Pictorial Map Building

[Mad Russian]

The S&L box down in the bottom right hand corner of MM turns on the structures or hides them from view while you work on the Height Map.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Here is the Height Map with the structures turned off.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Jacko]

Interesting, MR, but it doesn't look easy. [:)]

[Mad Russian]

The first time through can be a bit intimidating. I'm trying to take as much of that away as possible with this step by step tutorial that shows you clearly what each step looks like.

I can create a map in about 5 minutes. Once I redo the terrain map it's about another hour or so of work with MM to get a 1 km map presentable. It's not as hard as it looks. I've tried to show every mouse click so there's absolutely no question about what I've done or how.

Stridor and I literally spent weeks working out the kinks in MM to get it as simple as possible.

And of course we are hear to answer any questions.

Good Hunting.

MR

[junk2drive]

You can make a crappy map without doing the terrain map. Just tell the program to convert the GE image to 8 colors and assign a terrain type to those 8 colors. I've done that just to test the program. No buildings or trees. Just smooth the height map so that it doesn't look like the Alps and follow the rest.

[Mad Russian]

There are six brush size selection buttons in the height adjustment area of MM.
If you put your mouse pointer over each button it will display it's use.

In this case I have both the large strokes button on the right pushed and the large area brush on the left selected. I will make big changes to the map when I do anything to the height with these selections.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Next I hold down the shift key and roll my mouse wheel until I get the amount of blend of both the terrain map and the height map displaying in the window. So I can tell where the terrain map and height map interact with each other.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

When I'm done with everything I'll smooth the map. When I first created this height map MM asked me if I wanted to smooth it. I said no at that time.

The reason was that I will come in and make changes to the height map before I'm finished with it and I'll determine then what needs smoothed and where.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Ratzki]

I am having a bit of a tough time with water on my maps. Any chance on you showing us how you deal with a map that has a small stream on it.

[Mad Russian]

I'm not the water guy. I'll see if I can get Rick to show you how he does it. So far, I've only done one map with any water on it and that was for a small stream.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

The first thing I want to do is to go to the village and smooth where the houses will sit. This ensures that the houses sit flat on the ground. That no corner is dug into the ground while another corner is floating in the air.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

This screen shot shows both the size of the brushes I've selected and the size of the area that will be affected on the map using those.

You can see that I've adjusted the map by holding down the shift key while rolling my mouse wheel to get the amount of combination terrain map and height map that I can see where each fits with the other.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Once I level the village area I'll move on to drive my roads.

Here are four issues with my roads in red and what I did to correct the issue in yellow.

1) The elevation changes right at the road. The elevation needs to be moved back a bit from the road. Roads are made as flat as possible and rarely on sloping incline.

2) The slope is too close to the road. I want to move it back a little to smooth out the road.

3) This road intersection has 3 different heights coming into it. That needs to be moved back and elevations smoothed out some. Going from lighter to darker and not just from light to dark.

4) Four terrain elevations do not need to come together right in the middle of a road.

To use the level feature you put your mouse pointer over a shade of gray on the map. You hold the left mouse button down over that color and you drag the mouse where you want that elevation to be put on the map.

I only level roads and areas where I will put buildings the rest of the map I smooth until I get it the way I want it.



Good Hunting.

MR

[Ratzki]

Even a bit of a look at how you did the small stream would be good.

[Mad Russian]

We're talking about doing a Pictorial Tutorial just on water. Basic water is simple though. You put it on the map like all the other textures.

When I finish tutorial, if Rick hasn't started the water tutorial, I'll start it. He's away from his home computer at the moment so it might be a few days before you see anything on water. I want to complete this basic map tutorial before going onto another.

Good Hunting.

MR

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

We're talking about doing a Pictorial Tutorial just on water. Basic water is simple though. You put it on the map like all the other textures.

When I finish tutorial, if Rick hasn't started the water tutorial, I'll start it. He's away from his home computer at the moment so it might be a few days before you see anything on water. I want to complete this basic map tutorial before going onto another.

Good Hunting.

MR

I'll be away from my desk computer for another 2-3 weeks probably. But I'll start a thread on water in maps, and my internet connectivity is pretty spotty. But Mobius has also done a lot of work with rivers in his maps, so he might be able to answer some questions.

Thanks
Rick

[sztartur2]

Mad Russian can you extend the tutorial to add how to do tracks and poles properly?

[sevenpointsix2]

Can you please give some tips on placing visually linked structures like bridge sections, fences, railroad tracks, etc.. I can do it, but since there isn't a "snap fit" feature or a WYSIWYG edit display in MM (just the viewer) it takes a very long time to accurately line up these objects so as not to have any gaps and/or overlapping. - Thanks

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: sevenpointsix2

Can you please give some tips on placing visually linked structures like bridge sections, fences, railroad tracks, etc.. I can do it, but since there isn't a "snap" fit feature or a WYSIWYG edit display (just the viewer) in MM it takes a very long time to accurately line up these objects with no gaps and/or overlaying. - Thanks

You do it in scene edit, where there are special tools to do this (like clone position & rotation) then after you are happy with their 3D representation you save the map and then back import into MM.

S

[sevenpointsix2]

Thanks Stridor, I was trying to use the mouse to move objects around and didn't realize (D'OH! ) that it used keyboard commands. Serves me right for not reading the "whole" instruction manual first.

Much appreciated ... ... brewskies on me!