Warcraft 3 Terraining Class

[Stare Cat]

http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin.php?id=deoco2
wat

How about mine?

 

[MasterTrainer]

Bam!

 

[EmoBrother]

@Zian_1998 I think you should raise the areas around your stream area and the bit jutting out from the right looks a bit unnatural. By the way I'm looking at the screen shot. Other than that a very nice piece.

I'm Xian =.="
Anyway, thank you. I will raise it and make it more natural

 

[Daffa]

I remake the terrain well, now the water isn't boxy and I expand the map for more room, although the eastern part are empty tho..

 

[DESTROYER123]

This video was what I just needed.
Thanks Master.
+rep

 

[InfernalTater]

How about mine?

Yours is 404.

Bam!

Better, but still not quite mountain-like. Mountains need to be a bit less round. It's hard to describe their shape; they have edges, ridges.

I remake the terrain well, now the water isn't boxy and I expand the map for more room, although the eastern part are empty tho..

Better, but the middle pool mountain needs some work on the edges. The bottom-right edge is kind of boxy, and the tiles are stretched from too steep of a height over too long of a distance (which also makes the mountain look like a column, almost).

There is also the issue of playability: There isn't a lot of walkable ground within the mountains in your terrain, and it reaches all the way to the boundary and then stops. Empty boundaries are a no-no, they have to be covered with something.

This video was what I just needed.
Thanks Master.
+rep

I'm glad; I realized that I hadn't shown enough walk-able mountains, so I made that video hoping it would help people.

Good luck everyone, next video comes out on Monday!

 

[MasterTrainer]

Sorry; when I made the terrain, I did so under the thought that it's supposed to look like an Island with a hill in the middle. I'll work on it as soon as possible, though that might be longer than usual because, well, school starts in less than 12 hours.

 

[Binsu]

Indeed.... school starts... ;_;

 

[Daffa]

Will work after exam, sorry that I'm going to be off around a week ;_;

 

[DESTROYER123]

School starts tommorow but ends in 3 days (at least in my country and my school)!!!

 

[Xonok]

I've been messing around with water and waterfalls lately. I guess some people don't have to grow out of that

Anyways, I made a sequence of waterfalls that have some real life properties.

Note the deeper spots right where the water falls.
Also I made it so that the ledge is visible. In real life that's the part with the least water, cos it's all busy with falling.

 

[InfernalTater]

For everyone who has to take a break for real life purposes, if you miss more than one lesson please PM me when you're ready to pick up again and I can help you catch up. If you only miss one lesson you should be able to watch the videos and read the comments to help yourself, but I'm not going to ask you to read through a possible 20 pages of comments if you miss multiple lessons.

I've been messing around with water and waterfalls lately. I guess some people don't have to grow out of that

Anyways, I made a sequence of waterfalls that have some real life properties.
View attachment 126627
Note the deeper spots right where the water falls.
Also I made it so that the ledge is visible. In real life that's the part with the least water, cos it's all busy with falling.

Very good job on the waterfall, just work on the ground around it.

 

[MasterTrainer]

TLI I think it would also be helpful if you linked the posts in which the classes are in, in your main post.

 

[InfernalTater]

TLI I think it would also be helpful if you linked the posts in which the classes are in, in your main post.

My main post contains all of the lessons already. I update it every time I teach something new.

 

[MasterTrainer]

Oh sorry; forgive me if I did not notice it the first time, it's awfully late back here in my place.

 

[DESTROYER123]

Xonok are the waterfall a doodad?
They look awsome!

 

[mckill2009]

This class is getting insanely active, unfortunately, I dont have time as Im updating my own maps and have a busy job...keep it going guys...

EDIT:
I recommend to posts all assignment pictures on the first page and who made it...

 

[InfernalTater]

This class is getting insanely active, unfortunately, I dont have time as Im updating my own maps and have a busy job...keep it going guys...

EDIT:
I recommend to posts all assignment pictures on the first page and who made it...

It would get incredibly spammy if I posted screenshots of all students' terrains for every single assignment. Besides, some of them PM'd them because they didn't want them to be public, and none of them will be visually pleasing until we get to later assignments anyway.

You know, if you're busy updating your own maps, that's all the more reason to do this; then you will be able to make better terrain faster. An hour a week practicing these techniques is enough time to keep up and get better.

