomed to terraining and what's possible with the doodads, before I attempt something very exotic (I'm planning entirely custom tilesets, but I need to know what I want out of them first before I try it).
A.) I agree, the foliage is something that is a bit offputting and I wasn't really sure why. I think you put words to the thoughts I had fairly clearly. Once I get a more stable idea of where the "game area" will be so to say, I will start handing painting out the foliage. This is particular a problem with these maps now because I raised the UV density for the textures and it seems to also increase foliage density. Nice for some spots, but not for everything.
B.) I'm hoping I can find some "complex" doodads that will fill this gap in my search for new models. But generally I get what you are talking about and I have a few ideas I can bring these sort of details into the maps. In particular, I'm hoping I can create some custom waterfalls with distortion effects and such that look more realistic than the stock ones. I think the way the water blends with the rocks in 3-4 is also great for this kind of thing.
Hope to have some more screenshots in the future.