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Can someone please teach me some cool and super easy aesthetics? I've experimented a lot in the past but I haven't found anything that looks great and is also quick to do. I don't care if all my maps look the same, but they should look decent enough on their own and I don't want to spend days polishing the aesthetics on every map, especially since they usually end up looking like crap anyway.
Some requirements:- Organic textures, middle of paths light and very clean (not like Yeonsu).
- Cliff levels distinguishable by lightness.
- Small unpathable areas (e.g. between ramps and adjacent cliffs) can quickly be filled with doodads.
- Doodads don't obstruct vision, so no tall trees near edges of pathable areas.
- Little or no work required for large unpathable areas e.g. around the map border.
- Doodads should look nice next to rocks, towers, and LOS blockers.
- Clusters of doodads should not lower FPS too much.
I'm okay with doing a lot of work on stuff that I have to do only once (like setting up lighting or water) but I really dislike the repetitiveness of plastering doodads all over the place, so the less work that is, the better. Texturing is quick enough and can always be done with the symmetry tool so even if there are three or four different textures on one level that's not a big problem. Also I do the pathing by hand (this is actually not much work at all) and disable all doodad footprints, so whether doodad models line up with the footprints is irrelevant to me. However, the doodad models should make it easy to follow the edge of an unpathable area closely, like this:
+ Show Spoiler +
Placing doodads seems to be the most time consuming part for me, so the less work I have to do rotating and resizing and whatnot, the better.
If you have a suggestion for a simple aesthetic theme including textures, cliffs, doodads, texture prop (geysers/rocks), water/fog, skybox and lighting, then please tell me. Preferably with pictures so I can see what the end product looks like.
As a side note, has anyone ever managed to get water to look like ice? I tried that with Sacrifice but of course it looks like crap when I do it.
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I can't really give you a lot of advice (as I am no true expert), but one thing that is usually really good to do is to pick a tile set with a theme in mind for your map. For example, if you map has a lot of straighter edges, you might want a space platform, and if it is rounded or fluid, an organic tile set - ie you should design the layout separately and then pick a theme/tile set. Then I usually like to think of a small story - it doesn't need to be much, just perhaps why parts of your map could be the way they are - for example, in a desert map with man-made cliffs, those bases would need a water supply, and you could design your doodad work around that. You could try and think of how the planet would have changed over time, so in this desert, a lot of sand would be blown around onto the buildings, there would be large canyons due to erosion, etc. I really think that the more time you put into the aesthetics, the better they will turn out, but organic tile sets are much easier (in my opinion), because you don't have to make everything perfectly precise and straight.
If you take my most recent map, Quarry Fields, you can see, for example, that though the mining wasn't the main focus, in the background there are tanks, pumps and pipes, as well as scaffolding. The doodad work isn't dense, but it is quite effective I think. Not stellar, but at least satisfying enough to players that will barely see it throughout the game.
Quarry Fields Decoration
As for textures, I personally like exactly what you were describing (paths and heights clearly defined, but still clean and smooth). Just add a little bit of variation here and there, and consider creative ways of putting in obstacles, rather than just a canyon. One really simple yet effective thing I see in maps a lot is a lot of crags and spires in the border of the map, that are unpathable, but of different heights. These are then quickly textured, and sometimes have rocks and the like put on them, and are included around the bases. They make the map feel more like it is part of something larger, rather than an island (though of course, that could be exactly what you are going for).
Please note though that a lot of this is based on personal preference, and what I have said is my opinion of what makes maps look "good".
I hope I have been helpful
LComteVarauG
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RE: Aesthetics Foreword History proves that trends of art and aesthetic work evolves over time, and that influential- and innovative artists affect these trends with personal touches- and design philosophies. Thus, art may not be attractive to all individuals, but adapting to art trends that are generally agreed upon serves as a good starting point. 'Maps' for games generally consist of two dimensions - the level design & the aesthetic design. Despite level design being the obvious top priority, the two dimensions are highly interconnected, as aesthetic design is the dimension that gives an otherwise characterless map identity and personality. It is expected that you have read the Basic Texturing Principles (2012) article by Koagel. This description is based on my personal preferences of aesthetic design and how it interconnects with level design.
Cliffwork One of the aesthetic means that often times are neglected is working with cliffs. Depending on your style, you may want to do them differently. For organic terrain, you usually want the cliffs to feel natural - that means avoiding straight lines and repetitive- or artificial looks. The image attached below is a fair start, but can be done in many equally good ways.