 

[mckill2009]

The reason why I want to post it on the first page is for other students to find out their classmate's work, instead of finding them in these pages which is very difficult to browse, so that they may have the additional 'idea' on how others 'did that', in other words, seeing pictures of their classmates will greatly help them...

About my maps, I'm improving the systems, not the terrain ATM, as soon as it's done, I'll be active in terrain classes...

 

[MasterTrainer]

^ Nice suggestion you have there :3

 

[mckill2009]

Yes it is coz that's the one I've been banging in the first place, unfortunately someone takes that opportunity to make their own thread without informing me. Take note that I am the one who suggested terrain classes first, so it's a little disrespectful at my end...

I am not angry but a little info via VM or PM might be needed before this thread was officially opened...

 

[SA Dashie]

Grr I forgot to update my work.
Also it appears that I was ment to uncheck this option "Advanced > Enforce Water Height Limits".
I had recently reinstalled Windows on my PC so everything whent back to default(didn't think because of this).
If it wasn't mentioned in the last video about this option you should.

Also if we are to add all of the students work that want to get showed and are in image form, you should link the picture to a new tab instead of loading it all while the page is(it's slow with my connection to do this).

edit: Just watched the recent video. Those are actualy some pretty nice consepts.

 

[InfernalTater]

The reason why I want to post it on the first page is for other students to find out their classmate's work, instead of finding them in these pages which is very difficult to browse, so that they may have the additional 'idea' on how others 'did that', in other words, seeing pictures of their classmates will greatly help them...

About my maps, I'm improving the systems, not the terrain ATM, as soon as it's done, I'll be active in terrain classes...

Each assignment is for the students to use what they learned in the video, so you won't often see much in the assignments that hasn't already been taught. Besides, a screenshot doesn't show how they did it, only what they did, while the videos show how to do it.

I'm not going to flood the first page with screenshots for many reasons:

1: It would get incredibly spammy by the time 20 students have done 10 assignments: 200 screenshots, and that's assuming nobody takes multiple screenshots. This would take an unnecessary amount of time to load for the students with slower internet, preventing them from being able to learn in the class because they have to wait while their browser loads everything first.

2: It would eat up the character count of that post.

3: If ever the sources of the screenshots disappears, it would really make things look bad (and I'm sure as hell not setting up my own links or attaching 200 screenshots myself).

4: It wouldn't accomplish anything in the first place.

They can learn from the videos, and if ever there's something they're not sure about, they can always ask.

Yes it is coz that's the one I've been banging in the first place, unfortunately someone takes that opportunity to make their own thread without informing me. Take note that I am the one who suggested terrain classes first, so it's a little disrespectful at my end...

I am not angry but a little info via VM or PM might be needed before this thread was officially opened...

I informed you as well as everyone else a week ahead of time that classes would be starting in a new thread which would be linked to the old one, most of you were excited to hear that, and not a single person, including you, ever said anything against it at the time, so why would I have had any reason not to create a new thread for organization purposes? Stop trying to turn this into some sort of conflict just because we disagree about something as simple as screenshots.

I created this thread as a service to everyone who wanted to learn how to terrain, and that includes you. Instead of accusing me of being "disrespectful", you should be thankful to me for putting in the time to teach for free. I don't have to do this, I do it because I want to help you. If anyone's being disrespectful here, it's not me.

Grr I forgot to update my work.
Also it appears that I was ment to uncheck this option "Advanced > Enforce Water Height Limits".
I had recently reinstalled Windows on my PC so everything whent back to default(didn't think because of this).
If it wasn't mentioned in the last video about this option you should.

Also if we are to add all of the students work that want to get showed and are in image form, you should link the picture to a new tab instead of loading it all while the page is(it's slow with my connection to do this).

edit: Just watched the recent video. Those are actualy some pretty nice consepts.

I already did mention in the video that you have to uncheck that option, you must have missed it.

Good job on the water, but the terrain just looks like small hills right now; they need to be mountains. Keep in mind, mountains aren't smooth and round, so work on making some peaks.

 

[mckill2009]

Besides, a screenshot doesn't show how they did it, only what they did, while the videos show how to do it.

