Tutorials:Creating A World That Doesn't Suck - Painting

Terrain painting in Create a World is, in its most basic form, similar to terrain painting in-game; you use brushes, size, opacity and technique to get the look that you find aesthetically pleasing. However, unlike terrain painting in-game, painting in Create a World is extremely time-consuming. Terrain painting and sculpting basically make or break a world so this section is extremely important to you.

Looking around, a lot of world builders will use the default paints that CAW sets you up with. That bright green grass and the grey, repetitive rock. This, however, is another way to make your world "suck". By using these, not only are you not taking full advantage of Create a World's customisation options, but you're making a world that looks like it has just come out of the sculpting stage and all that you have done is press auto-paint.

*Note* - You can use Auto-paint, but if you have any consious thought of how you want your world to look, you will only use it to get a feel and understanding of the terrain, and where your cliffs and grass are supposed to go.

Terrain painting is one of those few techniques that can never really be taught utterly and completely, as it relies too heavily on user input, and if you compare two worlds, by two different users, you will see that the styles are extremely different, and that it is rather difficult to copy a style. You can merge ideas, styles and techniques, but to actually make a carbon copy of someone's style is difficult for the best painters.

The Tools

To really understand these tools, you need to view each as a seperate application. If you try and understand them all together, for one, this section would be very confusing, and for another, you would not learn all that much about what each tool can do on its own. There is a softer version of each tool listed below, that I didn't include descriptions of, because they function exactly the same as the main tools, except with lower fallouts and opacities. This effect can be achieved just as nicely with the regular brushes, so it doesn't really matter which way you get there, as long as you get the desired end result.

Flatten

This is probably the most important tool, as you will tend to place lots on a flat surface, so as to allow users to place custom lots without distorting lot edges. To use this tool, you simply click, hold down, and drag over where you want your flat area to be. Generally, you only need to use this tool with Fallout and Opacity set to 100. This is because even if you get your flat edges done, this tool doesn't make the cliffs for you.

Hill

This tool is used, mainly, for making hills. However, if you use it properly, you can make cliffs with it, as well as flowing fields. This tool will mainly be used to create texture, where previously, it was smooth. It is used

Smooth

Smooth is very useful in conjunction with most tools, for the simple fact that it helps to lessen angles that the other tools create in the terrain.

Fallout, Opacity and Size

The secret to both successful sculpting and terrain painting is heavily reliant on the fallout, opacity and size sliders that are located underneath the terrain painting and sculpting panels, on the right-hand-side of the CAW window.

• Fallout, which is basically how your terrain meets up with the rest of the terrain, is the bottom most slider. The higher you have this set, the more jagged your terrain paint will be when you paint over something to blend it in. Generally, unless you are erasing an entire area of painting, you will have this set to below 50 because if you do not, the brush will leave traces of the size of the brush where you are painting. In other words, if you zoom out after using a high fallout brush to blend, you will see big circles of paint, with blocks of the paint underneath showing through. This happens regardless of shade of the paint, because of the way the brush works.
• Opacity is exactly the same as opacity in Photoshop or Paint.net. It allows you to blend terrain paints directly with others by lowering the rate at which they are applied when you click your mouse. Lower setting equals lower opacity, which means a better chance that it will blend properly. For darker colors, you need to have it set slightly higher, but brighter colors will need nearly 1% opactity.
• Size is probably the easiest to master, and is definately the simplest to explain. Size is the slider you use to get a smaller or larger brush size. When you load CAW, your size will be set to 15, which is a decent size for regular painting, but when you want to add secondary and detail paints to cliffs, mountains, beaches, creeks, etc, you might be better off using lower settings.

Importing Terrain Paints

This is a feature that you will use a lot. If you use custom paints, your world will look unique and whatever paints you choose will add to the overall feel and theme that you are trying to portray. To import terrain paints, click the terrain tab on your Utilities panel and then:

• Click 'Add Layer'.

Choosing Colors

Choosing colors is extremely important, as not only can they make or break a world, but whichever colors you pick will decide what mood your world provides to downloaders, whether you want a happy, quaint town, or a depressing, grungy city.

