Modeling Terrain

[Higuy]

Here is a terrain tutorial I made. Its about 40 minutes long.

http://vimeo.com/11781231

I hope this tutorial will help people create better looking maps. I'm always seeing badly modeled maps that could have more potential. So, I went and created this. Hopefully it will help people in the end.

It covers -

Outlining base mesh
Creating mesh
Smoothing the geometry
Creating terrain/cliffs
What your final outcome should be

Its pretty simple.

Sorry about the voice quality (it is pretty shitty ), you can blame my xbox mic since I don't have another.

Thanks to il Duce Primo and Bungie for showing me how to model properly~

-Higuy

[teh lag]

Very nice to see all these video tutorials being posted these past few weeks. Thanks for helping us all keep the faith.

(Moving this to Studio Tuts since it's more of a general modeling thing)

[Longshot]

Excellent tutorial, I've been waiting for someone to release a tutorial like this for a long time now seeing as I can't model terrain to save my life. Thanks a lot!

[ThePlague]

Nice tool usage. This made me want to reinstall 3ds max

[Longshot]

How do you get the same result with the cliffs, just use the same method as the terrain? And in regards to you saying this isn't the correct method for next-gen games, what is? I'm keen to learn as much as I can.

[Darqeness]

And in regards to you saying this isn't the correct method for next-gen games, what is? I'm keen to learn as much as I can.

If I was making a cave I was going to put into UDK I'd use a similar method. As for normal terrain, most editors have an in-built heightmap based terrain editor. Although cliffs look like utter crap using it and it's impossible to make caves or overhanging rock formations with it which is mostly done with separate meshes.

[Higuy]

How do you get the same result with the cliffs, just use the same method as the terrain? And in regards to you saying this isn't the correct method for next-gen games, what is? I'm keen to learn as much as I can.

Well as Darqeness said, this can be applied somewhat for next gen. For cliffs and rocks though, I'd really look into using like zbrush for making those meshes.

[paladin]

I always find it interesting how everyone has there or style to modeling. Nice job.

[davidd]

This is great. Thx

[Llama Juice]

He got banned for that post because he encouraged people to cut willy nilly.

When you're in Max you run rampant like an emo with a razor blade...

Make cuts where you want them, not just "to add more triangles"

Also, isn't there some sort of "create polygon" tool in max? In Maya you could just draw out the outline of your map... not drop a shitton of verts and play connect the dots.

Anyhow, thanks for trying to help... but your methods are quite strange.