posted 03-24-06 02:55 PM EDT (US)
The reason this thread was created was to inspire and increase the amount of eye-candiers and eye-candy being produced here at HG. In my opinion, AOE3H has some of the best designers out there, that are currently working on this game. So this guide is mainly for eye-candy, and pretty much eye-candy only, although the tips can be used in other areas. Note: It is not our intention to remake Reinfire’s excellent “Improving Your Mapping Skills” guide, but to expand on specific methods for creating great screen shots.
Don’t make it the end of the world if something isn’t just in the right spot. True, for eye-candy purposes, you want it to be in that Get to know all the objects in the objects list. If you know what objects are available in which category (nature, embellishment, units etc), it can save you much time in looking for that one specific object you want to place. Browsing the entire objects list often gives you ideas for your scenario. But there are things in the “all” category that aren’t in any other, so it’s good to keep that in mind. An example would be the SPC Blizzard. Keep playing around with your shot. Through just playing around and trying things out, you’ll both learn about some things in the editor, and make your shot look better. Also try to make your shot look unique. Do something to it that will make people’s jaws drop, and just say wow. Download and install Shaw’s HC Units and Buildings Mod. This mod will really help you out, if you want to make some good eye-candy. Specialized Tips There are many things that could be an answer for this one. It’s mainly up to you on what and how you do this one. These are just some possible tips to help you. Generally for what I do, I’ll just open up my place object and look around until I find something that looks interesting and work off that. If you want to do an ocean/port scene, then look at the ships, HC buildings and people, etc…. Everybody always loves a good natural scene. But everybody also likes a good city scene or an army scene. It’s up to you what you make your shot of, though. Ever see some screenshots, and they were draped in a warm yet, dark lighting that reminded you of a fond memory? That was probably caused by the effects of the lightings in the editor. The different lightings are crucial to what could make an awesome shot or a crappy one. Some are good for snowy scenes while others are for that all encompassing sunset. Below are a list of the different ones and what kind of scenes they’re good for, IMO. To access the lighting menu, go to the top bar on the editor and click on the light bulb. This will open the world lighting menu. In all, there are 67 different lightings. Note: I took these all through the same test and just wrote down comments I had for each one, but these may and probably will differ in your opinion. Skyboxes are a very interesting concept. Using them correctly can immediately differentiate a noob from well, not a noob eye-candy creator. There are only 2 skyboxes in the Editor. Both are found under embellishments. The first one, just called SPC skybox is a picture of the sky in the dark. The best lightings for it are cavelighting, minescene,spc14anight, and st_petersburg_night. When this one is used properly and creatively, it can make an amazing shot. The only problem with this one is that it is pretty small, and will usually require you to stack the skybox or just zoom in pretty far. But the skybox1 isn’t near as far. Example below: And then there is always the skybox1, which is a clip of the sky during the day. As with the night skybox, it can be used to make a piece of eye-candy a lot better and more interesting. This is also quite a bit bigger than the night skybox. Good lightings for this one are pretty much any lighting as long as it isn’t like a night scene. But using skyboxes well takes time, practice, and these few tips. Sometimes, you just can’t get that skybox to fit perfectly. You still can see black on the edges and sides. So first off, just try to zoom in or move forward. If that still doesn’t work, or you don’t like the way it looks, then you can change the landscape or stack skyboxes. By changing the landscape, I mean putting hills or raising the land in general in front of your skybox. Cliffs are a great tool to use if you are having this problem. What I usually do if I don’t want to add cliffs is click on the raise/lower elevation tool, and set my brush size to 30(it can be any size you want), and just raise the overall land either in front of or the land the skybox is actually on. Now a lot of people have been asking, “How do you stack skyboxes?” or “What do you mean by stacking skyboxes?” By stacking skyboxes, we are talking about having a skybox set where you want it, but it isn’t high enough, so we raise or cliff the land right behind it, and put a skybox on there. So let’s stack a skybox. I’ve found that it is best that you just make a few little cliffs with the desired height that you want to make the skybox