Making a nice opening scene waterfall

[darwin]

The opening map of my campaign is a Barren's style tutorial area. I want the first opening camera shot of the first cinematic to be a beautiful looking waterfall. I know they're a tad cliche, but they fit the terrain I need for the opening sequence. Here's what I have so far:

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin_data/k1oxaz/_files/cliff.tga

I want the waterfall to come out of the side of the cliff. Something like this:

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4080/4807026574_9c802bfee7_o.jpg

or this:

http://www.ecardica.com/ecards/postcards/Waterfalls/waterfall_cliff.gif

I have meager goals; I'm looking for good, not perfect.

Any suggestions?

 

[Freddyk]

if you want to have the water going out of a cliff, you can make a cave (in doodads/cliff-terrain) and put the waterfall inside it.

 

[Kwaliti]

~Moved to Terrain board.

 

[Heinvers]

U gotta lot of work on that. GL

 

[darwin]

if you want to have the water going out of a cliff, you can make a cave (in doodads/cliff-terrain) and put the waterfall inside it.

I tried that at first, but whenever I put a cave down it gives me the terrible Blizzard cliffs. Also because I've raised the terrain so much it also deforms the cave.


Heinvers, give me something specific I can do. Someone taught me the rotating rocks trick last time, and suggested putting shrubs around them. I'm a slow learner, but I can follow advice.

 

[Heinvers]

Just look at some of the terrain galleries on the Terrain Board and u'll see.

 

[Celaquil]

U gotta lot of work on that. GL

Please refrain from commenting like this, if you've got nothing
constructive to say, then you've got nothing to say. Plain as that.

For starters, you could look into covering the awful raised terrain with
some spires and rocks and whatnot, to make everything look more like a
natural mountain formation. Other than that I'd advice you to change the
sky and add some terrain fog.

Both are done by going to "Scenario" in the top menu, from there you go to either
Map Preferences or Map Options. In Map Preferences you can change the sky, I advice
the "Fogged Sky" sky-box, and then in Map Options you'll see a little un-ticked box called
"Use Terrain Fog," enable that and set the Z Start values to zero, or close to zero, and
then tweak the Z End values to enhance or diminish the fog thickness.

Also, you'll also want to change the fog color, which is done by clicking the Set Color
button, obviously Here you can also chose "custom" color, where you can customize
the RGB values yourself, or chose one of the standard ones that fits best to your setting.
- Fog always improves a terrain.

 

[darwin]

Please refrain from commenting like this, if you've got nothing
constructive to say, then you've got nothing to say. Plain as that.

For starters, you could look into covering the awful raised terrain with
some spires and rocks and whatnot, to make everything look more like a
natural mountain formation. Other than that I'd advice you to change the
sky and add some terrain fog.

Both are done by going to "Scenario" in the top menu, from there you go to either
Map Preferences or Map Options. In Map Preferences you can change the sky, I advice
the "Fogged Sky" sky-box, and then in Map Options you'll see a little un-ticked box called
"Use Terrain Fog," enable that and set the Z Start values to zero, or close to zero, and
then tweak the Z End values to enhance or diminish the fog thickness.

Also, you'll also want to change the fog color, which is done by clicking the Set Color
button, obviously Here you can also chose "custom" color, where you can customize
the RGB values yourself, or chose one of the standard ones that fits best to your setting.
- Fog always improves a terrain.

Excellent, thank you!

I changed the sky from the yellow I had and it does look much better. I'll see if I can cover some of the uglier vertical terrain with some spires. I had a nice brown fog, but I didn't adjust the z-start. When I put it to zero like you suggested it did look much better.

Keep in mind this is for a playable map with a custom movement system, so processing speed is a concern for me. That's one reason I didn't clutter the entire cliff with doodads. Will the fog be a problem for processing speed?


UPDATED PHOTO:

I made some changes - used a new waterfall model, added some spires, have some fog. I'm still not in love with it. It seem too busy to me, but I'm not sure. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin_data/rvgqgx/_files/cliff 2.tga

 

[Celaquil]

Keep in mind this is for a playable map with a custom movement system, so processing speed is a concern for me. That's one reason I didn't clutter the entire cliff with doodads. Will the fog be a problem for processing speed?

I'm not sure, but I don't think the fog will affect the gameplay.
Also, furthermore, well. You'll have to decide then, do you want
a beautiful waterfall or a smoothly running gameplay? Cause, like
you seem to be concerned about, you probably can't have both.

