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Besides 3DSMax what else are you using to make terrain?


-Corax-

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:blink:

Just wondering if anyone else is using Z-Brush to make terrain? Broke out the ol' tablet and guess what I lost myself is using Z-Brush... when will I have time to shoot BSR?

ZBrush creates to heavy meshes for terrain I think. It's great for creating normal maps and such, but not really for entire landscapes.

I guess you could make the initial shape in ZBrush and then lower it and clean it in Max.

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:blink:

Just wondering if anyone else is using Z-Brush to make terrain? Broke out the ol' tablet and guess what I lost myself is using Z-Brush... when will I have time to shoot BSR?

ZBrush creates to heavy meshes for terrain I think. It's great for creating normal maps and such, but not really for entire landscapes.

I guess you could make the initial shape in ZBrush and then lower it and clean it in Max.

I do the back and forth thing... I find MAX too restrictive when it comes to natural shapes. Plus it's fairly easy to clean up in MAX.

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Laying out the terrain in max can be a bit time consuming and so on, but it's doable and you get the result you really want with some tweaking.

The way I do it is I lay out the basic shape of the terrain without adding much detail. Just the basic shape I want to things. It's often a good idea to draw something down on paper before you start doing so. I work with editable-poly so it's just to drag edges, create polys and adjust the heigth here and there. Further when I have the basic shapes set, I start to add details to the areas I want stones, cliffs and so on. I select the polygons that's gonna be part of this detail and I add a meshsmooth to them. Sometimes I do it twice where I really want some details. Then I use the "paint-deformation" tool to create the terrain shapes. (Guess this is the tool Wolfsong are referring to) After this is done, select all the polys in the area you have been working with and use an optimize modifier on it. Adjust it to your taste after how much detail you want to preserve. This way you get some pretty nice and natural shapes, with the use of not too many polys.

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I do the back and forth thing... I find MAX too restrictive when it comes to natural shapes. Plus it's fairly easy to clean up in MAX.

Doesn't Max has an "artist" tool (push/pull/smooth brush tool) ? I'm a Maya modeler so I really don't know. :P

You can use the paint-deformation tool like Biro said, but you can also use the Terrain-modifier, where you only draw elevation-splines (elevation maps, available on the internet (can be used perfect for this) and the modifier connects the splines, rendering it in a perfectly smooth landscape.

Still, boxmodeling is poly wise the most cheap way to go and also the most clean one.

I tend to use a combination of all of them, depending on the goal I'm after.

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