make trees that have very high size values, like 150% to 250% and spread them out across the landscape. There is a setting somewhere that makes objects blur when units are behind them. Put that on them.
you have no line of sight blockers! Swamps are full of things you can't see around, another thing swamps have is fog. Make use of environment doodads!
swamps wouldn't have many rocks, but what they might have is roots! there are root doodads that you can attach to the bottoms of your trees and rotate them so that they look like the roots are growing towards the water in the area, that's a realistic effect!
floating creep pads with custom colors and hdr multipliers give cool effects to water. Either muddy silt or oil on the surface are both acheivable with floating creep pads, look into them!
those bushes you have, keep the wide X and Y values but shrink the Z value. Most wetland plants other than trees are very short. Tall plants are found in forests, and unless they are underneath large trees it makes no sense for plants to grow large.
another thing, your world is devoid of texture variance. the grass and dirt will look different under and near the water than it will several feet from it, consider that when you texture.
Yeah, it sure does look uninhabited doesn't it? I don't intend for it to look so sparse in the final version but it should definitely look rundown. So I guess that's 1/2 of my overall vision achieved. Now to add the finishing touches to the doodads, then add citizens, guards, animals, that move around, participate in interaction, and real time randomized events to give the city a feeling of being alive again.
Still on the doodads though, how can I improve the realism?
burnt out truck, burnt out seige tank, burnt out trees, burnt out buildings, but no fire. Also, if it was a town why is there no garbage or human remains, and why are there no stumps? I have never seen that many houses somewhere with trees devoid of people chainsawing stumps out of their yards. One idea this gave me is to combine fence doodads, garage doodads, and deadman's port doodads to make a tin roofed storage shed that you can look into. Perhaps put valhalla cabinets and a wrecked mule inside. hope it helps!
use SCV combat tactics. SCV's only fight when you order them to and only run back a short distance when attacked without being told to fight. Another thing you could do is give him the hold fire ability that ghosts have it toggle on and off for when the player wants him to be aggressive or passive.
another thing you can use is complimentary doodads. Terran tarmacs, ground objects, street lights, signs all contribute. Put a blockade and make people walk around for more depth.
Sadly i think you lose lights if you import models into 3ds max. As far as i've heard this is not possible with the current exporter/importer tools, but this could change soon, as people are working on supporting more particles and lights, but I don't know how progress is going. What you might want to do instead is lower the HDR multiplier on your light to 0, then add a high HDR multiplier to a flashing light then stick it inside your light's model after tinting that blue. This is a poor workaroundd but it's the best i can think of to still retain your same light's body but get a different color.
that has to do with the interact distance and inventory pickup distance. if the shop's interact distance is higher than pickup distance it will drop the item on the ground typically. It also does this when multiple units with inventories are close enough to the shop, or when your inventory is full. you can make a validator that only allows you to buy items when the interacting unit's inventory is not full, or you could make a trigger that destroys items on the ground and gives the owning player money back so that it would appear to never hit the ground.
To fix your forest problem, why not create a new unit for your resource which instead of being one tree, is a chunk of forested area that trees are removed from as the resource count goes down. I believe this could be done with site operations, or just copying and pasting existing tree models in 3ds max. If anyone understands what i'm trying to say but knows a problem with my approach i'm sure these fellows would be glad to hear your input as well.
I started doing that in places i didnt show because i didn't have enough time to get it to look crisp enough. I also noticed that putting "Rooftop entrances" helps to fill in gaps in the dead buildings if strategically placed. Good idea.
When it's closer to completion could you take screenshots for me on ultra settings? If your pc runs it well that is...
It might be related to the actions. You tell it to create the unit at the center of the region then instantly move the last created unit to the center of the same region. Revoke the second part and try it.
Keep in mind these are rendered from the editor with medium settings. Lighting has only been started, and decorating walls and roadsides has just begun. The area that is showcased is about 7 standard game screens, with about 1200 doodads. Next on the agenda is to make the "strip" part look more flashy, currently it only looks cheezy in my opinion. Let me know what you guys think.
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@Selfcreation: Go
it seems that most of these woudl be easily doable through data.