The progress is nice, and looks much better, now you might want
to address the realism of the waterfall, wouldn't you agree that
having it magically appearing from thin air is kind of strange? >.>

I advice you either make a cave, and not one of those cliff-caves,
but use the elevation tool to lower the ground around where the
waterfall descends from and then use doodads to "construct" a cave.
Or
Make a pond on top of the cliff from where the water comes, this can
be done by accessing the UTM and exporting the Barrens waterplane
doodad, which can be found under "water" in custom doodads, there
you'll find the file-name for which file to export and import to your map.
Then simply use that doodad, carefully, to make it look like there's a
natural pond on top of the cliff, and connect it to the waterfall.

 

[darwin]

Okay, I think I'm getting somewhere. To clarify, the map has to be playable as a campaign, so I can't blanket the ground with doodads I'm afraid. I got the tile from UTM but I would need to put a bunch of them down and it was slowing up my computer, so I decided to make a cave like you suggested. I can't lower the terrain though, as the player needs to be able to ride across the top of the ground above the waterfall. So I did what I could with rocks and barrens fissures.

I edited out the green spewing stuff from the fissures so they're more like rocks and put them on their sides. This is what it looks like now:

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin_data/9irosz/_files/cliff3.tga

A couple of questions:

Is the water color of the waterfall okay? I tried to match the Barrens water as best I could. I can change both of those though.

The waterfall hitting the water looks plain. I don't know how to make splashes very well, but maybe it would look better if I put rocks in the water so the waterfall falls behind them; i.e. the waterfall could fall onto rocks rather than water. Should I do that?

Other than spires, rocks, shrubs and waterfalls are there doodads I should be using here?

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[Celaquil]

Looks much better.

Is the water color of the waterfall okay?

Yeah.

The waterfall hitting the water looks plain. I don't know how to make splashes very well, but maybe it would look better if I put rocks in the water so the waterfall falls behind them; i.e. the waterfall could fall onto rocks rather than water. Should I do that?

Well, that is one way of avoiding the problem, and done correctly, it also mostly looks good. Though you could always try using the UTM again, extract the "wave" doodads and use them to make the water appear naturally at the base of the waterfall.

Other than spires, rocks, shrubs and waterfalls are there doodads I should be using here?

Well, I'm presuming the rest of the terrain isn't done, some trees and more shrubs, rocks, and whatnot around and about wouldn't hurt.

 

[Xonok]

For the waterfall splash, use some steam-like doodads. I remember using something like this.

 

[Heinvers]

U know u can find some water based models in the Refuge in Ruins map. Yes the environmental doodads could do the trick.

 

[darwin]

I just wanted to say thanks again. I did some changes and came up with something I'm pretty happy with:

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin_data/3c5rb5/_files/WC3ScrnShot_020914_223339_01.tga

It's not cinematic quality, but given that they players will be driving around it, I think it's pretty good.

 

[Heinvers]

A lot better. But still, will that sky remain? U know it's a bit off. I mean why not use a Fogged Sky?
Also apart from the waterfall area, it's empty, looks a bit lifeless. Maybe u could add some trees here and there plus some shrubs and rocks. I think Keiji could detail it to you better.

 

[darwin]

I tried the fogged sky, but it didn't look quite right to me. Maybe I'm just used to the yellow... I'll try the fogged for a while and see if I get used to it.

I'm not sure which areas you're referring to as looking lifeless. There will be units there moving around and doing their thing during the actual game, so I need to leave a kind of empty road (the bit in the foreground, and the road above the water fall). I can have some shrubs there...I have a few, but I don't want to put too much in their way.

 

[Heinvers]

Nevermind that. U have no trees! The shrubs are too few, almost no rocks aside from the waterfall. I know it's a playable type but it's a bit barren.

 

[darwin]

I'll keep working on it. It's a pretty big map, and I hit the doodad limit earlier though I managed to back off it (I had used a lot of pathing blockers for a side mission). I have trees down the trail a bit. There's a mission where the hero has to chop down some trees, so I left them out above, but I suppose I could retrigger that quest and add some trees at the top.

Thanks for the help everyone.

 

[Heinvers]

Btw. U could use JNGP editor. That way you won't have to worry about doodad limit. Trust me.

 

[darwin]

What's the JNGP Editor? I looked in the tools section and couldn't find it.

 

[Razosh]

Turtorial.