Textures Working with textures may be troublesome to many, as the amount of detail is high and the possibilities are endless. Texture-work can however get broken into something simpler and systematical. Let me quote Koagel:
On February 06 2012 07:45 Koagel wrote: I believe that most textures can be classified as belonging to one of two sub-groups rather easily. There are spacious textures, which can be used to cover large areas without looking too bad, and there are transition textures, most of which have a distinctive pattern that gets very repetitive when used spaciously, but looks very fine when used together with spacious textures. [...] Quite often, spacious textures are hard to put next to other spacious textures of a different kind. You can mix different grass types to create to a more interesting, natural looking meadow, but it is hard to put grasslands next to dirt textures, for example. The problem is that most spacious textures are pretty boring by themselves, and this is why they are so easy to use on big plains. They just don't have many recognizable details. Although I defined them by the fact that they can be used on large plains, don't think you won't need to create some variation when using them- it is always good to use several textures of a kind on a plain to create a more natural, vivid feel, at least when trying to recreate natural settings. The transitions between them shouldn't be visible, and none but the most experienced mappers should be able to tell where which texture was used. I prefer to work in a very generic way of applying textures, that gives an overall smooth look, which doesnt detract focus from the actual game elements - that's part of where the interconnection between level design and aesthetic design lies. As we're doing an organic terrain here, I apply the textures in an organic and realistic way - just like what I did with the cliffs. I apply textures with an Airbrush (Falloff: 100, Size: 4-8). I usually use the bigger sizes for applying spacious textures, while transition textures generally are better when applied with a smaller sized brush. When working with textures, it is important to make different cliff levels easily distinguishable from each other, which is easiest accomplished with using different colors. If you're not very artistic by nature, using a Color Scheme Designer (Paletton) may be helpful - but not strictly neccessary. This is what I chose to go with as an example:
Polish Although the aesthetic work is now on a reasonable level, utilizing doodads can help you further develop the atmosphere that you want to bring to your level. Doodads follow the same principles are textures - some doodads can be used in groups, some can not. I like to refer to these doodads as respectively 'small'- and 'big' doodads, which may not be very accurate titles after all, as it is not exclusively about how much space they take up. It's more so about whether or not a certain doodad looks good by itself or in masses. Examples of 'big' doodads are distinguishable statues and large terrain objects, but also includes animated (with the exception being vegetation), particle-heavy models (plus those that either cast dynamic shadows or are significant sources of light). The 'small' doodads are easier to define, as those are the typical, static and not very distinctive doodads that have multiple model variations. This includes a wide range of trees, foliage, rocks, props, structures etc. and is the most commonly used doodad type. If you're looking for easy, performance-friendly aesthetics (slightly minimalistic) these are what you want to use. Take a look at what I achieved using only a handful of different 'small' doodads:
When it comes to border art, there's pretty much infinite ways to do it. Certain maps in the past have done an outstanding job creating the most amazing border art - but it is outrageously time-consuming considering the shortcut-options. No matter what kind of terrain you're working on, using a Skybox (optionally a Skybox Parallax too) will always satisfy. If you want, you can add asteriods, floating islands, small space-stations or anything else that fits the theme of the map. Instead of using a Skybox, you also have the option to add a thick Fog (with the lowest ground partially visible in some cases - depends on the theme and your personal preference).
Oh, and if you, despite having worked a lot on fine-tuning the texture- and doodad work, suddenly change your mind about the theme - then do not fear! The upside of using a generic texturing style is that you'll have a fresh, new aesthetic design after a few clicks swapping the Texture Set and doodads. Changing the complete Texture Set is done by choosing your desired set in the dropdown found at Map > Map Textures > New Texture Set. Saving and reloading the map file will render rocks and other doodads with Texture Set specific textures corresponding to the new Texture Set. 'Small' doodads like trees and foliage can also be replaced all at once, but requires a different approach, as the doodad itself has to be swapped. Using the Ctrl + H (Windows) command while the Terrain (F5) module is active opens up a Find window. Utilize this function to select and replace all unique doodads. Just take a look at what you can do in seconds:
I hope this adressed your question, Scorp
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Lovely guide you've made there, Scorp! I've also thought about making a guide of my own. Mine would be about using the Uniform texture tool to create the same look theme & look anywhere you want. It's nifty when you don't want to use the inbuilt mirror tool. :p Just need the mood for it I suppose. t_t
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Wow, that's some quite detailed replies. Thanks guys.
Regarding "spacious" textures, I feel that many just aren't spacious enough. I really like Tarsonis Dirt but it's difficult to use it for large areas because of tiling repetitiveness. And most textures are like that, they have details that are just too large for the texture size so you have to mix them and often paint over with other smoother textures (Phaeton Sand Dark is my favourite at the moment). I really like the low/high ground on Paralda; I'm pretty sure it's Phaeton Dunes in the middle but somehow it's much smoother than when I use that texture. There's some other sand texture in there but I think most of it is because of the lighting. I wanted to look it up but the map seems to be locked, or at least I didn't find it with the editor.
