Hello everyone, so I’m creating a large-scale city map, and I’ve already begun designing the buildings themselves. I’ve had the idea from the start that I should create each asset first, then put it all into the terrain map at the end, but I’m having second thoughts. I feel like there are also advantages to building terrain first. What I’m trying to avoid is creating a beautiful terrain layout, only to find there’s no room for my builds. Any advice on what you start with when creating a large-scale map? Thanks!
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It makes a lot of sense to design a rough layout of your map first, including some assets like buildings, before you start sculpting the terrain around it. This will allow you to make changes far quicker and with less effort than if you were to sculpt the terrain and only then think about how assets would be placed upon it.
For Ventureland, I used a industry technique called ‘whiteboxing’ which is making a very rough sketch of the terrain as I was figuring out the map layout. After being happy with how everything was laid-out, I sculpted the terrain around everything.
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Hi!
It really depends on what is more comfortable for you. If you start with the terrain, you can, depending on how even it is, rescale the buildings if necessary. Starting with the buildings first could be useful too, since you then just place the buildings.
I think you should start with the terrain first though I agree to @Wsly’s post;
Make a rough ‘‘sketch’’ as he said.
Hope this helped you!
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Thank you so much, this is super helpful. I was deciding how I was going to do a “rough draft” of my terrain, but the whiteboxing technique seems like the best thing to do. I appreciate the help! That map is beautiful btw 
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Well personally what i would do is knock out the hardest first.
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