But you can have an idea where the decorations like doodads fits best...

If you wont put screenshots, then tell students to make screenshots of their terrain then just link there, that solves your page character count...

I informed you as well as everyone else a week ahead of time that classes would be starting in a new thread which would be linked to the old one

Link me to that, AFAIK, you were addressing on that thread, not in my VM/PM...coz I really thought that the thread that I made was suppose to be a terrain class itself, like Ralle said...
Although Ralle dont mind if you were to make your own thread for terrain classes but a little info might be needed so that I didn't have to change the first page of that thread...

you should be thankful to me for putting in the time to teach for free

I already am thankful to you, in fact I already gave you rep...

Anyway, let's close this topic, what's done is done, and get down to bussiness...

 

[MasterTrainer]

@TLI, can I know when you'll release the next lesson?

 

[DESTROYER123]

Most of the students have not completed this class yet.
However next lesson does not sound bad.

 

[MasterTrainer]

Well of course it doesn't sound bad.

I forgot I have to re-edit my terrain also lol

 

[DESTROYER123]

I decided to delete the spiral thing.
Here's a new one.
It's a hill that you must walk on the road to get it the top of it.
And there's also a river somewhere.
Opinions and stuff.

Clickboooom!

Terrain Class 01.w3x (24.3 KB)

 

[InfernalTater]

I want to see some mountains from each person's terrain. Hills are easy to make and don't require any experience or skill with the height tools. You need to prove that you also know how to make mountains, which are still easy, but better demonstrate your understanding of the tool. Keep in mind that this is a class, not a map, and your goal should be to challenge yourself; do what's harder in order to learn the necessary skills. It's better to make a not-so-good mountain and learn something along the way than to make a good-looking hill and learn nothing new. I won't judge you as a person any lower based on the quality of your terrain because I understand that you're all here to learn, and if you already knew everything you wouldn't need to be here. Just try; keep working at mountains until you have them down. I want to see everybody here have a clearly visible mountain before they move on to the next lesson (because the next lesson will be on using tiles for your mountains!).

I haven't created the next lesson yet, though. I wait until right before it's time to release it to make it in order to ensure that anything I address in the video is relevant to what you guys might need to hear.

Good luck, guys, keep practicing! You really need to try to get this playable mountain terrain down by Wednesday, I'm not going to let this lesson stretch any longer than a week (this lesson started last Wednesday) because it wouldn't be fair to keep the students who've got this down waiting so long for new material. If you don't have this down by then, I'll still help you, but I encourage you to try not to take too long because it's much easier if everyone moves together.

But you can have an idea where the decorations like doodads fits best...

If you wont put screenshots, then tell students to make screenshots of their terrain then just link there, that solves your page character count...


Link me to that, AFAIK, you were addressing on that thread, not in my VM/PM...coz I really thought that the thread that I made was suppose to be a terrain class itself, like Ralle said...
Although Ralle dont mind if you were to make your own thread for terrain classes but a little info might be needed so that I didn't have to change the first page of that thread...


I already am thankful to you, in fact I already gave you rep...

Anyway, let's close this topic, what's done is done, and get down to bussiness...

The students already do submit screenshots occasionally, but linking to all of their screenshots from the first post would eat up the character count which I will most certainly need in the future as I continue to add new lessons to it.

I said many times in your thread that I would be making a new thread when classes started. If you don't even check your own thread, there's not much I can do about it. There were too many people signing up for me to go around PMing each and every one of them.

I didn't want to use the previous thread because that thread already had 14 pages of planning the classes and it would be much easier for the students if they had a thread dedicated specifically to the class, and not to the planning part.

If there's anything else on this matter you want to say, PM me, because this is no longer relevant to this thread.

 

[Xonok]

Xonok are the waterfall a doodad?
They look awsome!

They weren't doodads yet on that pic. (and it doesn't look as good when animated)

But now...

Attached map without:

...and with tiles/some doodads/some units


Note to TLI: When I learn something new from the next lessons, then I will remake the tiled version. This here was for trying out if my vision would work. It seems it will.
Note to anyone who notices the 144 units: The scale of this map/terrain is incredibly small. It saves map space, looks better and fixes many other problems(speed limit).

 

[InfernalTater]

They weren't doodads yet on that pic. (and it doesn't look as good when animated)

But now...

