Terraining - Introduction

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	Terraining - Introduction Tutorial By maerlyn A Brief Introduction To Terraining and The World Editor In this tutorial, you will make a traversable hill using a variety of techniques. Follow the sections step-by-step. Things you will need -Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne -about 20 minutes 1: Starting Up Open up the Warcraft III World Editor. It'll be in your Warcraft III folder on the Start Menu. Click File > New Map. Set the width and height both to 64. Choose Lordaeron Winter as your tileset. Click Snow for your initial tile. Then click OK. 2: Viewing Options You will now be presented with a blank map. First off, click View > Grid > None. Or, press G until the gridlines disappear. Now go to View > Pathing – Ground. Or, press P. You might want to get a larger view of your map. To do this, roll your mouse wheel down. Or, hold Shift, right-click, and drag down. 3: The Tool Palette The Tool Palette is a list of tools. It has 5 modes: Terrain, Doodad, Unit, Region and Camera. We will be using the first two. If you have a Tool Palette in your workspace, make sure it is in Terrain mode by clicking the drop-down box at the top and selecting Terrain. If you don't have a Tool Palette, bring one up by clicking Window > New Palette > Terrain. 4: Actually Terraining We are ready to start applying some terrain. On your Terrain Palette, click Increase One. Change your brush size to 3, and make sure it is circular. Change your texture to Snow. Click and drag to apply the brush. Make a raised area the size of about 5 brushes by 5 brushes. Select brush size 2 and make a smaller area on this region by clicking and dragging again. Select brush size 1 and connect the higher ground to the edge of the lower. We will now add ramps. Make sure there is enough exposed edge along the cliff. Click the Ramp button. Now press on the cliff, and drag along, as though you are flattening the edge. 5: More Terraining In this section we will add a pit and some bumps. First, click Decrease 1. Make a pit. Add a ramp. Note that the bottom ground of a cliff can be no lower than 2 below the top. That means that if you tried to lower it, the Editor would automatically compensate by decreasing the top. Now to Raise and Lower the ground. Click View > Grid > Medium. Now click Raise. Click and drag to slowly lift the ground. Although tedious and perhaps unnecessary, this tool does have a practical purpose. You can use it to fix ramps. 6: Adding Some Doodads The map's pretty boring right now. We're gonna add some trees and rocks. Click the drop-down menu on your Palette and choose Doodad Palette. In Trees/Destructibles, click Snow Tree Wall. Add some around by clicking. If you misplace a doodad, press Space and click it. Then press Delete to remove it. You can also drag-select. To begin placing again, press Space once more. Trees look best placed randomly. Dragging your brush will space them somewhat irregularly, and this is good. For best effect, place them so they don't obstruct units' movement. Clusters of trees also look nice. Consider placing them along cliff edges. Note: using two different tree types can look very nice. Try canopy trees or use combinations like Summer & Felwood or Winter & Northrend. Trees can overlap. To do this, press Shift while placing them. More doodads like rocks can be found under Environment. Note: you can use doodads from different tilesets in any map. 7: Adding Some Blue Ice Note: By modifying the tileset, you can add and remove specific tiles in your map. You can also import custom tilesets. There's no ice in your Terrain Palette. That means you need to add some. Click Advanced > Modify Tileset. Click Use custom tileset. Remove Rough Dirt and put in Ice (from Northrend). Click OK. Note: you cannot add or remove cliff tiles. Here's the finished product: 8: Some Tricks You can place trees in places they do not normally go. To do this, you need to open up the Object Editor, and click the Destructibles tab. Select a tree (I used the Barrens Tree Wall) and change the Editor - Placeable on Cliffs to True. A basic introduction to the editor and to terraining. Tell me what you think. Click here to comment on this tutorial.