• Happy, quaint towns would generally, if you want to portray a happy place, use lighter, more saturated colors, and, in a lot of cicumstances, brighter colors. A vibrant mix of greens is what you might pick for your surrounding hill and valley colors, with a light and playful tone for the beach and a brown or a greyish brown for cliffs. Although cliff color sometimes depends on what sort of climate or area of the world your town is based in, if any.
• In a depressing and grungy city, however, you would use darker, less saturated colours, like olives and tans, and the cliffs might be a darker, maybe even mossy grey tone.
• As a last example, an isolated desert town would be mostly sand, and you would not see bright green grass surrounding it, because then it wouldn't be a desert. You might see patches of olivey looking grass, probably a lot of deader grass. You would also see a lot of rock and dirt mixed into this. To get that isolated feeling, you need to surround the town by either expanses of nothing, or big cliffs of grey, red, orange rock.

Though you have to remember that the above examples are just that; examples. There is no rule against using other sorts of schemes, but if you are trying to make a world that makes people feel things, you need to use the correct colors because colors portray emotion.

Tips from Creators

Terrain painting is a skill that very few people have the drive and talent to master. This is why I have compiled a section of information on various techniques and styles that a couple of creators, as well as myself, use while terrain painting.

armiel

First thing after starting making a new world is, that select my paints and place them in order. In most worlds I do my own recolours of EAs paints, cause I simply don't like their shades. Usually my first layer is the base grass, the darkest one of my choices. After that I place my sand, then rocky paints, dirts, and finally grasses, lightest as last.

Paints

• Rocks/Cliffs: I usually use 2-3 rocky paints in addition to dirt and some grasses all blended together. Darker rock in shadow part, lighter in highlights.
• Hills/Grass: I normally have 3 grass paints, dark, light, and detailed ones. I blend them together to create an image of live grass.
• Beaches/Creeks/Rivers: Depending on an area, I use one sand, blended to dirt and different grasses.

Blending

• Size = 5-10
• Opacity = 5-10
• Fallout = 0

I have a weird, sort of blotchy painting style. For mountains and cliffs I start with the darkest paint, brush 10-10-0, and paint all the shadow parts. Then I add more detail with a lighter or different looking rock, same brush settings. Then, depending on a case, I use either sand or a very light rock to paint the highlights. At this point the paint usually looks horrible.

Then I start the actual paint work. I lower my brush setting to 5-5-0, and take the darkest paint again, and paint over the shadow parts, blending against the other paints. Then the lighter rock, painting over the whole thing, holding mouse down. I only click on point that I feel need more defined detail. Then, depending on results, I blend more of those same paints in, until I like the result. In some cases I also use dirt paint to create different shades to the rocks.

I do the grass and beaches pretty much the same way, blotches here and there and then just blending until the result is good. Then I add dirt under any vegetation.

Examples of TVRdesigns' painting style (click for full size).

TVRdesigns

I use a technique that is similar to armiel's as it tends to rely on very defined sculpting prior to the painting phase to get the gullies and rises in my cliffs and hills. Basically, darker paints are used for gullies and shading and lighter paints are for rises and parts where light hits the most.

Paints

• Rocks/Cliffs: I tend to use 4 rock textures, darker and lighter shades; sand, dirt and dead grass paints.
• Hills/Grass: Between 3 and 4 grass textures, darker and lighter shades, like the rock.
• Beaches/Creeks/Rivers: I have two different sand layers, and dead grass and dirt layers.

Blending

• Size = 3-10
• Opacity = 1-5
• Fallout = 0

I use these settings because I find them easier to work with and having to click more to get the blend looking good is better than it being too prominent. To set up to paint using my technique you have your base grass layer, then your rock paints, then your dirt and sand layers, then your other grass layers. Please note though that this way can get extremely complicated, especially when you want to add another color, as it might not blend with the others as well. So, to overcome this issue, you need to choose all of your paints before you start painting, and then experiment with their blending.