A Land Far Away

OK, so I've decided to share some of my experience in area building with the rest of you ingrates.

First things first, the NWN2 Toolset is more like a graphics design package than an area builder, especially when it comes to exterior areas. There are many things to consider such as bloom settings, walkmesh pathing, shadowing and texturing that I imagine for many people are novel when first opening the toolset. I'll try to dispell some of the myths and give some pointers on how to best utilise (in my opinion) this powerful tool.

To begin with I'm going to work through three types of terrain common to the Forgotten Realms setting. Though in each tutorial I'll show a different type of area, the tricks and methods used can be combined to create all manner of regions for players to enjoy.

PRIMER
Its vital that you know what you are going to build. This might sound obvious, but you need more than a vague idea of what an area is going to be before you begin buiding it, you need to decide things like size, major features, is the area likely to see combat, what will the lighting settings be?

Without this you won't stand a chance of achieving the full potential of any exterior area. You should know, before you even open the toolset, in your imagination what an area is going to look like.

The three things I most often see missing in area building not directly conected to appearance are walkmesh pathing ,elevation and line of sight.

Pathing: The AI uses routines to find a path to any target, these are made "instantly" every 6 seconds (one combat round). If the AI cant find a path to a target or destination, it will look for another one until it finds one that is valid.
The AI will not "wait" if one creature is blocking the quickest route, it will send the NPC onto the next available route and it will then not recalculate a new path for the NPC until one combat round later, by which time the NPC may have lost two or more combat rounds bimbling about when it should be fighting. This is very important to consider as XP awards and CR ratings are based on the creature having some for of common sense that NWN2's AI routines can't simulate. Its up to us as the area builders to give it a helping hand.

With this in mind, there should be NO place in your area where the walkmesh is too narrow for two medium size creatures to fit through simultaneously. I'll demonstrate this in the tutorials.


Elevation: By default, the player can only look up whilst in character drive mode, this camera mode limits the players view in other ways though. It is also unlikely the camera will ever be focused "up" by default. This means any hostile NPCs on a steep elevation that the player can not see on screen will target and attack the PC before the PC has a chance to react. This might seem reasonable enough as the NPCs "surprise" the PC(s) but it passes an unfair advantage to the NPC in that the NPC will automatically attack any PC that comes into its perception range irresepective of elevation differences.

Its tempting for some to create very steep, almost vertical slopes. This should be avoided for two reasons. Firstly, its unrealistic. Slopes over 1:2 are pretty rare in nature and normally collapse through errosion in a very short timeframe. Secondly, it prevents PC's seeing up the slope, but does not affect the AI as the AI routines do not take into account the slope of terrain in any way. So an NPC on top of a slope could fire a crossbow at the PC, but the PC would have difficulty targetting and firing back at the NPC.

Line Of Sight: Line of sight in this example means the line of sight available to the player in the game client, this is very different from line of sight calculated for NPCs. Too much foligae, smoke, etc will mean a PC can not see an NPC to target them, whilst the NPC is again unaffected and can target the PC. When considering this you should also bear in mind the objects around the PC, avoid where possible "boxing in" a location on three sides or leaving only a very narrow entry to an otherwise unaccesible location. This is because the player client camera can not exist within an area of placeable or terrain walkmesh (I'm sure youve all experienced "camera chop" when the camera whips between zoom and close up as the PC moves about). This is builder error and not a game engine error, its avoidable if you use non-static placeables to block movement rather than allowing the placeable to cut the walkmesh during baking.

One other thing to mention before we begin is the difference between placeables and environment objects. Environment objects are a converted placeable that is to all intents and pruposes just a graphic, it hase no "physical" presence within the game's physics engine. This is great for cutting down on module size and server load, but carries a few drawbacks. The Environment object may not fade correctly when blocking camera view and environment objects do not grant PCs a bonus for hiding in shadows (a PC or NPC gets a bonus to hide checks if they are in the shadow of a placeable object) as this is calculated using an objects C1 collision boundary, and environment objects have no C1 collision boundary. Environment objects should only really be used outside the occlusion grid or towards the centre of other wise inaccesible locations.

TUTORIAL 1 : FORESTS

Forests and wooded areas are a popular above ground adventure location, from the depths of the ancient High Forest to well tended and open parklands.

Remember what we said in the primper, know what you're going to build. For this example We're going to build a small area of temperate deciduous woodland. This is seasonal woodland where the trees loose their foliage during winter. It is caracterised by dense undergrowth, trees spaced in clumps and lots of deadfall.

