Request to terrain tools or advice

[Afis777]

So I wasn't good at terrain in WE but I know basics and read most of tutorial. And meanwhile I found some creations which give me some questions in my mind like : "Well, how the hell they did it?". And this is question which I like to ask to you, some quality modders and mappers who can probably help me.

First at all I'm making map about real locations in WoW MMO which means needing in accuracy with in-game map. And I found maps about game world in WoW, like this one.

You may download it by your own and see how it's make. Warcraft III Azeroth 2.0 Map Screenshot

You can see how's it precisely done by this exact shapes of continents (not by landscape obviosly it's terriable, seriously) and this plateaus are same by same how it's in WoW.

My question is — it's all are handmake? I mean like every title is nearly made by editor's brush? How it gets so much accuraty? I can believe it. If it is so then which what I must start to make something like this according to the real in-game map in WoW?

And here another example made by cMsxxs Forget丶Dust (Please, if you read this contact me later I really like to ask you about your great work) which is more fascinating DRAENOR - Warcraft 3 Maps - Epic War.com

I really can't believe if it's all handmade. Can be there any tools and some copyrigthing codes which make work more easy? I really need help to get start my big work.


Sorry for my poor English.

 

[lord_Turin]

Some people use variations of this tool:
Terrain 1.0
It draws the basic shapes from a height map.

But then again, there are a lot of dedicated terrainers aswell that just do it all by hand.
sometimes it takes many versions (years) to get to a nice accurate representation.

I find though, that making highly accurate terrain outlines makes the terraining harder because on a map a city is a dot, but in the editor you use a lot more space (in general) to create a city.