Documentation Home

Appendix: Cliff Models

The Starcraft II engine uses a large set of 3d tiling models for each cliff type. CliffMade1.max in the example directory is an example of a Man-made type cliff set with fixed UVs and CliffNatural0Ex1.max is the basis of all the natural cliffs in Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm that use procedural UVs.

Cliff Object Naming Requirements

The 3DSMax file and all cliff objects inside it need to have three sections separated by '_' in their naming to export and work in the game correctly.

CliffNatural0Ex1_BBDC_00

CliffNatural0Ex1_CCRS_00

Cliff Mesh Requirements

Each Cliff Object's outer vertices are precisely positioned to tile and be welded to its neighboring Cliff objects and terrain.

Cliff Materials

Cliff Objects themselves use a material from another model. The same mesh can be used with a different material to save disk space. The Man-made type cliffs will use as cliff material that is built to match the UVs of that cliff. CliffMade1.max uses BelShirCliff1_Material.max and CliffMade6.max uses BraxisAlphaCliff1_Material.max.

Tri Planar Cliff Materials

Cliff Objects themselves use a material from another model. The same mesh can be used with a different material to save disk space. With Heart of the Swarm we added a new material type called Tri Planar Blending. Load the max file CliffNatural2_Material.max to see how the Tri Planar Material is set up.