Note that throughout the tutorials I have used the terrain colour tool to black out the occulsion grid for ease of viewing, dont do this when you build areas for play!

1.Lets begin. I'm sure we've all seen this before, the wonderful flat grid full of TT_GG_Grass_19 :



2.We have to loose the default grass 19 texture, it's far too green for anything other than an acid dream. Replace it all using the texture swapper, I've gone for TT_GG_Grass_23.

Now we need to loose the "flatness". No ground in nature is ever perfectly flat, to add some unevenness to the ground I simply select the raise tool on medium with a strength of 10% (Size 6, Outer 6, Strength 10%) and drag it quickly across the area in wavy lines, crossing each other. I then repeat this process with a small brush (size 1, Outer 3, Strength 10%).



The result is very subtle, but its important we do it now rather than later.

3.Now to add some tree's, we need a mix of large and small trees, for this exmaple I'll place one large tree with a cluster of a few smaller, younger trees around it. The toolset renderer is very different from the in game renderer, so I normally place a human sized creature to give me some idea of "scale".

Because I am making a deciduous woodland, I have to make sure I only place deciduous trees. For my main tree I'm going to use an English Oak and my smaller ones will be silver birches (white birches to the Americans). I'm using these because this is a forest type I commonly see around me, so I know what it should look like.



4.The Oak is smaller than the birches, and to my eye the birches are far to large compared to the human model. So next we have to scale up the Oak to x,y,z 1.5 and scale down the birches to x,y,z 0.7 (you can find these values in the properties window under the appearance tab), I have also changed the Random Seed values of the 4 briches so that they arent clones of each other.



5.We now have the basic sctructure of the area, with terrain mesh in place (albeit a very basic one) and some trees to base our woodland round.

The game engine renders shadows farily well, but it can be best to give it a helping hand by "painting in" shadows where they would natturally occur.
Using the colour with a brush setting of 1,15,50% cover the entire area in a patchy covering of RGB 198,156,109 (light brown), this darkens the ground and kills the glaring green that all the grass textures seem to have. Then under each tree using the same brush apply a single dot of RGB 75,75,75 (dark Grey) this the shadow of the tree canopy.



For now, we'll focus on the base of the oak, but the following steps should be applied to the base of all the trees in the area.

7:Broad leaf trees such as Oaks have large, horizontally expanding root systems (in general). Normally this causes the ground around the base of a large tree to be lower than the surroungin ground as the tree draws water and so the soil contracts. The large canopy of a broadleaf tree also stops light getting to the ground below it, and so by a combination of choking leaf litter and lack oflight, kills most ground cover plants immediately around its base.

Because we have placed a dark shadow dot where the trees trunk is, we can do these steps with the trees themselves hidden. Turn off trees in the show/hide drop down. We can also now delete our reference human figure.

Using the lower terrain tool, with settings of 1,15,50%, quickly lower a depression centered on the base of the trunk, for smaller trees (such as the birches) use lower tool settings of 1,10,30%.

Now we need to replace the grass texture under the trees themselves. First select a texture that looks like leaf litter, I went for TT_GJ_Jungle_08, Using the default medium brush settings (6,6,50%) paint some dead ground around the base of each tree, then change the brush settings to (1,3,25%) and expand this out in irregular strokes to break up the outline. Fianlly using the brush settings of (1,3,75%) add some dots of our original base texture of TT_GG_Grass_23 to further break it up.

The result should be something like this



8. Because we lowered the terrain, our trees will now be floating. Turn show/hide trees back on, select the trees and lower them all (hold Alt_left mouse and move mouse to raise/lower quickly). For good measure height lock the trees so they wont automatically jump back to the terrain level if we change it in furture. Height lock is very useful and can be found under properties on the Misc tab.

Our forest is looking much more realistic now, but its not quite there yet.

Next we are going to simulate ground cover. Ground cover is made up of low plants that grow on the forest floor, it's important to remember that it cant normally grow directly under the trees as they block the light it needs.

To simulate ground cover, we're going to use 4 methods.

First is terrain colour. Our ground cover willl grow best where there is both water and light, so we can help ourselves out by painting these area a richer green.Use the terrain colour tool with settings of (2,2,30%) and colour RGB 89,133,39 (Olive Drab). The greenest areas will be lower lying (excluding where we lowered the ground around our tree trunks - the trees have all the water here) and away from leaf cover, so using fast, irregular stokes paint these areas green.