be, then place the skybox near it. Then use your move object tool and move it on up the cliff. That seems to be the easiest and fastest way for me, but you can just directly place it on top of the cliffs, but for that perfection stuff, I like to place it on the ground first. Also, it helps if you rotate the skybox. To do this, click your move object button, and click on the desired skybox. Then, while pressing Control, use your arrow keys(left or right), and move it to the right spot. A warning on stacking skyboxes. Be careful on how you set the stacked skybox. Take the night skybox for example, if you place your first one, then stack your next one, but the stacked one is too low, you might wind up with two moons. So make sure that your skyboxes line up okay, and don’t contradict the other. If none of this works, then you should just take the shot anyways, open it up in PhotoShop, paint, or some other place you can edit a picture, and just crop off what is no good. But try to get the least amount of black void as you can, while still making the shot look good, so you don’t lose too much of your picture from cropping. Warning on using “paint” and “Photoshop”: In my experience, opening the screenshot in any other application can have adverse effects on the quality of the graphics and should be avoided if at all possible. Ever wonder how they get those characters to sit down or fish or look like they are talking? Here is a simple guide as to how it is done even for dummies like me. This will require using triggers and cinematics. Let’s make the Old Coot sit down on a stone fence. 1.Place your stone fence and the place the Old Coot in front of it. 3.Press the insert button to bring up our camera track as illustrated by “TWO”. Special Note: The “Pitch Editor” is part of Reyk’s Mod 6.Now close out the Camera Track Editor, we’re finished with the cinematic. Next come the triggers. 8.Next go to condition and set as Always. 10.Trigger one is done. Now insert another trigger the same way as illustrated by “FOUR” 12.Insert the last trigger, again referring to illustration “FOUR”. This one is for the Screenshot. This time select Active only. IMPORTANT: Keep in mind that because we are using “Loop” on the Animation Triggers, that the animations are constantly recycling. Any “Idle” animation will remain constant, but the motion animations such as “Talk”, “Point”, “FireWeapon”, etc... will continually regenerate. Because many of the motion animations recycle on half-second intervals, you may not get the desired effect by using the “SCREENSHOT/Timer” trigger. If this is the case, then simply run the playtest and wait until the motion is where you want it and press “print screen” on your keyboard. “Print screen” will take the shot and place it in the same place as all of your other screenshots. From this point you can add more Characters and animations by following the steps illustrated. Open the triggers editor again and then select the first animation trigger. AND VIOLA! Special effects, such as rain, snow, and lighting, such as sunset-scenes, add a good deal of appeal to your screenshot. First off, we’re going to talk about rain and snow. Both of them can be found in both the place objects list, and have separate triggers. Under place objects, look under embellishments, and you will find PROP Rain. This will give you a blotch that rain will come out of. Compared to the triggered rain, this rain is bigger than the other’s. Or, you can go to the triggers menu. Click on the triggers button, and insert a new trigger. Set it to Active, Loop, and Run Immediately. Then go to Effects, and click on Render Rain. From here, you can set how hard/much you want it to rain. Then, when you go to your playtest, movie, or whatever it will be, it’ll be raining the way you set it. For snow, you can go to the objects list and under the all category, find SPC Blizzard. SPC Blizzard creates a lot of snow and wind, but when you take a screenshot(from the editor), you only get a few snowflakes. So I’ve found that manually entering the snow via a trigger works a lot better. To do this, open up the triggers menu and select Active, Loop, and Run Immediately. Then go to effects, and click Render Snow. Just like the Render Rain effect, you can enter in a number to effect how hard/much of it you want it to snow. So enter that trigger in, and when you playtest your scenario, it’ll now be snowing. (This picture actually doesn’t show much snow, but that’s because it was taken at a 10 degree angle. A rule of thumb for using the render rain and snow is that they really don’t show up at very low angles…but some still do show up.) And then there is always that all-moving sunset or cool lighting. One thing I really like about the editor is the way the water reacts with the lighting. There are many, many possibilities you can generate with the water and lighting, but I’m going to list some of the best. But it is really up to you to do some trial and error to get that perfect look. As I was saying earlier, it is up to you to choose what you want. But for that sunset, I personally like the New England Water with the New England Lighting. For a rainy day, then choose minescene with just about any water. For that tropical look, then go with any of the two lisbon lightings and Caribbean water, or any other water will do nicely. Those are just a couple of the cool water/lighting combos. As far as I know, there are 3 ways to get this done and we will show you step-by-step how you can do it yourself. Step 1. First, we place the objects that we will be using. In this example, I will only be using 2 units, but you can use as many as you like: Now, use the "Position object" tool to move the IGC Musketeer onto the little hill.