Also, I've so far always been using different middle textures for different height levels but I think now that the textures around the edges are actually more important. It's quite difficult though to find e.g. different rock textures that vary in lightness, but not too much in hue.
The guide by Koagel is quite interesting, especially the part about hard transitions. I tried to recreate that on my latest map Path Of Vengeance but I'm not quite satisfied with the results; I guess I'll have to use even smaller brushes.
Regarding doodads, I don't like trees/foliage very much, since unless you place them all individually and very carefully they will either obstruct vision in pathable areas or tree trunks will be so far from the edge of the pathable area that it's not clear where units can walk and how to wall tightly. And if you swap themes then you have to redo that work since the models are quite different. The easiest doodads to fill small areas with that I have found so far are chiselled rocks, and they even line up nicely with desctructible rocks. However, without trees maps seem to look quite "dry" unless you use grass and I don't like that much either because of the high noise, and grass without trees looks weird anyway. Zerus plants seem a good compromise since they are mostly square. Generally though it looks quite weird when most of these doodad clusters are next to ramps, so I guess I'll have to make more small pockets to fit doodads in. But then I'm reluctant to do this as it would mean "wasting" more time fitting doodads in unpathable areas that could have been cliffs.
In any case, I feel I should focus more on abstract aesthetics than specific themes. No one cares anyway if there is grass with lava pools at the top of skyscraper cliffs floating in space; so as long as the textures blend well and the colours don't clash it should be fine, right? And apparently it doesn't even look bad when manmade cliffs have "organic" edges (like on Paralda). I guess this is still my problem, finding one particular tileset that looks clean and not dry and doesn't require many doodads. But I'm slowly getting there.
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On February 24 2015 18:13 And G wrote: Regarding "spacious" textures, I feel that many just aren't spacious enough. I really like Tarsonis Dirt but it's difficult to use it for large areas because of tiling repetitiveness. And most textures are like that, they have details that are just too large for the texture size so you have to mix them and often paint over with other smoother textures (Phaeton Sand Dark is my favourite at the moment). I really like the low/high ground on Paralda; I'm pretty sure it's Phaeton Dunes in the middle but somehow it's much smoother than when I use that texture. There's some other sand texture in there but I think most of it is because of the lighting.
Spacious textures are not very appealing to look at by themselves. I recommend using them in pairs: that's what I did in the example above, as well as Paralda as you mention. Both maps use a combination of the two spacious textures Phaethon Sand Light and Phaethon Dunes. Not quite being able to tell which textures where used is a decent indication that you've probably blended your spacious textures well. While the lighting does have some say, sticking with the one that most closely matches the Texture Set (custom or not) usually produces the best results. I do not recommend using a custom lighting unless you introduce imported textures.
On February 24 2015 18:13 And G wrote: It's quite difficult though to find e.g. different rock textures that vary in lightness, but not too much in hue.
I will address this in a future post.
On February 24 2015 18:13 And G wrote: Regarding doodads, I don't like trees/foliage very much, since unless you place them all individually and very carefully they will either obstruct vision in pathable areas or tree trunks will be so far from the edge of the pathable area that it's not clear where units can walk and how to wall tightly. And if you swap themes then you have to redo that work since the models are quite different. The easiest doodads to fill small areas with that I have found so far are chiselled rocks, and they even line up nicely with desctructible rocks.
(Chiseled) rocks are great and can be used in various ways. A recent example of good use of this doodad is Cactus Valley RE by Ferisii. However, I think trees are great too. You have to be careful of not obstructing vision too much (gameplay and map readability comes first after all), but this can be achieved by rescaling the trees to a more appropriate size in key areas. Due to the nature (no pun intended) of vegetation models, they often times look good despite being scaled unequally on one or more axes.
On February 24 2015 18:13 And G wrote: [...] if you swap themes then you have to redo that work since the models are quite different.
Saving and reloading the map file will render rocks and other doodads with Texture Set specific textures corresponding to the new Texture Set. 'Small' doodads like trees and foliage can also be replaced fairly easily, but requires a different approach, as the doodad itself has to be swapped. Using the Ctrl + H (Windows) command while the Terrain (F5) module is active opens up a Find window. Utilize this function to select and replace your desired doodads all at once. The new doodads retain their position, rotation, scale and model variation. Trees like Bel'Shir, Mar Sara, Aiur and Tarsonis use the same base models, which allows you to replace them seamlessly. Other doodads may require slight adjustments.
