Making a mountain look right

[darwin]

I have a city built into the side of a rocky mountain for a campaign I'm working on. I've attached a screenshot. It needs to be playable, and I'm looking for "good" not "great" quality.

I'm concerned that the mountain is just way too plain, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I don't want to put trees on it, as the camp is having a lumber shortage, and I want a kind of rocky feel. Should I just blanket it in giant rocks?

p.s. Ignore the shadows, i haven't saved it and computed shadows in a while.

 

[ResidentV]

Well, you could hill it a bit and blend some rock doodads into the mountain... have the border between the bottom bit and the mountain slope riddled with pebbles and rocks, have some bushes grow up rather than trees, they would draw less attention and make the mountain look more mossy and natural.

also why save in tga?

 

[darwin]

Well, you could hill it a bit and blend some rock doodads into the mountain... have the border between the bottom bit and the mountain slope riddled with pebbles and rocks, have some bushes grow up rather than trees, they would draw less attention and make the mountain look more mossy and natural.

also why save in tga?

Thanks, I've added a few, but it's so small I'm not sure it makes much of a difference. When I put in fog and sky though, it doesn't look as plain as I was worried. Take a look at this and tell me if I should add something to the mountain.

Also, I used a .tga because that's what the screenshot saves as! I know almost nothing about visual editing. Should I use something else? My Infravision program won't save as .jgps unfortunately.

Thanks again, +rep in case you didn't notice.

 

[HOooDy]

Ohhh , .. Darwin So What's The Map For ?

 

[Azurot]

Instead of "blanketing" the cliff in rocks you should choose your rocks more carefully and incorporate them into the rock face. Use different negative maximum pitch values for the rocks (make multiple rock doodads and change their maximum pitch value to things like; -.45, -.65, -1.00, -1.25, and so on....) this will give you a wider range of rock shapes and contours to work with and you can better incorporate them into your terrain work.

If an example is needed I will gladly give it.

 

[darwin]

Instead of "blanketing" the cliff in rocks you should choose your rocks more carefully and incorporate them into the rock face. Use different negative maximum pitch values for the rocks (make multiple rock doodads and change their maximum pitch value to things like; -.45, -.65, -1.00, -1.25, and so on....) this will give you a wider range of rock shapes and contours to work with and you can better incorporate them into your terrain work.

If an example is needed I will gladly give it.

I had read something about max pitch values but I didn't realize you had to make multiple rock doodads...which explains a lot! I've added some rocks to the sides. Is this what you had in mind? (+rep as well, thanks for the pitch idea).

Also, I'm having a really weird bug where the doodad will spin 180 degrees when I try to place it. I'll have it selected and be positioning it on a cliff side, and then when I try to rotate it with the mouse it will turn fine then suddenly zip 180 degrees. If I move it atop the cliff it will rotate normally, but then when i drag it down it flips again. Do you know what that is?


RE: Hoody. It's a campaign I've been working on forever. It was done and playable, but while touching it up I decided to redo the terrain and a few spells. The terrain was terrible. I'm hoping to have it done this year. It's got about 30 triggered new spells, all new units, new models I've collected over 9 years, some horrible custom skins, a reasonable plot, and 4 heroes so you can replay it 4 times with different dialogue and all new spells.

 

[ResidentV]

I would recommend to try and build the ground up with doodads to the rocks popping out of the mountain, rather than have them sticking out like spikes have some rocks "fall" underneath them to make it look like some rock came loose off the mountain and down the slope.

Also, I would say less is more! you don't need rocks all the way along the ground, instead have areas where the slope remained "unbroken" - rather give it a bit more rough texture to make the terrain itself look like a rock formation - then you can have grass growing up a bit towards the slope and add some bushes and weed to make it look more natural. This will help blend the mountain with the actual playable area - right now the mountain looks like a separate entity.

 

[darwin]

I would recommend to try and build the ground up with doodads to the rocks popping out of the mountain, rather than have them sticking out like spikes have some rocks "fall" underneath them to make it look like some rock came loose off the mountain and down the slope.

Also, I would say less is more! you don't need rocks all the way along the ground, instead have areas where the slope remained "unbroken" - rather give it a bit more rough texture to make the terrain itself look like a rock formation - then you can have grass growing up a bit towards the slope and add some bushes and weed to make it look more natural. This will help blend the mountain with the actual playable area - right now the mountain looks like a separate entity.

Your second point made perfect sense, I'll try that. Your first point confused me though. What do you mean "build the ground up with doodads to the rocks". Do you mean stack rocks on top of each other and up to the rocks that jut out of the side?

 

[ResidentV]

Pretty much yeah, just so it loses the "spiked turtle shell" feeling