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

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Creating A World That Doesn't Suck

Planning | Compatibility | Basics | Roads and Sidewalks | The Grid | Lots | Buildings and Road Layouts | Sculpting | Objects, Bridges and Effects | Terrain Painting | Distant Terrain | CAW and S3PE | Custom Content | Glossary

Contents


CAW's Terrain Painting panel.

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.

What Does What?

To the right you will notice that the entire CAW panel for terrain painting is present in this tutorial. This is to make all of this easier for you to understand.

  • The first thing you will notice with this whole panel is the Layers box. This is your main area for choosing, renaming, selecting and applying terrain paints.
  • In the panel shown to the right, you can see that "grass_medium_base.dds(Lawn) is highlighted in blue. This means that this is the selected layer.
  • To make a layer active in the Layers panel just click on it.
  • The Add Layer button is also known as importing. This is explained further down.
  • Clear is used to clear all the paint that you have added to your map.
  • Below this is AutoPaint. Do NOT use this.
NO AUTOPAINT! (click for full size)

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.

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.

Basic Technique

Technique with painting is more a skill that a user has to develop over time. But rather than just shove you into it, below are some basic tips you can use to help get you started.


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.

TVRdesigns

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

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.

You can find me here.

armiel

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

*This section is written by armiel*

First thing I do when I start a new world is select my paints and place them in order. In most worlds I do my own recolours of EAs paints simply because I 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. I use darker rock in the shadowy parts and lighter rock as 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 with dirt and different grasses.

Blending

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

I have a quirky sort of painting style. I like to apply a base coat of shadows and highlights before blending the mid-tones on top. 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 and the same brush settings. Then, depending on the look I'm going for, 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 use the darkest paint again to go over the shadowy parts, blending against the other paints. Then the lighter rock, painting over the whole thing, holding mouse down. I only click on points that I feel need more refined 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.

You can find me here.

kiwi tea

File:TVRcaw kiwi teaterrainpaintExample1.jpg
Examples of kiwi_tea's painting style (click for full size).

*This section is written by kiwi_tea*

Before I do anything, I sort a palette for the world based on reference images. For Niua Simoa, those were photos I had of Tonga and Tahiti. For Riverblossom Hills those were images of the TS2 neighbourhood alongside images of farmland. It really depends on what I'm doing, but I consider returning to reference images over and over pretty essential. I don't try to copy these images, just capture something of their essence and colour scheme. I think carefully about the layering of the textures, and then add them in order - bottom texture to top texture.

Paints

  • Rocks/Cliffs: 2-6
  • Hills/Grass: 2-6
  • Beaches/Creeks/Rivers: 2-6

Blending

  • Size =
  • Opacity =
  • Fallout =

Bleh (Info on your actual painting style, how you use the brushes, short bursts, long clicks, etc. As well as layer organisations and all the other stuff in armiel's section. :) )

You can find kiwi_tea here.

jje1000

File:TVRcaw jje1000 teaterrainpaintExample1.jpg
Examples of jje1000's painting style (click for full size).

*This section is written by jje1000*

Bleh (Info about how you sculpt your terrain to work with your paints)

Paints

  • Rocks/Cliffs: (How many paints do you use for these areas? What type? Look at Armiel and mine for an example)
  • Hills/Grass: (How many paints do you use for these areas? What type? Look at Armiel and mine for an example)
  • Beaches/Creeks/Rivers: (How many paints do you use for these areas? What type? Look at Armiel and mine for an example)

Blending

  • Size =
  • Opacity =
  • Fallout =

Bleh (Info on your actual painting style, how you use the brushes, short bursts, long clicks, etc. As well as layer organisations and all the other stuff in armiel's section. :) )

You can find jje1000 here.

Ouerbacker

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

*This section is written by Ouerbacker*

Before I even start a world I look at pictures of areas that show a style I want to reproduce in CAW. I base my terrain's contour and paints on these pictures. Unlike Armiel and TVR my list of terrain paint layers is not very organized. This style of disorder bleads over into my techinque.

Paints

  • Rocks/Cliffs: I use anywhere from two to five textures for rock. Unlike Armiel and TVR I mix my rock textures together randomly until they look nice.
  • Hills/Grass: I use two to three textures for grass
  • Beaches/Creeks/Rivers: I use three textures for beaches . When making a creek I use whatever rock textures I am already using and one or two dirt textures.

Blending

  • Size = 3-20
  • Opacity = 2-15
  • Fallout = 0-20

Before I paint anything I sculpt out the area I plan to paint. After I am happy with the contour of my terrain I paint the areas that are meant to be rock with a single texture. This first layering of rock is very messy and imperfect. Once that is completed I touch up the edge of the rock with my base grass texture. After that is done I continue adding details to both the rock and grass until neither of them looks overly repetitive . At this point I add foilage in the grassy areas and paint a little dirt along the edge of the road. I use lots of short quick clicks for my terrain paint.

You can find Ouerbacker here.

Importing Terrain Paints

The 'Import Terrain' window (click for full size).

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'.
  • Select the '...' button next to the Texture text box and locate your terrain paint.
  • Once selected, press okay and name your new layer a unique name to make it easier to know what is what.
  • Lastly, you want to select your Terrain Sound. This is the sound that sims make when they walk on this surface. For instance, if your paint is a rock paint, you should select Rock 1 or Rock 2 and if your paint is a grass, you should select Lawn or Long Grass. Remember, these are just examples. There are other sounds you can use for these surfaces.
  • Select OK and now you're done.
Creating A World That Doesn't Suck

Planning | Compatibility | Basics | Roads and Sidewalks | The Grid | Lots | Buildings and Road Layouts | Sculpting | Objects, Bridges and Effects | Terrain Painting | Distant Terrain | CAW and S3PE | Custom Content | Glossary

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