9: Next we need to break up the ground on less fertile areas, to do this select a texture that is less grassy than our base of TT_GG_Grass_23, I went for TT_GG_Grass_22 just above it, using the texture tool with settings of 2,3,50% paint the raised areas of our area with this texture in irregular patches. Then change the brush settings to 2,2,25% and soften the edges of the patches.



10:To complete our ground cover, we're going to use a mixture of trees and grass.

First, place tree ground cover. Found under Blueprints/Trees/Shrubs the holly, boxwood and fern are ideal for this. Place hollies and boxwoods in clumps in areas you have painted with TT_GG_Grass_22, and ferns in the lower lying, greener areas. Try to keep them in clumps rather than a general spread.
Next, paint grass in the areas in between, avoid the dead areas under the trees and with denser grass on greener ground. I used AG_Grass_03, AG_Grass_04 and AG_Weeds_05 with brush settings of (2,2,20%).



11:Finally, before we bake the area, use the walkmesh cutter tool (found under Blueprints/Triggers/Empty) to cut around the base of our tree trunks and aounrd any deeper areas of scrub. Bake the area and its done.

You could make your area denser, or sparser, add dead wood or some rocks, but the basics would remain the same.

Final image rendered in game qith default lighting settings.

2: ROADS

Roads are everywhere, and feature in many areas, wether its grand paved highways or simple packed dirk tracks.

We're going to look at these two examples, paved, metalled trade roads and the packed earth roads and tracks that connect less well travelled or less wealthy areas.

Paved, or mettaled roads, are not simply slabs laid down on top of raw ground, if built like this they would sink and break up in a few weeks after being used by heavy wagons and traffic. Roads such as this were historically built raised with a ditch running down each edge to drain off rain water.

Continuing our vein of realism, we'll try and make something that looks like it could actually function as a road.

1:Our first step, as before is to replace TT_GG_Grass_19 with a better texture, again I've gone for TT_GG_Grass_23, but use whatever suits the area your road is running through.

Next, we need to build our cross section of the road. By Default the terrain is set at a level of 0, we want a long raised strech and the best tool to use for this is the flatten tool. The road needs to be wide enough to allow traffic to travel, if you're unsure of scale, put a wagon placeable down to use as a reference, a main highway should be wide enough to allow two wagons to pass each other.

I decided I needed a road 12 units wide, so using flatten brush settings of size 12, outer 6, height 1 and strength 100% draw a straight (ish) line across the area.

Next to place ditches by the side of the road I use the lower tool with default small brush settings, run this quickly up and down the edge of the road to create a dpression running either side of it.



2:Next, pick a cobble texture for the road surface, I picked TT_GS_Cobblestone_05, paint this down the top of the road area using settings of 12,2,100% allowing the texture to bleed over the edge onto the slope slightly (dont worry about the sharp edges, we will deal with those later).

Pick a dirt texture for the base of the ditches, I used TT_GR_Desert_05. Paint a strip down the base of the ditches using settings of 2,2,100% then belend the edges into the surrounding texture using a brush of 0,3,75% and then 0,3,50%.

The result should look something like this.



3: Lets concentrate on the road surface.

It needs a curve, with the centre slightly raised. To do this use the raise tool with settings of 1,12,5% and run the brush up the centre of the road surface, the effect only needs to be very slight.

Then add curbs to the road edges. Ideal placeables for this are the PLC_MC_StonePlaneXX appearance types. If these don't appear in your blueprints list you can set one up by putting down any placeable object, then under the appearance tab select the appearance drop down and scroll until you find PLC_MC_StonePlane02, this is the longest.

Now give the placeable the following settings:
Change the Tint to whichever you like.
Uncheck the Static tickbox
Check the Walkable tickbox

Place the curb along one edge of the road surface, once the first one is in place, check the heightlock tickbox. You can then use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste multiple curbs until the edges of your road are fully covered.



To complete the road surface, use the same dirt texture we used on the ditches, and add some irregular patches to it, concentrating in places that would see the most traffic. Use a low brush setting of around 2,2,30% to avoid swamping the cobbles. Then add a very few patches using setting os 1,2,75%.

Repeat this process using the original grass texture along less well travelled parts of the road (such as the raised centre).



Our next step is to add some colouring to the surfaces. The dirt in the ditches is too yellow and the road is too clean.

Using the terrain colour cool with settings of 3,3,25% and RGB 166,124,82 paint a strip of brown down each ditch. Then using settings of 2,2,10% do the same in patches down the sides of the road. To complete the colouring use 3,3,25% and RGB 89,133,39 to add green patches in the deeper sections of the ditches.