(click and drag) Now, still using the "position object" tool, move the Caravel on top of the little hill: (click and drag) Great! Now the IGC Musketeer is "on" the Caravel. But, there are 2 problems. 1, half of his legs are cut off. 2, You can see a little bit of the hill underneath the Caravel.(see the light area?). Lets fix those 2 problems. Step 5. Using the "elevation" tool again, put it on the slowest setting. This allows you to make fine adjustments without accidentally sending your musketeer up into the sky. Then slowly raise and/or lower the little hill until the musketeer's feet are showing properly and you can't see any part of the little hill. This will probably take some trial and error, and you may need to use the "position object" tool again and make slight adjustments to the positioning of the Caravel and Musketeer until it looks just right. If you have the elevation perfect but you can still see a little bit of the hill underneath the boat, use the "paint terrain" tool on the smallest brush size and paint a little bit of "blackmap" texture underneath the ship. This makes it appear as if it was simply a shadow under the boat. NOTE: This method is only useful for screenshots and cinematics, because the units cannot move and if the unit or building upon which they are standing is destroyed, obviously it will ruin the effect. The method for buildings is virtually identical, and with a bit of practice you should be able to do it without much trouble. If you want more great examples, check out the AOE3 Eyecandy thread in the AOE3 Heaven website Scen. Design Thread. I hope this guide helped you, and I hope you will enjoy using this technique! The second way is to modify the proto.xml file, which requires some modding experience. Using this method will be more inclusive as you can modify a limitless amount of units and buildings. But without the knowledge or experience in modifying files, this could be quite an undertaking. If you are interested in using this method, ToMyBoy has a guide on how to do it here: The third way, which I believe is the easiest, I will explain here in detail. This requires using the “javelin” under embellishments and the “Replace Object” tool. First place the javelin. In the following illustrations, I have used the “Pitch Editor” that is included in After placing the javelin, use the move tool and rotate the javelin as shown in the following 2 shots: rotate to: Now use the up-down arrows on the keyboard and raise the javelin to the desired height as illustrated: Now rotate the javelin back to its original position: Now go to the “Replace Object” tool and select the object you want to change the unit into. Here I used “Prop_potted plants” under embellishments: As you can see, the potted plant has now ignored the laws of gravity. Let’s try a unit now. Use the same method as before and now replace the javelin with a unit I have experimented with nearly all of the units in the library including the IGC and HC units and have not found any so far that did not work using this method Floating Old Coot Unfortunately I have not found any buildings that will stay elevated using this method, but by elevating the units you can make some very interesting screenshots. Special Note: This method is only good for Screenshots or Cinemas. Once the unit is moved in this state, it will fall back to the ground. Many times you may feel limited in were you can place a building simply because you would like to have a building on an elevated piece of land but would like a nice way to get to the structure other than a terrain ramp. While there are many ways to make an attractive ramp, sometimes they just don’t seem to fit with the scene you are trying to create. This guide will show how to dress up that ramp by using steps. First go into objects and select “PROP rock fence” under embellishments. Keep right clicking until you have this version: Go ahead and make several copies of the rock fence as these will be the treads to your staircase and you will need several. Once you have as many as you need, you will then rotate the stone fences like so: Now use the mouse wheel to rotate the stone fences flat like this: In this tutorial, I will only be using five stair treads for simplicity sake. Next line up the stone fences in front of the elevated terrain