Basic Terraining Tutorial

Level 6
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
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189
Basic Terraining Tutorial
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Tools Needed: Warcraft 3 World Editor

Introduction: So you've made a map, but its just not complete, it needs one more thing, terrain, terrain makes up most of the map, sure it can have great triggers, great skins and what not, but no one likes to play on a plain bare surface. So lets get started.

Step 1: The basic tileset.
When you make terrain you should always be aware of what type of terrain you want the players to focus on mainly, rather it be grass, snow or dirt, it doesn't matter. But lets make ours a type of forest area. I made a 32x32 map with Lordaeron tileset. Go to the terrain palette and select the 'Grass' tile. Place the grass randomly around the basic area of your piece of terrain. It should now look something like this.
wc3scrnshot060805211224018bk.jpg


Step 2: Blending Tilesets
Sure, it looks horrible for the moment, but now we will have to blend tilesets. Select another tile from the terrain palette, lets use grassy dirt, fill in SOME of the gaps were there is dirt, don't fill in all the gaps. Now that we have blended those two tiles together its time to add one more tile, lets use dark grass. Fill in the remaining dirt spots with dark grass and it should turn out to look something like this...
wc3scrnshot060805212218027sc.jpg


Step 3: Water and Cliffs
Now, you have a flat plain of land that looks decent, but you don't see that type of land when you go out walking do you? Let's fix it up some...Back to the terrain palette select the 'cliff' labeled shallow water and drag it diagonally downward to make a stream. You should now have a stream, but it is bare and it needs some doodads, so, go to the doodad palette and look under water. Lets put some fish in, one destroyed ship and some floating lily pads. You should now have a beautiful stream. Back to work, back to the doodad palette, go under the catergory labeled Bridges/Ramps, search for short natural bridge (diagonal 2) and lay it across your newly created stream. If the bridge doesn't seem to look quite right, left click on it and click Ctrl + Page up or Page down to raise and lower the bridge.
Now your map should look like this...
wc3scrnshot060805212910035ja.jpg


Step 5: Trees and surroundings
Your map is looking great already, but not great enough, go back to the Terrain palette and at the bottom of it apply height 'Raise'. Click on area of your map, around the bridge and such, do create small bumps in the terrain. Select the 'smooth' tool if they get too pointy. Now, back to the doodad palette. In the doodad palette go under Trees/Destructibles and select the Summer Tree Wall. Place trees around your desired area until it looks just as you would like it too, ours is supposed to be a variation of a forest. Your done, if you wish you can add custom doodads or tilesets which can be downloaded from this site, this is just a brief explanation of terraining, more doodads should be added such as: Barrels, Homes, Crates, Tents, Banners. It all depends on the setting.
Lets look at the final product:
wc3scrnshot060805213558043lp.jpg

Good luck with your terraining![/u]
 
Level 6
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
Messages
189
Lestat(br) said:
Good job! I luv to make good landscapes for the game, but i didn't knew that the bridges could be raised/lowered by pressing [ctrl + PageDown] or [ctrl + PageUp]. Good tutorial...

Thanks, I wrote this tutorial ages ago, you're the only person that bothered to reply. Sadly my Frozen Throne disc quit on me. :(
 
Level 1
Joined
Aug 1, 2006
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2
I really loved step two, where you blended the tilesets and highlighted the parts of grass with the "Darker Grass" tile. I never thought of that before, and I've always had trouble making my terrain look more natural, so I think this will help. Thx.
 
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