What is terraining outside the modding/mapping community?

[Hugget Sukker]

Game scenography?

If so, I'd like to be a "game scenographer". What do you think it takes to be hired as such? You'll probably have to be a scenographer allready. Would it require modelling skills? How do they work on games? Is it a teamwork between director, modellers, scenographer(s), etc.?

This is meant as a cue to opening a discussion, even if that's a discussion on how moronic my thread sounds...

 

[Deleted member 157129]

Terraining would be a large field that needs 'specialists' from different fields. You need a modeller to model the terrain, a texturer to paint the terrain, a designer to design the map for balance, tactical elements etc. Besides, you probably need more people as well. I doubt there is a full-time job where all you do is make terrain (like in the WC3:WE).

 

[PurplePoot]

It's part of the level design field, which is itself part of the game design field.

 

[Deleted member 157129]

Aye, but the designers themselves does not make the terrain, they say 'this is how it's going to be' -- unless the programmers have already set up a World Editor so that the designers can play around and make it, like a terrainer in WC3 Modding does it.
However, like I said, there's no full-time job that is just this.

My previous post was a bit unclear, but Poot summed it up pretty nicely. It's the design part that concerns the 'terrainer' -- though 'terraining' encompass multiple fields.

 

[Teh_Ephy]

I'm pretty sure that it would be completely plausible for a level designer to actually be a part of the coding process.

 

[Deleted member 157129]

Of course, but probably not coding anything him/herself. Basically, designers take part in everything.

 

[Hugget Sukker]

Right, level design is the term I'm looking for. When I say terraining, I particularly mean the visual and tactical elements of a level. Texturing and modelling is important to the visual side of level design, but I wouldn't count modelling as level design.
I guess the designers make a detailed layout, but do not necesarilly sit down and implement it unless, as you said, they have a WE to play around with. I'd imagine though, such a thing isn't all so rare. Just rarely as powerful and simple as the WE...
Any series of "levels" in a game always feature some repetition, and implement a basic system in different environments, possibly with level-specific customizations. When you have a lot of frequently repeated, customized elements, you usually design a system that lets a user handle it more easilly, even if the only users are level designers, or people who do the hard labor for the level designers.
But I also think there must be another field over the visual part; background art.