like this: Now select all of the “stair treads” at once by holding down the left mouse button and dragging a box around all of them, then drag all the treads onto the elevated terrain. Make adjustments as necessary for evenness. Now you can dress up the steps with eye-candy or even put railing on with any version of the “rock fence” rotated. For a more rustic look you can use the single wood plank found under “SPC Railway Props” for the treads and the wood fence found under “Props Native” for the railing. This is only one example of the versatility of the “Rotating Objects” tool. Experiment and have fun. Place your water. Now, we create a "bridge" of land across the water. there are several ways to do this. I will use the first method in this example, since I am using the river tool. Using the "cliff" tool I keep making slight adjustments to the "height" slider until the cliff is exactly the same height as the ground. This involves a bit of trial and error. A height of "4.00" seems about right. (see picture) (obviously you want to use the type of cliff that best matches the water- I have selected "Rocky Mountain Edge"). Now, place the "bridge" across the water. If you want the bridge to be wider or narrower, adjust the brush size accordingly. Now, we have a bridge that units can walk across. If you want the bridge to look like a natural bridge, read no further. But most people will want the bridge to look somewhat man-made, so let's move on to the "embellishment" stage. The next screenshot was made with the basic bridge, (above) and props from the "place object" menu. I used the "position object" tool to put them all in place....... There are many, many ways to execute this basic method, so use your imagination, try different things, and look at some screenshots in the As before, place your water first. I am using "Amazon River Basin". Then, select the "paint land" tool. Click "brush settings", and set the brush to square. You will see a setting for "cliff mode" in the brush settings menu, set it to "clamp high edge". Adjust the size of the brush to the desired width of bridge, and slowly, one click at a time, build the bridge across the water. If it becomes uneven, hit ctrl+z to undo until it looks good again. The edges must be perfectly straight for it to look good. It should look like this picture when you're done: Then of course we move on to the embellishment stage, and as before, there are dozens of ways to do this, so use your imagination and experiment. I will use "ruin wall" props here, and first I place several of them on the map so I can slide them into position using the "position object" tool: After I click and drag them all into place, I rotate the map a few times to make sure it looks good from every angle. Here is the finished product with a lightset, forest and underbrush added: Of course, it isn't destructible or very realistic, but it's better than nothing. AoE3 Eye-Candy Thread- Triggers List- Shaw’s HC Mod- ToMyBoy’s Guide- Reyk’s Mod- Custergrant- ShawDaMan- Twoqtimes2- I, as in Custer speaking, can’t thank Twoq and Shaw enough for the work they’ve done and the help they’ve been. These guys are great, and just plain amazing, if you can’t tell by their work. We had some problems, as in mainly me, (and they were technical, not us fighting, thankfully) with the guide is some areas, but we fixed them, and twoq and Shaw were there all the way. I could keep going on, but they already know how much I feel indebted to them. I would also like to thank all the HG Staff for being supportive and wanting to help out…Stonewall especially Of course, what would this guide be without the Eye-Candy thread and all the great people down there. I thank you all heavily, and Reinfire too. Heck, you have to thank HG for being here, and bringing us altogether, so we can share all of this, and I think I’ll stop there… And I would like to apoligize for not being able to insert pictures on here, due to size and technical problems. So with that out of the way, I’m really hoping that this guide has taught you a thing or two. Hopefully it has inspired you to go out and try making your own shots on the editor yourself. Sometimes, all that is needed to inspire someone is just seeing the awesome shots down at the Eye-Candy Thread…I know that’s the way it was it Twoq. But this might have done just that. Maybe now, we’ll be seeing more than just the six or so same people posting in the Eye-Candy Thread and awesome shots in the contest Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this and it has done something for you. Thank you everyone and enjoy! Also, look forward to the next latest project of zeus and me, and possible additions to the guide. Have fun and keep making eye-candy! Come join the Guild! [This message has been edited by Custergrant (edited 03-26-2006 @ 05:51 PM).]
201a-A little bit brighter than default.
301a_malta-Dark, and good for afternoon shots.
302a-Longer shadows than default.
302a_base -Tad bit darker and has longer shadows than 301a_malta.
