- Joined
- Oct 6, 2008
- Messages
- 759
Hello Everyone!
- Lack of attention when it comes to logical placement/arrangment of the enviroment - usually a mapmaker must be inspired to make a good looking and even sometimes unique terrain. There are very few people here on the hive who can produce a masterpiece just by default. I have a friend painter who does pictures of sceneries by orders. He is good enough to sometimes produce a splendid and marvelous painting even when it`s someone`s request.
The point of this is to ensure people that they can do good, but can`t always force it to look good like the painter who does it for living.
Inspiration is key to this. If you are making a jungle - examine a few or even a lot of pictures, sceneries and photographs. Don`t start your terrain by just seing the list of doodads you can use for it. Thinking outside of the closed-catalogue-like boundaries of the World Editor.
That does not mean to look for pictures and try to recreate them. To do a volcano, you must see a volcano. Examine it in real life and then turn on your imagination and make a beautiful result.
Lack of attention can also cause certain bad results when it comes to simple logic - wide burning fires in a small object over a surface of water is a good example of that. Other is using tropical trees in non-tropical enviroment. THINK before you do. I know when a man is having his head storming with ideas things can mess up with each other and the result would be a few good ideas messed up into something not partially as good.
- ``It looks too hard to do it that way`` - NO IT`S NOT! Even if it takes some time to assimilate many techniques before starting, the result would be more than pleasing at least to yourself. Be patient and don`t get bored easily.(Unless you are a descendand of Mozart and can make masterpieces by boredom.) The most important lessons in my opinion are connected to visionary execution of your terrains. And since I take interest in playable terrains, you will learn less about for example light and proper light placement but I will have a topic on it later on. Just scratching the surfaces which I assure you will be more than enough for such terrains.
- Blending the terrain into a whole piece - People usually forget how important factor of any game is the impression that the atmosphere creates. It looks better, it feels better; it IS better.
To create the perfect setting for example of a jungle you will most likely need to work on doodad colors,fog, weather, even advanced filters and last but not least - sounds.
- In real life each diffrent ecosystem can be described by one or a few colors. Much like the four seasons each setting differs from the others. In the incoming color lessons we will talk about tinting colors and blending enviroments by such techniques.
- Fog is a cosmetic setting for the artists of terraining. Be wary as fog can both improve or decrease the quality of the results. Fog must be considered by looking at camera options, cinematic instances and much more. In the fog lesson I will try to define your choosing of numbers when it comes to thicknes,color and other specifics. Weather effects will also be included in the fog lesson.
- Sounds are something that usually people skip, use ingame sounds or non at all. Especially for single player maps where the limit of the map is only equal to the limits of one`s imagination a nicely vocalized terrain speaks of the author`s attention to details. Sound is that special last layer of polishing that you can implement over a map. Then you are done. The internet is free of endless catalogues of various sounds,music,humming-mumming etc.etc. And of corse you can always tamper with another games` data files and extact some needed sounds. And lets not talk about legallity of such actions as I tend to write whole disertations on those topics. (lol)
Before reading anything from the text bellow, please excuse me of possible grammar or other textual mistakes, english is the 4-th language I somewhat know. (hehe)
I have been steadily examining many people`s mistakes in terraining whole enviroments and/or indoor terrains. I am talking about obvious mistakes, make no mistake yourself I am not near great to judge the masters in the hive, my opinion hits those who are the bellow-average (if I can put a grading in terraining) but desire improving.
Let it be clear that I am mainly doing playable terrains as actually putting in action any of your creations for me is more important than taking a fixed camera screenshot that will eventually fall to oblivion. (no offense to the terrain showcasers, you do a beautiful and much harder job, but it is inpracticle for me)
It seems to me that the picture-breaking points are mostly the following:- Lack of attention when it comes to logical placement/arrangment of the enviroment - usually a mapmaker must be inspired to make a good looking and even sometimes unique terrain. There are very few people here on the hive who can produce a masterpiece just by default. I have a friend painter who does pictures of sceneries by orders. He is good enough to sometimes produce a splendid and marvelous painting even when it`s someone`s request.
The point of this is to ensure people that they can do good, but can`t always force it to look good like the painter who does it for living.
Inspiration is key to this. If you are making a jungle - examine a few or even a lot of pictures, sceneries and photographs. Don`t start your terrain by just seing the list of doodads you can use for it. Thinking outside of the closed-catalogue-like boundaries of the World Editor.
That does not mean to look for pictures and try to recreate them. To do a volcano, you must see a volcano. Examine it in real life and then turn on your imagination and make a beautiful result.
Lack of attention can also cause certain bad results when it comes to simple logic - wide burning fires in a small object over a surface of water is a good example of that. Other is using tropical trees in non-tropical enviroment. THINK before you do. I know when a man is having his head storming with ideas things can mess up with each other and the result would be a few good ideas messed up into something not partially as good.
- ``It looks too hard to do it that way`` - NO IT`S NOT! Even if it takes some time to assimilate many techniques before starting, the result would be more than pleasing at least to yourself. Be patient and don`t get bored easily.(Unless you are a descendand of Mozart and can make masterpieces by boredom.) The most important lessons in my opinion are connected to visionary execution of your terrains. And since I take interest in playable terrains, you will learn less about for example light and proper light placement but I will have a topic on it later on. Just scratching the surfaces which I assure you will be more than enough for such terrains.
- Blending the terrain into a whole piece - People usually forget how important factor of any game is the impression that the atmosphere creates. It looks better, it feels better; it IS better.
To create the perfect setting for example of a jungle you will most likely need to work on doodad colors,fog, weather, even advanced filters and last but not least - sounds.
- In real life each diffrent ecosystem can be described by one or a few colors. Much like the four seasons each setting differs from the others. In the incoming color lessons we will talk about tinting colors and blending enviroments by such techniques.
- Fog is a cosmetic setting for the artists of terraining. Be wary as fog can both improve or decrease the quality of the results. Fog must be considered by looking at camera options, cinematic instances and much more. In the fog lesson I will try to define your choosing of numbers when it comes to thicknes,color and other specifics. Weather effects will also be included in the fog lesson.
- Sounds are something that usually people skip, use ingame sounds or non at all. Especially for single player maps where the limit of the map is only equal to the limits of one`s imagination a nicely vocalized terrain speaks of the author`s attention to details. Sound is that special last layer of polishing that you can implement over a map. Then you are done. The internet is free of endless catalogues of various sounds,music,humming-mumming etc.etc. And of corse you can always tamper with another games` data files and extact some needed sounds. And lets not talk about legallity of such actions as I tend to write whole disertations on those topics. (lol)
Exta class: Animated enviroment. Certain enviroments can be brought to life by manually animating a simple moving systems via triggers.
That being said I think I covered my whole plan for the class for the summer/fall. They will begin later than the other teachers` classes.
