How would one achieve the cliffs in dota2 terrain?

Questions & Answers
1

Hey, sorry for the potentially odd title! I’ll try to explain in more detail.

What I am essentially asking is, is whether anybody knows how is the terrain made in dota2, the cliffs in particular (Or alternatively, how to achieve this result). For reference, see: Dota 2 Reborn: Touring the New Hammer - YouTube

From what I see, in a simplified form it is essentially nothing more than a 2D heightmap for each tile, but what I do not know for certain is whether these cliffs are procedurally generated meshes, are they modular pieces stitched together, or is there some other approach?

I have tried to do this procedurally playing around with the heightmap, but my results are quite far from it: https://puu.sh/GzFRX/61f3945a65.jpg.

2

I probably can’t tell you how to do that but from my understanding is that they are using the hammer editor which is what valve uses for all their games just about, so the reason they can do that is that, is because that probably a tool made for that engine/editor.

3

Got my answer by digging around in the hammer editor, it seems that it’s all about artist made models designed to be stitched together like that of the tiles in marching squares.

For anyone interested in the models, see: https://puu.sh/GG0B4/f26239b478.jpg