302b_cavelighting-Very dark and good for night shots.
303_atsea-A lot like default and as its name says, good for sea shots.
304a-A little bit darker than default.
304a_base-Bright.
305b-A dark lighting good for dusk shots.
306a_caribbean-Bright lighting good for battle shots, and it makes units somewhat shiny.
307a_beach-Good for afternoon shots and makes units bright.
307b_trueenemy-Much like default, but can be good for snow shots, and makes units shiny.
308b_caribbeanlight-Dark, good for dusk or snow shots and makes units bright/shiny.
309a_summoned-A little brighter than the last one.
310b_brunswickdestroyed-Dark, with long shadows, and good for snow or water shots.
311b-All I have for this one is that it has a lot of green in it, kind of makes everything greenish.
312b_washington-Bright.
316a_russians-Good lighting for snow shots.
316b_rockieslight-Good for a cloudy or snowy shot, and makes metal shine.
319a_snow-Lightly bright lighting and is good for snow shots.
319b_mineentrance-Somewhat like the default, but good for snow shots.
323b_inca-Good for afternoon or midday shots.
324b-Pretty much like the default.
325a_oldcoot-Shadows are a little longer than the default’s.
amazon-Good day lighting with decent sized shadows.
amsterdamevening-Dark lighting good for dusk or possibly night shots. Has the longest shadows than any other lighting.
amsterdam-Bright lighting with shadows, and is good for water shots.
bayou-Good all general day lighting and is good for sunsets.
berlindusk-Dark lighting with long shadows and makes metal shine.
berlin-A pretty bright lighting.
boston-A lighting that is somewhat dark, but does make units appear very bright.
caribbean-Has shadows and is good for watery shots.
carolina-Lighting that is good for afternoon shots.
carribean- Had long shadows and is good if you are wanting your shot to appear stormy.
constantinople-Bright lighting that is good for changing water .
greatlakeswinter –Good for snowy or cloudy-like shots.
greatlakes-Again, good for cloudy-like shots, and afternoon shots.
greatplains-A pretty bright lighting that is great for midday shots.
greatplainstest-Just a little darker than the greatplains lighting.
lisbonstorm-Good for stormy shots, and is relatively dark, and is very red, by that I mean, makes objects have a lot more red in them.
lisbon-Not quite as dark as lisbonstorm, but still has all of its properties.
londonsunset-Very dark lighting with long shadows.
london-Fairly bright lighting and makes units appear very bright.
malta-Brightest lighting of them all.
minescene-Very good for night scenes.
newenglandstart-A relatively dark lighting that is great for morning shots.
newengland-My personal favorite of the different lightings. Is good for afternoons shots, and when mixed with New England water, can make an awesome sunset effect.
ottomanmorning-A pretty bright lighting good for morning shots, and has shadows.
pampas-A very versatile lighting, being good at afternoon, cloudy, or watery shots.
parisday-A bright lighting that makes units bright.
paris- Good for sunsets and has long shadows.
patagonia-Lighting that is good for afternoon and snowy shots.
rockies-Excellent lighting for snow and forest scenes.
saguenay-Once again, excellent lighting for snow and afternoon shots.
sevillemorning-Has shadows and is good for morning and afternoon shots.
seville-Bright lighting that is good for water and makes units bright.
sonora-Pretty much the lighting you see in all those Western movies. Good for morning to afternoon shots.
spc14buffalo-Quite good for late afternoon shots and has pretty long shadows.
spc14anight-Pretty much what its name says, great for night shots.
st_louis-A relatively dark lighting that makes units bright.
st_petersburg-Great lighting with shadows that is probably one of the best for snow.
st_petersburg_night-Superb night lighting.
texas-A pretty bright lighting.
yucatan-The exact same lighting as texas. I’m not really sure why they even have it.
Yukon-A somewhat darkish lighting that is excellent for snow shots, and isn’t too bad for cloudy shots either.
Editor’s Note: All the lightings that represent a city tend to make units very bright. These are not recommended if making an eye-candy shot focused on a person or persons, close-up anyways.