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Okay so here's a problem I have a lot. I've finished the map layout and the pathing layer. I've filled the unpathable areas with chiseled rocks and added some vine-like trees in there to make it more lush and line it up better with the LOS blockers. So far, it doesn't even look too bad:
But what to do about the texturing. I really like the Paralda style with grass along the edges and sand in the middle, but here I have rocks everywhere and they don't look good on grass, unlike the rocks on Paralda which are mostly green. So I need some sort of brownish stone texture around the edges (like on POV I guess) but then the whole map will look way too arid (like POV). And of course I will need different versions of that texture for the cliff levels.
So now I don't even want to start with the texturing since I know it will end up looking horrible anyway and not at all what I imagined for this map (which would be sort of like Paralda, lush but also bright). So if someone could suggest a set of textures or a particular map to steal take inspiration from, then that would be awesome.
Edit: I would also appreciate it if someone could check my maps Crusader, Paradise Found, and Purity and tell me whether the lighting there is okay. In my opinion it's alright, but people have in the past complained about some of the custom lighting settings I've used and it would be great to have some feedback since I've achieved some really nice visual effects with those settings.
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Hi, I am rather new to this site so please excuse me if I manage to mess up the image.
From what I gather you want a kind of desert oasis kind of theme going on with your textures? This is something I came up with to answer your question:
First Pic
I don't know if you will like it much or anything like that, but a few things that I do on organic style maps is to make sure that I choose height priorities for my textures.
For example in my picture the priority goes like this from lowest to highest:
Sands Dirt Rock Light Grass Dark Grass Darkest Grass
(lowered the view more so you could see the details)
Second Pic
When I go to texture the map I would keep this in mind and use height to more accurately highlight what it is my textures are doing. I would also transfer this hierarchy to my cliff levels. The lowest being sands (unless raised) the second being mainly dirt and rock (unless raised) and then the top layer would be mostly grass (unless lowered). Creating a sense of traversal and constructiveness to the map as a whole.
Another thing I typically do is then correspond certain doodads with those textures, for example... a tree wouldn't be found on sand/rock, but it will on the grass/dirt.
I hope I helped in some way...
Tric
*Apparently I am not allowed to use the img function yet, so I had to post links.
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On March 04 2015 17:14 Tric wrote: When I go to texture the map I would keep this in mind and use height to more accurately highlight what it is my textures are doing. Using the height tool gives great results but unfortunately isn't "allowed"; that's why all ladder maps are flat. For example, see Ohana before and after it was added to the ladder pool.
Anyway, after some experimenting with different dirt, rock, sand, and grass textures the map now looks like this:
I think the differences between low and middle ground are obvious enough so I'll just leave it like this. In the future though I'll probably alternate manmade and organic levels, like on Paralda.
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On March 08 2015 20:43 And G wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2015 17:14 Tric wrote: When I go to texture the map I would keep this in mind and use height to more accurately highlight what it is my textures are doing. Using the height tool gives great results but unfortunately isn't "allowed"; that's why all ladder maps are flat. For example, see Ohana before and after it was added to the ladder pool. Anyway, after some experimenting with different dirt, rock, sand, and grass textures the map now looks like this: ImageI think the differences between low and middle ground are obvious enough so I'll just leave it like this. In the future though I'll probably alternate manmade and organic levels, like on Paralda. I can see big improvements. I would however probably change the lighting to something brighter to fit the textures. You should also play around with the grass-to-sand transitions - they follow the cliff lines very strictly at this moment. Just like cliff work, the transitions have to look natural and thus not as strict in terms of shape and coverage. For examples, refer to maps like Paralda (me), Samsara RE (etcetra) and Ganymede (Uvantak).
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There is much to be said for opening up Blizzard maps and looking at what they've done with particular tile sets. They might not have the best layout designers (underrated IMO though), but they have world class digital artists.
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On March 08 2015 20:43 And G wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2015 17:14 Tric wrote: When I go to texture the map I would keep this in mind and use height to more accurately highlight what it is my textures are doing. Using the height tool gives great results but unfortunately isn't "allowed"; that's why all ladder maps are flat. For example, see Ohana before and after it was added to the ladder pool. Anyway, after some experimenting with different dirt, rock, sand, and grass textures the map now looks like this: I think the differences between low and middle ground are obvious enough so I'll just leave it like this. In the future though I'll probably alternate manmade and organic levels, like on Paralda.
That looks really nice, though the transition could use some work still. Agree that the lighting could be changed for a better look.
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You're doing a lot of cool progress here, And G, good luck to you!
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