Next we will have to adjust the surface mesh so that PCs can walk off the road. Because of the ditches some of the sections of the road edge may be too steep to walk on, you can see this by turning on the "surface mesh" option on the top bar. Any triangles outlined in yellow will be baked as un-walkable when the area is fianlly baked. Using the raise and lower tools with settings of 1,2,10% tweak the mesh surface until all the yellow triangles are gone.

Our road is now nearly complete, all we need to do is add some decoration.

Select the water tool and set water height to -1, select a greenish water colour and paint water down the bottom of the ditches. Too add a bit of extra blending paint a dark brown in areas with water using the colour tool to make the ditches appear muddy.

Using the methods in the previous tutorial, place some trees along the edge of the ditch, but once placed lower them so that the trunk is completely below ground. This will create a "hedge".

Fianlly, add some weeds to the ditches using either grass or tree objects.



And in game with regular lighting settings:

2:Roads Continued

Onto Packed Dirt roads. These are not simple rough dirt tracks, they are made by packing and hammering either the ground that is already present or shipping in gravel and clay and packing that into a road surface. The result can be as hard as concrete as long as it does no get too much rain but in winter they can turn into an impassable mud bath. The packing was historically done with jackhammers - huge wooden mallets lifted vertically by two or more men by using simple levers (jacks) to puch up the hammer then releasing it so it dropped onto the ground.

Dirt roads tend to be lower than the surrounding terrain as a result of the initial packing and the succesive passage of wagons and livestock. They are cheap to make, but require constant maintenance or they quickly become over grown and impassable.

Whereas paved roads had ditches to drain rain water away, dirt roads almost always had hedges planted along them, the root systems of the hedges served to draw up water running from the surrounding ground and drain the road.

1:Again, to begin with, get rid of the hatefull grass_19, once again I replaced it with TT_GG_Grass_23.

To create our road surface this time, we need to lower the path the road will take. Again we are going to make a large trade road, so it needs to be wide enough to allow two wagons to pass.

Using the lower terrain tool with settings of 6,12,10% create a depression following the path of your road. Next, paint a dirt texture down the length of this depression, I have used TT_GR_Desert_05 again, using settings of 15,3,100%. this will leave very hard edges but that does not matter for now.



2:Blend the edges of the road to the surrounding terrain, to do this use brush settings of 2,2,75% using the original texture (in this case TT_GG_Grass_23), try to only just cover the edge of the dirst texture. Next use a brush of 2,2,50% and blend the edge a little more, then again with a strength of 25% and finally 10%. When using the 25% and 10% brushes add some fairly random patches of grass texture to the surface of the road itself.



3:The dirt texture is far too yellow. As we did when building the forest area, add a layer of patchy brown to it using settings of 6,6,25% and RGB 198,156,109. Then 3,3,50% with the same colour and paint an irregular, wavy line down the centre and in the lower parts of the road surface.

Then, to add some variation, use a mud or dirt texture to paint some patches on the road surface. I used TT_GD_Dirt_02 with settings of 2,2,50%. Then 2,2,25% and finally 2,2,10% to blend. As TT_GD_Dirt_02 is darker than TT_GR_Desert_05 I tried to stick to depressions in the road where moisture would gather.



4:Finally, the road surface is a bit uneven, to break it up a little I ran the lower brush with settings of 2,2,10% over it in irregular strokes a few times. Then using the methods in tutorial 1, place a groundcover hedge along the road edges.



And rendered in game with normal lighting settings

3: Edges.



Edges. In NWN it was avoidable but understandable to have hard edges on everything, but given what the NWN2 toolset can do, it should be a crime.

There are two main sources of this hate crime in NWN2 building, placeable edges and texture edges. We'll adress texture edges first.

Lets look at the texturing tool



1: Settings this section affect the brush size and how strongly it applies a texture

2: This scetion is where you choose your texture to apply. You can only have 6 texutre per terrain tile (the section outlined in yellow when you select terrain). However you should hardly ever need to use more than 3 or 4.

3:The size setting determines the radius of the brush where the full strength set in 5 will apply.

4:Outer is a radius added on top of size in which the texture applied will beldn from the setting in 5 to 0%, but it is not particularly reliable as the longer you hold the mouse button down the more texture is applied to this area until eventually it matches the area defined in 3.

5:This is the pressure ofthe brush, for example if set to 50% then any terrain under that covered by the area set in 3 will be a 50/50 blend of the original texture and the one you are applying

6:these four buttons choose the default brushes of small, medium, large and gargantuan. If you change one of these while toolsetting then select another brush size the toolset will save your brush settings until it is reset, so you can use these to save brush sizes you use often.

