Need help with ground texturing

[leigh]

Firstly, welcome to the forum :beer: It's always great to see new members!

Now, onto your question: for ground textures, procedurals are often the best solution seeing as they look fine both close up and far away. It's just a matter of controlling them. In Max, you just need to make a blend material (I think that's what it's called) so that you can isolate different areas for grass, sand or whatever kind of terrain you need. That way you eliminate the randomness that often makes procedurals look fake. Make some alpha images in PS, and use them to place the different kinds of terrain in the right areas.

Also, another thing is that you shouldn't try to compensate for lack of geometry by using bump maps. Bump maps should ONLY be used for minor surface abrasions and other very minor topical changes. It is unlikely that you will get a realistic terrain using only bump maps. Ensure that your actual model has a fair amount of detail modelled into it first. Then, you can smooth your mesh out drastically, and use displacement mapping with maps made in PS or whatever.

As for getting reference, well I personally always just use things like Google image search :)

Tutorials for realistic landscapes are probably going to be a real mission to locate. Most tutorials (especially on landscapes, for some bizarre reason) tend to be aimed at beginners, and are unlikely to yield photorealistic results. The best advice that I can offer you is to get lots of excellent reference, and just try and match it.

Of course, if you encounter any problems, you can always post here! Good luck with your project :D

[GodfatherUr]

Thank you very much Leigh. I appreciate all the good advice. I am running into one issue though :) Ok here is the deal, the person I am doing the work for would like the models/scenes built to ACTUAL scale. IE converting max units to km. The terrain must be a min of 2km x 2km. Doing so means I have much much much open space. If I add too much geometry me comp will hick-up. :) I could always use low poly models I guess, but this is to reproduce as close to photographic as posible so I am at a lose for what to do. Primarilly I model Objects/vehicles/characters etc and not terrains :hmm: . He keeps trying to get me to use Bryce to make the terrain but I do not tend to like the way bryce terrains come out. Sooo... any other thoughts on this?

[leigh]

Hmmm... yeah I see what you mean. Well, that is why it is essential to get some cool reference. That way, your client can look at all the pics you have, and say "I want that one" and then you just reproduce it.

Here, where I work, we work only with visual effects, in other words, our work is always photorealistic, and let me assure you - we often use low poly models for things. If it's going to be way in the background, then don't bother wasting precious RAM and processor power by giving your machine unneccessary geometry to deal with. Obviously, anything closer to the camera needs to be hi res. What I recommend is to have rocks and things in the foreground, modelled in a decent amount of detail. That way, it draws peoples attention away from anything low-res in the background.

Something very important that you have to consider is that your image maps are going to have to be very hi res. I am presuming that your output will be to video, so that means that in any given shot, your texture maps that are showing should be nothing less than about 1500x1500 pixels. That is why I recommend that you use procedurals - you don't have the resolution problems to deal with.

As for Bryce, something that I can say in favour of it is that it is very quick and easy to create displacement maps with it, as you can instantaneously see the effect that the displacement map you are painting will have on 3D geometry. Then you just export the map as an image and use it in Max ;)
However, steer clear of their materials and things - they aren't very nice at all.

[GodfatherUr]

Thank you so very much once again Leigh :) I appreciate it.

[leigh]

Anytime :thumbsup:

[Mr Fudge]

If you are having trouble with huge scenes you could always use the level of detail utility in Max. It dynamically switches models based on its distance from the camera. So for e.g.: You could have 5 different versions of a rock. With varying degrees of detail ranging from Ultra-High to Ultra-Low poly. A good way to accomplish this would be to model on Ultra-High rock and then save out copies after applying the optimise modifier.

There is also progressive meshing. It is a technique that is used primarily for rendering real-time terrains in games etc. What it does is dynamically lower the resolution of the terrain based on its distance from the camera. I'm not sure what the max utility/plugin out there is called. But someone on this board is bound to know.

Later,
Mr Fudge

[snot_nose]

you can also work on the models in a different file then the terrain file and connect them with x-ref

[GodfatherUr]

Mr Fudge (nice name by the way :) )

I have considered this and for objects, that would be excellent. Problem is though, is there a way to do that on the terrain without having to creat a terrain with multiple sections. For example is there a plugin or a way in max natively to allow that the closer a camera gets to the terrain, the more detailed that portion of the terrain becomes. I know max will do this for whole objects but what about portions of an object considering I have a vast terrain size.

Snot_nose

Currently doing that :) Thanks for the advice anyhow :thumbsup:

[Mr Fudge]

I know several utilities exist for progressive meshing for Maya. Post a querry in the Max section and see if anyone knows the name of the plugin/utility for Max.

Sorry I can't be more help...

- F

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