Attached map without:
View attachment 126674
...and with tiles/some doodads/some units
View attachment 126675

Note to TLI: When I learn something new from the next lessons, then I will remake the tiled version. This here was for trying out if my vision would work. It seems it will.
Note to anyone who notices the 144 units: The scale of this map/terrain is incredibly small. It saves map space, looks better and fixes many other problems(speed limit).

Scaling maps by making units smaller and zooming in the camera is indeed good for solving issues such as that, but it also reduces the quality of your terrain as suddenly your smallest 1-square unit of terrain is now a huge amount of terrain. This is okay for most maps, but depending on what you're trying to do, you might want the detail of a smaller brush.

Still, this does look pretty good; good job on it, you've done well enough that you're ready for the next lesson when it comes out. Just try to have a bit more walking space, some of the spots were a bit too tight with only one tiny square thick of walk-able path.

 

[bethmachine]

Sorry for handing in late will not happen again.

Here's the link.
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin.php?id=bzh5fi

 

[InfernalTater]

Sorry for handing in late will not happen again.

Here's the link.
http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/pastebin.php?id=bzh5fi

Just attach it, your pastebin file was 404.

 

[bethmachine]

Tli Inferno I am sort of new here so I don't know how to work with atchments ahh this is embarressing.I am really sorry plus check your pm I am going to send you a message.

 

[DESTROYER123]

Xonok, I need to find out how you make those waterfalls

 

[InfernalTater]

Xonok, I need to find out how you make those waterfalls

If you make water above ground without enforce water heights, lower the ground back down to normal, the water will flow down to the ground.

 

[DESTROYER123]

+rep

 

[mckill2009]

This is what my assignment looks like...
- The right side where the waterfall drops
- The left side pathable way to the waterfall

First

EDIT:

Improvement

 

[InfernalTater]

Looking good, I'm going to make the next lesson tomorrow. It looks like most of you have gotten the hang of this.

 

[fladdermasken]

I don't know how you feel about outside inputs, but can I just say that I completely disagree about using either the plateau, the smooth or the noise tool. I know my generation of terrainers avoided it like the plague because you have little to no control over it.

IMO if you really want good results you'll have to do them by hand and be the man in manually.

 

[InfernalTater]

I don't know how you feel about outside inputs, but can I just say that I completely disagree about using either the plateau, the smooth or the noise tool. I know my generation of terrainers avoided it like the plague because you have little to no control over it.

IMO if you really want good results you'll have to do them by hand and be the man in manually.

Plateau, smooth, and noise are tools and can be useful. The problem is when people try to use them alone without using the manual tools in conjunction to touch them up.

I already said you'll want to rely more on raise and lower, but these other tools also can be very helpful. I'm not talking about being lazy and making the whole terrain with plateau/smooth/noise; you'll still have to manually raise and lower every single part of the terrain. Those other tools are just helpful for some parts and can be very effective when used responsibly. You do have control over them, you just have to do single clicks when using them instead of holding the mouse down and dragging all over the place like a fool. Most of us were fools when we first started using the tool, and because of us starting out foolish as any new person is, we decided those tools were dangerous and didn't want to use them ever again. As we became accustomed to ignoring those tools we learned how to use the other tools instead. But if we apply our skill which we now have to the tools we'd previously ignored because we didn't have the caution at the time, we will find that they are useful and not entirely dangerous.

When you want to raise ground and have it be flat, the same level, you could either 1: Raise it to the height you want, plateau it, make the area at that height, then smoothen it and do the rest with raise/lower, which is pretty quick, or you could 2: Try to make perfectly flat ground with the raise tool by using the grid and clicking each individual part one click at a time until you've created the entire area perfectly flat, which would have the same effect but take quite literally a dozen hours instead of a few minutes. Sure, if you're making mountains, which indeed are not flat, you don't use the plateau tool, which is why I did not use that tool when making mountains, but if you're trying to make something flat, you might as well use a tool that makes it flat to begin with.

 

[fladdermasken]

There aren't many ways to use the noise tool non-randomly. I can't think of any uses for the smooth tool beyond, well, smoothing things out, and the only decent thing I've seen done with the plateau tool was an old trick ~Void~ did for some terrains. But my main point was, if you want it smoother; the height tool does it best. If you want it rougher; the height tool does it best. And if you want it completely flat; well, why would you want it completely flat?