Have you ever seen those screenshots with a sky in the background, but didn’t know how to create that? Well, you’re about to find out.
2.Next we want to make a camera track using cinematics. Select the camera editor as illustrated by “ONE”.
4.Next we will position our camera to the desired pitch and zoom using the pitch editor. Once the desired pitch and zoom are achieved, press add on the camera editor as illustrated by “THREE”.
5.Then put in the duration of the track as illustrated by “FOUR”. I used 5 secs here because that is all the time needed and camera will remain in that position until you move it.
If you do not have this or any other Camera Pitch Mod, you can use the “Camera Face Unit” trigger. If you need further explanation on triggers go to
7.Open the Triggers Editor and press insert as illustrated by ”FIVE”. Then select Active, Loop, and Run Immediately as illustrated by “SIX”.
9.Next go to Effect and select Set Animation. Then select the Old Coot as illustrated by “SEVEN”. Press the unit button as illustrated by “EIGHT”. Then type in the animation SittingIdle as illustrated by “NINE”.
11.This time only select Active and Run immediately. Go to Conditions and set Always. Go to Effects and set Camera Track under type and Track_1 under Name as illustrated by “TEN”
13.Next go to Conditions and select timer. Set the time at 7 seconds. Now go to Effects and select SCREENSHOT. Triggers done.
14.The next step is the easiest. Go to File and select Screenshot. There will be two tic boxes that say Interface and Pointer. Make sure to select both and then close the box.
15.Now go to Scenario and select Playtest Scenario and watch the Old Coot sit down. You will see when the screenshot happens.
Then on right side of the editor you will see another list of selections that include Insert, Copy and Delete. After adding new character, set their animations as shown below. A list of all the animations, and what they do can be found at
(notice the size of the rain, and the x’s it makes)
Step 1 of course is to determine what unit(s) you want to put on the building/ship. I will show you how to do it for a ship(the method for ships and buildings is pretty much the same). For this guide I will use a Caravel and an IGC Musketeer, although the method is basically the same for all ships, units, and buildings.
Step 2.
Now, I rotate the camera to get a better view, and, using the elevation tool, I raise a little hill of land near the Caravel. Notice, the brush is on the smallest setting, medium speed.
Step 3.
Now the IGC Musketeer is on the hill. ^^^
Still using the "position object" tool, move the IGC Musketeer(or whatever unit you are using) around a little bit until you hit the "sweet spot". The sweet spot is when the unit is on the very top of the hill- as high on the hill as you can get it.
Step 4.
Pretty, isn't it?
Use this method for placing units on walls, buildings, towers or what ever you want.
This is one example of how I used this method:
First, decide what water the bridge will be across. (In this example I am using "Yukon River", but the method applies to any water. You do not have to use the "River" tool, you can also use the regular "water" tool.)
1. You can use the cliff tool, and simply adjust the height of the cliff to the level of the ground.
2. You can use the land tool and "draw" in the land (this method works best for water placed with the "water" tool, rather than the "river" tool).
3. Use the "Elevation" tool to raise the land in the water. (not recommended)
Ok, let’s fancy up our bridge a bit. There are many number of ways to do this. I will show you 2 examples, but be imaginative!
Now, I will briefly illustrate how to do it with the "paint land tool". (My favorite method)
If you want to see a great example, check out Raptor07's "Bayou bridge" screenshot in the AOE3 Heaven Scenario Design eye-candy thread. He did a great job!
Reinfire’s Guide-
Animation List-
“Lighting...Friend Or Enemy”
“How To Master Those Pesky Skyboxes”
“Using Weather And Time To Your Advantage”
Author
“Ohh...So That’s How They Place Those Objects On There”
“Bridges...Something That Adds A Lot Of Pizzazz”
Co-Author
“Make Your People Do Things Now!”
“Floating Objects Guide”
“Stone Steps, A Neat Little Trick”
Co-Author
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Head of Research and Development for the AOE3 Editor
Designer's Mod Co-Creator
Official Story Writer of Wherever
