Terraforming Tips?

[Starman_Omega 0]

When I look at all these city journal topics I always see beautifully carved rivers and deltas and mountains, so it looks perfect. how do you do it and what tools do you use?

[MrCinatit 30]

i personally use pretty much every tool out there, and am consistently changing the size of the tools (hint: in case you do not know, ctlr+(a number) will change the size of your terraforming tools), plus i zoom in at almost all levels.

to be honest, it takes a lot of experimentation. while using the mountain tool might seem obvious for making mountains, the cliff tool can be used to make especially ragged mountains, when used wisely. the erosion and soften tools can give your landscape a lot of personality.

when making rivers, i seem to lean towards the deep valley tool. if i am going to make a small pond, or an above surface lake with the rain tool, i use the shallow valley. but, the tools can even be interchangable in these cases.

i have also found that, personally, large cities are easier to work with than smaller and medium cities. yes, there is the lag issue. and, it gets worse when you develop cities. but, for pure terraforming pleasure and freedom, i find large cities offer the greatest flexability.

i also try not to make everything too perfect, nor make it look too planned. nature is not perfect, nor is it planned. yes, nature does follow rules - but many are broken, as well.

i also find i get a lot of inspiration from not only looking at terrafoming jobs in the city journals section, but taking trips via Google Earth.

the best suggestion i can give is to simply go wild with the terraforming tools. set up some experimental regions, just to practice with.

hope this helps, and don't be afraid to ask any other questions. hand-terraforming is that which gives me the most personal pleasure in this game - a fine tool, that.

[obliq 0]

Date: 1/27/2006 11:15:33 AM Author:Starman_Omega When I look at all these city journal topics I always see beautifully carved rivers and deltas and mountains, so it looks perfect. how do you do it and what tools do you use?

quote>

I haven't actually posted a CJ yet, however, that doesn't stop me from providing some input.

 

The most difficult aspect of creating terrain I have found is sea level. I create a rough of the landscape in a paint program (saved as a grayscale bitmap). I set the ground level at RGB(90, 90, 90) and move at 10 unit increments for each level in the terrain. 5 units would be fine also. Personally I would recommend smudging (if your paint program has that feature) to smooth out the grades instead of blurring.

 

Once imported you can clean it up with the terraforming tools. Use the big brush for large features (CTRL+5 to CTRL+9) and CTRL+2 or CTRL+3 for detail work and don't forget to zoom in to the highest or next highest level.

 

If you create a rough draft in a paint program it gives you something to follow when doing detail work in SC4s God Mode. I have found it difficult to create a river from scratch in zoom level 1 or 2.

 

Another thing I recommend is laying out a city plan in a paint program. Each pixel represents a grid square from SC4. I have found this very helpful in scaling out maps especially when creating a map from the real world.

[Starman_Omega 0]

Thanks alot for these tips, they are really helpful