So we’ve all had the chance of seen hundreds if not thousands of cases of those awe inspiring renders that look amazing showing off mountains, rivers and nature. Well the moment you realize that you are looking at a CG image is the moment that you realize that someone had to do the terrain for that render. And if that doesn’t sound like something that you would ever need just think about the fact that if you happen to work on a architectural project you are bound to end up with the need to model the terrain surrounding your base model.
Modeling terrain in 3ds Max is not a very complicated thing, but if you have never done it before it might pose a bit of a challenge. In the following video you will see how to take an image and from it extrapolate the isohypse lines that define the contours of the terrain. From there we will see how to generate terrain from those lines in 3ds Max, and then how to better control the geometry and making it all quads.
Oh and one more thing, this is for those of you who are still reading this and haven’t simply jumped off to the video to see what’s going on there. Even if you know how the terrain compound object works, make sure you check out the last 3 or so minutes of the video you can see how to generate terrain by using a plugin called Splineland. This plugin is amazing for someone that is doing this on a daily basis, and can afford to spend the cash to buy it. I only scratched the surface with this tutorial about it but i might make a more detailed one in the future covering more about it.
So without making this any longer then it should be, check out the video so you can see what i was talking about.
In case you would want to follow along with the same image that i used feel free and get it from here, or you can get one from Google.
Having said all that i hope you guys learned something in the the process of watching this and you also enjoyed it. If that is the case then subscribe to the YouTube channel, share it around, like and help spread the word around.