Famous Terraining Tips

Alright, I have noticed that lately there are people having trouble with some basic (in my eyes) terraining knowledge/skills. But it has nothing to do with their terrains, but how they accomplish it. Also, in the sticky section there is basically Misc Data twice. Because it is in the For those beggining to terrain along with a seperate sticky. Anyhow... I am not at home right now so I cannot give perfect descriptions of these thing without a WE. Also if anyone has any other tips/tricks please post them and I will edit them in.

-Doodads resetting height after moving them?

• You can change a setting in the WE called 'Reset doodad height'.

-Can't change anything in your terrain because you added fog?

• Just go into the object editor and go to your fog doodads, or for that matter any doodad you do not want selectable while terraining, and there is a 'Ignore Model Clicks' boolean statement. Set it to true, and the WE will ignore any clicks on that model. BUT if you do a select of multiple doodads, the ignored model click doodads will also be selected

-Want a doodad really high up but don't wana sit there raising it with CTRL+PG UP?

• Just raise your terrain ground up around the height you want, and make sure you have changed the doodad height reset, hit CTRL+ PG UP or CTRL + PG DOWN, and then relower your ground so it is where you want it, and you will have saved time rather than raising it from the ground..

~Void~

• Use boulders! The bigger, more solid and thick rocks are by far better than the thin pointy ones, they can be manipulated however you want them to be. Burying your rocks 1/3 of the way into the ground is also a good idea, it makes them look like they have been there for a while, which they probably have.
  
• Place your trees naturally, and everything you make. Looking at pictures of nature (ESPECIALLY in the setting you are working in) is a really good thing to do. I do it myself for almost everything I make (it's also really good for making excuses for small blips that people uncover after you post it!). Trees don't grow evenly spaced one by one, they tend to grow in formations and clumps, but kinda loose clumps. Remember that in nature, nothing is really uniform.
  
• Don't stop until you get exactly what you want! When you make something, be it terrain or anything really, look back at it and ask yourself "is this the kind of thing I want to make, and can I improve it in any way?". If you don't ask yourself these kinds of questions, you miss small flaws and awkwardness in your terrain. Think of it like proof-reading a paper, except not as lame and boring and totally more important.
  
• Although something COULD happen in real life, that doesn't mean it's appealing. I find myself fucking this up a lot, and I also find other people (everyone?) fucking this up too. Sure, you can get a bunch of pointy rocks on a hillside surrounded by clumps of evenly-spaced trees, but it doesn't look good at all. Sure, there are plenty of empty hillsides with no fog whatsoever, but that doesn't mean we want to see you make them.

You should add more. I'll think on what could be added.

I'll post some more conceptual ones.

- Use boulders! The bigger, more solid and thick rocks are by far better than the thin pointy ones, they can be manipulated however you want them to be. Burying your rocks 1/3 of the way into the ground is also a good idea, it makes them look like they have been there for a while, which they probably have.

- Place your trees naturally, and everything you make. Looking at pictures of nature (ESPECIALLY in the setting you are working in) is a really good thing to do. I do it myself for almost everything I make (it's also really good for making excuses for small blips that people uncover after you post it!). Trees don't grow evenly spaced one by one, they tend to grow in formations and clumps, but kinda loose clumps. Remember that in nature, nothing is really uniform.

- Don't stop until you get exactly what you want! When you make something, be it terrain or anything really, look back at it and ask yourself "is this the kind of thing I want to make, and can I improve it in any way?". If you don't ask yourself these kinds of questions, you miss small flaws and awkwardness in your terrain. Think of it like proof-reading a paper, except not as lame and boring and totally more important.

- Although something COULD happen in real life, that doesn't mean it's appealing. I find myself fucking this up a lot, and I also find other people (everyone?) fucking this up too. Sure, you can get a bunch of pointy rocks on a hillside surrounded by clumps of evenly-spaced trees, but it doesn't look good at all. Sure, there are plenty of empty hillsides with no fog whatsoever, but that doesn't mean we want to see you make them.

-Use your creativity, its a simple word.. but really hard to understand, if you want to do something and there's no model to do it! USE your imagination, your creativity! it allways work! .. use diffrent items and build them up so it looks like what ever you want... here's some trick i always used...

Gaulish Still house!
-Take a peon grave model (the wood plank on the ground with no fissure) and make it bigger and darker.. and place it close to a Villager's house (Village Model) (the one with 1 floor and 2 floors..)

-Take a Hay (the ronde one attachted but the top) and put it so it recovers a Barrack (orc's building) you will have a nice gaulish house...

-Take a skull pile and give it a mushroom pathing.. after that, put them on a ruined Fountain (dalaran ruined).. so you have a nice dongeon doodad creatred...

-Take the Ilidan Model in the extras... change the color.. and use it as a vampire statue.. (i allways use this)..

-put warmills (orc's building) in front of each other to make a rock Orc style wall.. and do it so you don't see the fire!..

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/f267/my-terrain-84786/

-to create different skies you can use foggy sky and add different fogs

+like pink fog+foggy sky = pinkish/yellowish sky


-use a lot of fauna and FLORA (every plant is different)

-use a good cam.angle to create the epic effect ( mostly its good to make the angle as you will watching on things in real-live


SRZ FOR MY ENGLISH , BIN EIN DEUTSCH-RUSSE

Many nice tips, afraid I dont got any to teach away

But you should add Gilles:

Thou shalt NOT use Blizzard Cliffs! (or.. was it Voids... <.<)

I'll try and find some time to put all these together in one post and add it to the Tips For Beginners sticky. I'll also call it Hive Terraining Tips, not Famous.

here is some i came up with, some are kinda hard for begginers to grasp immidiatly though...

-- Camera angles are one of the most important element in creating a good terrain ( If you are purely terraining). The Best angles are the ones that have the sky in view, the midground in view and the foreground in view. using large Z offsets for the camera ( anywhere from 200 - 700 ) and using a field of view of 120 ( if your going for a long looking terrain ) or 20 FOV ( if your going for a way to make something seem larger ) are always good.

-- When terraining, try and incorporate some sort of lighting to it. There are few types of lighting that i am refering to :
1) lightes that come from torches, etc. If the foreground in your terrain is a bit to dark, you can always add to that effect by placing a torch near a small area of interest. It makes the terrain surrounding it seem even darker, which is a good touch.
2) EPIC lighting, like the sun flare and fog doodads. Sometimes, they could be a bit tricky to use. But by putting some sun flares behind mountains, and then placing one or two in front of the camera at the right angle, you can have a very epic feel to your terrain.

-- laslty, when making epic terrain, SCALE MEANS ALOT! by scaling trees so that they get smaller as they approach the background, it creates a profound feeling of depth and "far-away-ness" that, if done right, can be legendary. Scalling your doodads are definetly a must for a mountain-like terrain. Make trees that are closer to the camera about 1.0. and then progress with a tree that is .5, and then one that is .3.



Hope these are included in your thread. good tips up there BTW..

when making rivers, either use flattened waterfalls or use the lower terrain tool to have natural rivers instead of using shallow water cliff.
Always use the raise tool to make mountains, and plateua them if needed. Smoothing is also a good tool
When youve created a hill/mountain side, its best to add a rock tileset to the sides, and leave the ramp/entrance a regular tileset, like grass or dirt, and add pathing blockers so people cant run up your cliffs. this is aesthetically pleasing and its also realistic.

Here's a good one for ya. Copy and paste this folder into your WC3 directory, and when you set the custom light environment to Dungeon in the world editor, everything will be all black. Place White Light doodads (or other light emitters) to light up parts of the map.

Credits go to WindexGlow for this.