For this example we are going to blend a grass texture into a dirt texture.

We're going to blend TT_GG_Grass_23 into TT_GD_Dirt_31. I have covered the area in a snow texture to better highlight the blend.

Heres our start point, two dots of each texture, with a brush setting of 5,5,100%



If we try to use the toolsets outer edge blending to combine the two textures, we will not get a good blend, this is because the outer edge does not apply textures evenly:

Brush settings of 5,20,100%



This kind of rough blend would be ok outside the occlusion grid, or in an area where a PC wouldnt get close to it, but it still looks like two big blobs blurring into each other.

A better way to acheive an even blend is to paint one texture at 100% right up to the boundary of the next. Here TT_GG_Grass_23 runs right up to TT_GD_Dirt_31 with a brush setting of 10,5,100%:



Now we have TT_GG_Grass_23 as our base, we can blend TT_GD_Dirt_31 into it. We do this by sucessively lowering the value of strength from to 100%, first to 80% and placing another blob of texture that barely overlaps the first:



Then we repeat the process using 65%, 50%, 40%, 30%, 20%, 10% and 5%:



Finally, to complete the illusion, we need to alter the terrain. It isnt enough for the texture to change, we have to show why it is changing. In this case you could slightly raise the area covered by TT_GD_Dirt_31 so it looks like a raised patch of dead grass.

Here we have created a smooth, even blend of textures, but of course in reality when toolsetting we rarely want this. Using smaller brush sizes and irregular edge shapes can create a much more convincing looking terrain.

3:Edges Continued

The second source of hard edges is placeables. When first putting down the bones of an area its sensible to keep the terrain as flat and even as possible, but leaving it like this can make it look unfinished.

Heres our example, its an extreme case but it serves to highlight the point. A Wharehouse in a grassy area with a path leading to it:



We'll focus on the edge of the warehouse against the grass.

1:First of all, check position lock and height lock on the placeable, these can be found under properties/misc tab and will prevent the placeable moving around in the event we alter the underlying terrain or misclick it.

The game engine renders its own shadows, but they can be a bit hit and miss and most people playing on a multiplayer server will have them turned down to minimum if not turned off altogether, but as builders we can cheat a bit to simulate shadow.

Using the terrain colour tool with settings of 2,6,50% and an RGB colour of 75,75,75 draw along the edge of the placeable, this simulates a shadow cast by the building.



2:Now we need to remove the "hard edge". Straight lines dont often happen in the real world, even more so before mass manufacturing and mechanical construction. Cetainly in the Forgotten Realms there are times when we'll want a perfectly straight, square edge but in most cases we don't.

To break the straight edge, use the terrain raise tool with a low setting (2,2,10% will do) and pull up some of the terrain along the wall to create an irregular join to the ground.



3:The plants along the edges of buildings tend to be affected, either for worse or better depending on surrounding conditions (if the edge is along a well travelled road, plants may do better in the shelter of the wall for example) in this case we'll assume our grass is having a harder time by the wall, so we paint a dirt texture up against the wall edge. Using the method above, we blend this into the surrounding terrain texture.

We also paint a light green in the areas that are more lush, lower areas were water can get trapped against the wall



Now for a finishing touch, we can add some tree object shrubs and grass to break up the edge some more.



Onto the front of the warehouse, and the path.

We can treat the path as we did the packed dirt road in the previous example, but this time around we'll make it muddier using the same method we used to add water to the ditches in the paved road example.

First blend the edges of the track into the surrounding grass texture.
Then lower the terrain under the remaining dirt texture using the lower tool on a low setting (2,6,10% should do)



Now use the lower tool again, but with a smaller outer radius (1,2,10%), then colour the path a patchy brown.

Add some green tinted water at a height that allows only a small amount to appear in the depressions of the path.



And finally, blend the sharp edges of the warehouse as we did on the long side against the grass



The warehouse now looks like it belongs where we have put it.

Sandermann,
Thanks for sharing your tips and tricks, you've got some good looking stuff going on there. I must, I'm afraid, be Mr Pedantic and take issue with some of the satements in your preamble.

1) The camera doesn't go below horizontal. It does in Character Mode. I'm forever getting overexcited moving the viewpoint and end up looking up my own hose.

2) The camera doesn't go over an area with no walkmesh. Yes it does. Think of a bridge over a river - the camera still revolves around you when it's over the water. It probably doesn't go inside objects like buildings, it's true, which causes "choppiness". If you know how to fix that I'd be grateful to know.

