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For those of you, who want to create a rural map with open fields surroundet by some fieldroads and other rural stuff, i want to give you this guide to start with. Some basic knowledge of the relic wiki should be there, but i will explain most things in detail.
For any style of map, you should not use more than 4 tiles for your whole map. All the other texture tuning should be done with splats and splines, cause this is the best for the performance. So you want to choose your set of tiles good. In a rural map you will need some sort of green grass, dark sand for fields, some sort of texture for wheat fields, if you plan to use them and some other sort of sandy texture for white sand. You will find this tiles in the "Grass" and "dirt" folders. In this guide i will use the following
tile set:
- Dirt\Dirt_sandy
- Dirt\Dirt_soil
- Grass\Grass_Mixed_2
- Grass\Grass_yellow
The default tile for every map when starting is "Grass\grass_base". If you want to change your basic tile into for example "dirt\dirt_sandy" you have to go to the tile menu, mark the currunt default tile, then choose the new basic tile and after that just click on the "assign" button. Now your new tile will fill the whole map. After that you may add the other tiles you want to use.In this guide i will create a wheat field beside a muddy field and a little road.
Step 1:
First of all we have to paint the tiles for the fields. Use "grass\grass_yellow" for the wheat field and "dirt\dirt_soil" for the muddy field. Paint it where your fields should be and let a small strip between them untouched. Your screen should look like this
Step 2:
The next step is to place the splines, which will create the look of a field. Pick up the spline menu in the toolbar and then choose the texture you want to use. For the wheat field i will use the "field\farm_harvest" texture and for the muddy field i will choose the field\farm_brown" texture. Draw the splines along the lenght of your field like shown in the picture
After you have drawn the splines you should use the "Colourize" option to make them transparent in some parts and to give them some other colours in others. This will prevent a monoton look, which isn't very realistic. First of all you have to select the spline you want to colourize, we will start at the edge of the field. After you have selected it you hit the colourize button and a new window will pop up like shown in the first picture above. It contents 2 bars. Each point on the bars is for one point on the length of your spline. the top bar is for colour, he bottom one is for transparence. You can put markings on the bars by just clicking on it. There are 4 markings yet when you start the colourize tool, 2 at the ends of the bar and 1 near to each end. You can select them by clicking on them. The ones at the end i will always leave untouched. We will now select one of the markings near to the ends. You have some options now. By clicking into the colour table on the left top of the window you can pick a colour you want to select for this marking. It will fade out to both sides of the marking. For the wheat field you may pick some sort of yellow/orange, like you see in the picture. Do the same for the marking at the other end of the bar. Another option is to modify the transparence of your spline at the selected point. For this you can differ the value of "alpha", the lower the value the more transparent your spline will be. At the edge of the field you should use a higher transparence so that you have smooth edges. You may choose a value around 140 for both markings
For the splines in the middle of the field you may want to do some more markings to create a look where the spline blends in and out, this will look more realistic. Just click on a point on the bars where you want to change the transparence and then pick a diffrent alpha value for it. A good example is shown in the next picture. Do it in a diffrent way for each spline.
You do not always have to choose a diffrent colour for your splines, thats just a method to create more variation. For the muddy field i will only use the variation in transparence. Again you want to have a low transparence at the edges of the field in order to not have a too big contrast and in the middle of the field you will again use some variations of blending in and out, so that your final result may look somehow like this
As i told you i also want to have a road passing by, so we just choose a road texture like "nm_tracks\field_road_1" and then draw the spline along the fields. If you want to differ the width of the road just hold the shift button + right mouse button and drag it to the size you want.
Step 3:
As a next step we will place some objects and details. All those little objects and details create the realistic look. For example you can draw a little fence between the fields. Use the spline tool for this again. Switch to Object mode on the top. Then select the fence out of the objects menu, for example "emvironment\art_ambient\objects\walls\wood\farmfence_02" and hit the "add Object to list" button. After you have selected an object mark the little box under Object mode. Under Default you have to choose "wall mode", always do this if you build walls, it connects the single objects. Then just draw your fence.
As you see one end of the fence always has now post. You will have to switch to the "object placement" tool in the toolbar and place it manually. You find the post in the same objects folder you picked your fence of. You may also want to have wired telephone posts along your road. Its done the same way like you created your fieldfence. Search the folder "environment\art_ambient\objects\posts" for them.
Another thing i like is to emphasize the corners of the fields with trees and bushes. You may pick a bigger tree to place it right into the corner and from there you start a short row of bushes along the edges of the field. Also place some bushes and scrubs around your electric posts or along the road. Choose those bushes and objects out of the "ebps\environment\art_nature\bushes" or "ebps\enrivonment\art_nature\scrub" folders. With the other detailed stuff, like a farmwaggon with crashed crates or things like that you should be creative. Thats the part of map-making art
Step 4:
Now that we have placed the objects and field-splines the next step is to do some accents. We start with the tile editor. Reduce the brush-size so that you can draw details and also reduce the strenght to something like 30. Be creative now and add some accents to the landscape to smooth some edges or rework some monoton parts, like the ground around the fence or the road.
Step 5:
One of the best methods to give the landscape special notes it the splat tool. If you take a look at official maps, they provide an excessive use of splats. For our rural area we find good splats for example in the "nm_rural" folder. If you select the splat tool you find an option to preview the textures right under the texture window, this helps a lot in finding good ones. Very important when using splats is to use the opacity option. If you just select a splat and place it on the ground it will look like you just glued it on, but not like it connects with the world. you have to reduce the opacity to make it a bit transparent, so that it merges with the world. I will show the effect in the following picture.
In addition to opacity you can use the Colour option, with a diffrent colour some splats fit even better. This counts especialy for the "Mud" and the "grass" splats. You can and should also use this and rotation for some variation. This is important, cause several splats of the same kind in the same colour and rotation look unrealistic.
You can find splats for every kind of detail you want to add, as for example road dirt in "nm_road_dirt\dirty-sandy-blend" in order to accent your road. Just be creative and look around. Don't be shy to use an excessive amount of splats, as long as they fit together! You can also put some splats over another. After you placed them you can select them all by clicking on them, then you can choose the order in which they appear by using the page down and page up buttons on your keyboard. After placing several splats your fields might look somehow like this
Step 6:
Another option to add accents is the grass-editor. You can choose between diffrent types of grass. There are tow types preselected, but you cann add other types by pressing the "+" or remove others with the "-" button. I prefer the use of "Grass_Dead_00", "Grass_Green_01" and "wheat_field_01". Do not choose to many types, this will cause performance problems. The most important thing using the grass editor is to JUST use it for adding accents. Excessive use will result in unrealistic look. For this again reduce the brushsize to "1" or "2". Then draw some accents, like wheat on the fields or grass around the fence. Be creative! Pay special attention to the edges of textures. Grass is an excelent way to smooth those edges!
This should also be the last step, so that the result is something like this
I hope this guide helps you a bit, and the result will be some awsome new maps
This post has been edited by OnkelSam: Mar 27 2009, 08:29 AM
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