Seeking Mentorship

[Hedgehog-king]

Recently I've tried to make several terrain templates of countries, such as templates of the United Kingdom. They haven't been the best successes in mapping history...

Are there any experienced terrainers that could take some time to teach me the techniques needed for realistic real-world terraining?



If your too busy, may I have a bite-sized list of terraining tips? Or a link to a personally favored tutorial?



Thanks everyone

Hedgehog-king

 

[~Void~]

Well some tips are:

• If you're going to mass trees in a forest, put lots of shrubs and greenery and other environmental doodads in it.
• Space out your trees a little bit. Put the pathing size to barrel, or "2x2default.tga"
• Shrubs are good. Use a lot of them.
• Don't use Blizzard's cliffs. Instead use the raise/lower tool, plateau, rock tile or dirt tile and pathing blockers.
• Make sure you use plenty of tile variation so it's not boring.
• Don't make your terrain too flat. Even if it's just using the noise tool and then smoothing (A LOT OF SMOOTHING with noise )
• Smooth your terrain's rough edges and don't spam doodads in one place and then leave another place bare. Make a gradual transition.
• Fog is tasty.

That's all I can say off the top of my head.

 

[Gilles]

It's hard to just give general advice. Post some of your work so we can be more specific.

 

[Hedgehog-king]

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/resources_new/maps/5719/

This is the only one I have not deleted so far.

The minimap looks plain, but it looks soo much better with in-game fog of war, doodads, terrain textures, and units. I just KNOW I'm doing something stupid here.



Thanks for the tips void, +rep

 

[Nudl9]

My suggestion is that you just go out in the wild and see how the things grow and such... and then remember it!

 

[Hedgehog-king]

Does anyone have any suggestions on improving the quality of the minimap image?

 

[Gilles]

Only thing I to improve the minimap image is to import a custom one.

I'll dl the map later on. Could you just post pictures next time?

 

[~Void~]

Like 5 people have said they were going to +rep me but I haven't received any :'( It's so confusing...
And your rep showed up on my rep list but the number didn't increase...? Wtf?

 

[Gilles]

Probably because he didn't have any rep at the time. You need rep to give rep.

 

[Hedgehog-king]

I'd post pictures but my map doesn't have any real textures, or doodads, its just the shape of it. :/