But yes, if you want to use either, make sure the detail work after is done well. If we take mckill2009's example, the edges are way too rough (I'm guessing noise) and the hill in the background is way too smooth (I'm guessing smooth or no detail work with the tiny brushes). A little trick I use is I start out with the large brush and then gradually work my way down to the tiny brushes. I do most my work with a size 1 or 2 brush.

When you want to raise ground and have it be flat, the same level, you could either 1: Raise it to the height you want, plateau it, make the area at that height, then smoothen it and do the rest with raise/lower, which is pretty quick, or you could 2: Try to make perfectly flat ground with the raise tool by using the grid and clicking each individual part one click at a time until you've created the entire area perfectly flat, which would have the same effect but take quite literally a dozen hours instead of a few minutes.

This might stem from the fact that I actually never want my terrain to be completely flat, but what I do instead is in that case raise the ground and use the smooth tool (not around the edges) to get it almost flat. Seemed to generate a nicer result.

 

[InfernalTater]

There aren't many ways to use the noise tool non-randomly. I can't think of any uses for the smooth tool beyond, well, smoothing things out, and the only decent thing I've seen done with the plateau tool was an old trick ~Void~ did for some terrains. But my main point was, if you want it smoother; the height tool does it best. If you want it rougher; the height tool does it best. And if you want it completely flat; well, why would you want it completely flat?

But yes, if you want to use either, make sure the detail work after is done well. If we take mckill2009's example, the edges are way too rough (I'm guessing noise) and the hill in the background is way too smooth (I'm guessing smooth or no detail work with the tiny brushes). A little trick I use is I start out with the large brush and then gradually work my way down to the tiny brushes. I do most my work with a size 1 or 2 brush.


This might stem from the fact that I actually never want my terrain to be completely flat, but what I do instead is in that case raise the ground and use the smooth tool (not around the edges) to get it almost flat. Seemed to generate a nicer result.

There are some situations in which you actually do need perfectly flat terrain, for example when using the alpha tile to create walkable structures without laggy destructibles.

As for the smooth tool, I usually only use that to clean edges after using plateau. I also use it for creating ramps since it easily creates a perfectly smooth ramp with steadily increasing height.

 

[Bernkastel]

Go away, Flad. You cannot possibly comprehend the might of "playable" terrains.

 

[Xonok]

If you make water above ground without enforce water heights, lower the ground back down to normal, the water will flow down to the ground.

I'll note that the reason my waterfalls look like they do is that I try to make it more realistic. I make lower spots where the water falls and shallow spots before it walls. Also the whole waterfall should generally be shallow. if you want it to have depth, then you use doodads, but you can't possibly except to do it with tiles only.

 

[InfernalTater]

Go away, Flad. You cannot possibly comprehend the might of "playable" terrains.

Bernkastel, cut that out, you're not helping anyone.

 

[mckill2009]

I have none againts any height applying tools except the noise, coz it really sharpens small hills in the process, plateau is fine as long as it's not too high/flat and you appy smooth at edges...
I've learned so many things here so any tips from a terrainer like flad are very much welcome, one thing I would learn most is how to create an awesome river/ocean or any form of water specially with a waterfall and how to decorate your terrain...

Question: shall we cover caves in the lessons?, coz that's the 2nd thing I'd like to learn most...

newest development: 20% complete

 

[InfernalTater]

I have none againts any height applying tools except the noise, coz it really sharpens small hills in the process, plateau is fine as long as it's not too high/flat and you appy smooth at edges...
I've learned so many things here so any tips from a terrainer like flad are very much welcome, one thing I would learn most is how to create an awesome river/ocean or any form of water specially with a waterfall and how to decorate your terrain...

Question: shall we cover caves in the lessons?, coz that's the 2nd thing I'd like to learn most...

newest development: 20% complete

Everything you mentioned above will be covered.

 

[Binsu]

Hey, sorry guys, will be submitting my terrain assignment later. Too busy with school works right now. Hope you all understand.

 

[MasterTrainer]

Nice job with your terrain mckill2009; I really like it. It's the proper motivation I needed.