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@Excludos: Go
make trees that have very high size values, like 150% to 250% and spread them out across the landscape. There is a setting somewhere that makes objects blur when units are behind them. Put that on them.
you have no line of sight blockers! Swamps are full of things you can't see around, another thing swamps have is fog. Make use of environment doodads!
swamps wouldn't have many rocks, but what they might have is roots! there are root doodads that you can attach to the bottoms of your trees and rotate them so that they look like the roots are growing towards the water in the area, that's a realistic effect!
floating creep pads with custom colors and hdr multipliers give cool effects to water. Either muddy silt or oil on the surface are both acheivable with floating creep pads, look into them!
those bushes you have, keep the wide X and Y values but shrink the Z value. Most wetland plants other than trees are very short. Tall plants are found in forests, and unless they are underneath large trees it makes no sense for plants to grow large.
another thing, your world is devoid of texture variance. the grass and dirt will look different under and near the water than it will several feet from it, consider that when you texture.
0
@vjeux: Go
Yeah, it sure does look uninhabited doesn't it? I don't intend for it to look so sparse in the final version but it should definitely look rundown. So I guess that's 1/2 of my overall vision achieved. Now to add the finishing touches to the doodads, then add citizens, guards, animals, that move around, participate in interaction, and real time randomized events to give the city a feeling of being alive again.
Still on the doodads though, how can I improve the realism?
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@replaywarrior: Go
burnt out truck, burnt out seige tank, burnt out trees, burnt out buildings, but no fire. Also, if it was a town why is there no garbage or human remains, and why are there no stumps? I have never seen that many houses somewhere with trees devoid of people chainsawing stumps out of their yards. One idea this gave me is to combine fence doodads, garage doodads, and deadman's port doodads to make a tin roofed storage shed that you can look into. Perhaps put valhalla cabinets and a wrecked mule inside. hope it helps!
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@CommodoreButtrape: Go
use SCV combat tactics. SCV's only fight when you order them to and only run back a short distance when attacked without being told to fight. Another thing you could do is give him the hold fire ability that ghosts have it toggle on and off for when the player wants him to be aggressive or passive.
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@voodude2008: Go
another thing you can use is complimentary doodads. Terran tarmacs, ground objects, street lights, signs all contribute. Put a blockade and make people walk around for more depth.
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@s3rius: Go
only warmth and size are changed. Nothign else.
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@s3rius: Go
If bugs were warm blooded, and as big as dogs would you have one as a pet?
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@crabrock: Go
Sadly i think you lose lights if you import models into 3ds max. As far as i've heard this is not possible with the current exporter/importer tools, but this could change soon, as people are working on supporting more particles and lights, but I don't know how progress is going. What you might want to do instead is lower the HDR multiplier on your light to 0, then add a high HDR multiplier to a flashing light then stick it inside your light's model after tinting that blue. This is a poor workaroundd but it's the best i can think of to still retain your same light's body but get a different color.
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Title.
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@KimmysCurse: Go
that has to do with the interact distance and inventory pickup distance. if the shop's interact distance is higher than pickup distance it will drop the item on the ground typically. It also does this when multiple units with inventories are close enough to the shop, or when your inventory is full. you can make a validator that only allows you to buy items when the interacting unit's inventory is not full, or you could make a trigger that destroys items on the ground and gives the owning player money back so that it would appear to never hit the ground.
0
@dddarrenccc: Go
To fix your forest problem, why not create a new unit for your resource which instead of being one tree, is a chunk of forested area that trees are removed from as the resource count goes down. I believe this could be done with site operations, or just copying and pasting existing tree models in 3ds max. If anyone understands what i'm trying to say but knows a problem with my approach i'm sure these fellows would be glad to hear your input as well.
Sorry if this doesnt help at all.
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@replaywarrior: Go
I started doing that in places i didnt show because i didn't have enough time to get it to look crisp enough. I also noticed that putting "Rooftop entrances" helps to fill in gaps in the dead buildings if strategically placed. Good idea.
When it's closer to completion could you take screenshots for me on ultra settings? If your pc runs it well that is...
@Twobit2354: Go
Everything aside for the roads are doodads. About 1300 in the screen shots shown.
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It might be related to the actions. You tell it to create the unit at the center of the region then instantly move the last created unit to the center of the same region. Revoke the second part and try it.
0
Pictures attached.
Keep in mind these are rendered from the editor with medium settings. Lighting has only been started, and decorating walls and roadsides has just begun. The area that is showcased is about 7 standard game screens, with about 1200 doodads. Next on the agenda is to make the "strip" part look more flashy, currently it only looks cheezy in my opinion. Let me know what you guys think.