sTiMiN's 3rd time terrain!

[sTiMiN]

This is the 3rd time I've actually tried to terrain something nice. Give me some tips on how to improve and tell me whats good/bad about it! Thanks!

 

[RED BARON]

Well it is a little plain for the start, use more height variation, mostly on the river sides. The waterfall doesnt look very much like a waterfall (maybe the angle the pic is taken in, but lloks more like a more streaming river... and that river should be deep all the way, not only in some places, and what are the bubbles doing there? Looks misplaced, place some fish if anything.. also a tip you can make the fence stand closer by removing there colision size.... (set to 0) and some custom tree models would also improve the overall felling.
Else it gets is message out of a happy home in the forest.
btw juts noticed that plant right in front of the waterfall... place it somewhere else together with more of the same (riverrushes) so it would fit in...
Hint looking at real areas helps making the non real ones, also using cam's improvbe the angles you can take screenshots from...
Work with it and post a new..
But good that you havent used cliffs for the river

 

[sTiMiN]

You said "also using cam's improve the angles you can take screenshots from" I was just wondering how I rotate the camera, I've been trying to figure this out for a while.

 

[PurplePoot]

Ctrl, Rightclick, drag rotates.

Shift, Rightclick, drag zooms

Middle Scroll scrolls faster.

Hitting C and then Middle Scroll scrolls up/down

However, the best results come from Shift+Rightclick+Drag, and Ctrl+Rightclick+Drag (sorry, no idea what the equivelants on mac are, if you're using a mac)

 

[sTiMiN]

Thanks alot.

 

[Craka_J]

For a third try, I suppose it's all right. It's pretty small so there's not much to judge.
More tile variation and add some shrubs and rocks in river. Looks too empty, yet too cluttered at the same time. The trees in the bottom right make it look cluttered and the lack of tileset variation and lack of environment doodads make it look plain. The emptiness is where the child is and near the doorstep of the house. Adding tile variation will help clean up the plain feeling. Might even make it so you won't need doodads. But that's really doubtful.
~Craka_J

 

[HermanTheGibbon]

Make the windmill bigger to match the scale of the house (windmills are bigger than houses in general) and also sink the rocks into the ground a bit with CTRL + Page Down to make them look a little more natural, and so they don't look as though they are floating above the ground Also add some fog to make a nicer atmosphere, and more tile variation for realism!

 

[Deep Sea Kraken]

Also for changing the cam distance, rotation and angle just right-click on the camera in the camera manager and change the raw numerical values (how i do it)

 

[Wraithwynd]

Reeds, rushes, cattails, etc usually do not grow in the middle of a stream or river. They grow on the banks where the moving water is slowed by shallowness. It takes a bit to pull off reeds in the middle - with your water fall so close it will be difficult to pull that one off.

Rocks inside of the waterfall just doesn't work - due to the transparency even the most place rock totally in the waterfall looks like it is floating in space. The best way to make it work is to use something like rock chunks and "build" up the boundary.

For games you would make a custom rock chunk, change it to ramp or pathing blocker to remove the hp and ability to attack it.

also, your waterfall is pumping out way more water than that narrow stream can handle.

I've made a quick water fall as example (attachment) - it is by no means complete - this is only a "rough" version. I bet you can see the rocks that I did not lower yet, and besides the cliff walls needs to be covered, hidden, blended something.

Note how the basin that the water fall dumps into is wider, it leaves the impression that that much water can flow. If I were to take this further I would build up "rock chunk" boarders on both sides narrowing the channels that the water fall is falling in.


Things like floating debris, lily pads need to be "hooked" on something that obviously would not move due to the water. Such as a log, or a group of rocks - just floating there we expect the flow of the stream to "push" the floating debris downstream until it does snag on something.

Stacking waterfalls does not work - the waterfall doodad has a "top" and a bottom animation that creates the effect of water on a surface - You can customize and stretch as much as you need. And example is in my second attachment.

In object editor I made a copy, held down the shift key and selected Maximum Scale and typed in 500. I plopped the doodad then I hit enter and increased the 5 to 500 - The first waterfall is the extreme one - the second has its base water spread animation just above water level, the other has it way up in the air - although the water fall is on its "bottom".

Others have great success in stretching the x &/or Y while reducing the z forming long wide stretches of "rushing" water.

Cheers