3) Use non-static placeables rather than environment objects. That goes against the prevailing orthodoxy of converting everything you can to environment objects, which I suppose I take on trust. However I can think of reasons against, notably an increase in bake time for your area, an increase in processing time when playing as each object is "seen" by the engine and the simple fact that placeables just don't bake right sometimes.

Sorry to appear negative in a very positive thread,
ingratefully,
Teric

Awesome tutorial with some very helpful tips. Thanks Sand!

Teric:

1)I had forgotten that, as I've not used character mode for a long time. I still think its best to avoid steeps slopes as character mode is limited in other viewpoint respects and a slope thats too steep still doesnt, imo, look very good.

2)You're right again of course, I think what I was aiming at is the camera can't exist inside placeable's cut walkmesh, when referring to boxing an area in. Sorry I was rushing and making the the tutorials at the same time as the posts.

3)

Environment objects should only really be used outside the occlusion grid or towards the centre of other wise inaccesible locations.

Use Environment objects where you can, but if in doubt I think you're better to use a placeable.

I'll amend the tutorials for the first two points.

Great Tutorial. We can always learn something from everyone, and I'll put those tips into practice. I do edges of roads slightly differently:

Paint the road at 100%
-Lower it in the middle ( outer of about 3-4, 10%)

-Use the grass texture along the side of the road to 'scribble' down the border between the grass and road, corssing the interface between the two ( inner 1, no outer, 75%)

- Do as above with a gravel texture, but not covering all of the grass previously scribbled down ( takes practice), and also scribble the gravel tecture along the length of the road very fast to leave gravel patches on the road.

(this give the effect of wear areas in the grass along the edge of the road, and grass encroaching onto it)

Use the terrain colour to darken the middle area of the road
(say grey at 10%.)

Throw a few bits of grass along the edge and some plants

This is the method I used for the new Silvy Surrounds, might not be historically acccurate, but it looks nice. To me, those ditches along the side of the right are a fraction too large, though for a major highway, I think that would be the way to go.

On Placeables, it is always nice to some placeables for chrs to hide behind, if only to give them time to quaff a healing potion out of sight of the archers when they are at 1 hp. I've had a chr die that way, when an arrow went right through the boulder!

Wagon ruts for dirt roads!

Thanks for sharing Sander...with this, I might actually start building exteriors myself! I've only had experience with interior areas, it would be a nice change of pace for me. Know that at least one builder will benefit from your experience.
'

Excellent work sand.

Just wanted to draw your attention to some vids i uploaded a while ago that i found on nwvault, there's some pretty decent stuff to pick up from this.

http://www.youtube.com/user/zicada1#p/u/18/w-NskwAtu4k

zicada wrote:Excellent work sand.

Just wanted to draw your attention to some vids i uploaded a while ago that i found on nwvault, there's some pretty decent stuff to pick up from this.

http://www.youtube.com/user/zicada1#p/u/18/w-NskwAtu4k

Dude! I have got to get myself a tablet.... that looks soooooo much easier than a mouse

Plus I totally didn't know that you could base colour different tiles!. Gave me an idea to do a Yatt area several times with different base colours, use Tanitas terracoppa to add different tiles in, then blend using the brush, to do the same thing you did, but with a procedural texture base before going to detailed texturing. Think I'll give it a go!

{edit} Zic, what hardware are you using? A tablet PC with a touchscreen and stylus, or a PC with a seperate tablet and stylus attached as an input device

Sand:

Would you mind if we shared these with The Citadel School of Persistent World Building?

Some great guides you've put here.

ElCadaver wrote:

zicada wrote:Excellent work sand.

Just wanted to draw your attention to some vids i uploaded a while ago that i found on nwvault, there's some pretty decent stuff to pick up from this.

http://www.youtube.com/user/zicada1#p/u/18/w-NskwAtu4k

Dude! I have got to get myself a tablet.... that looks soooooo much easier than a mouse

Plus I totally didn't know that you could base colour different tiles!. Gave me an idea to do a Yatt area several times with different base colours, use Tanitas terracoppa to add different tiles in, then blend using the brush, to do the same thing you did, but with a procedural texture base before going to detailed texturing. Think I'll give it a go!

{edit} Zic, what hardware are you using? A tablet PC with a touchscreen and stylus, or a PC with a seperate tablet and stylus attached as an input device

The person in the video isn't me ! I just found the vids and uploaded them for easy access.