What has everyone found to be the best method for modelling terrain?
Personally I paint displacement maps or poly model to get the overall shape of the terrain, then use layers of smaller noise / displace modifiers to add some more natural looking randomness, then either a bump map or vray displacement for fine detail. It’s the different levels of scale that make something look big - If you stick to procedural textures you get some other side benefits like having the texture controlling the displacement also being a good mask to blend between snow and earth or grass and earth for example.
Actually I was referring to the modelling of specific terrain and not just random irregularities here and there. I was just curious if there is some quicker better way to do it. Often I find myself making a big mesh (which sometimes gets complicated) in autocad with surftab. Other times I have imported the contour lines into max to then use the terrain function…which does not always work very well.
Actually, it depends on scene. But you could try surface modifier (and turbosmooth)
I take splines in and use the terrain command - THEN I create a plane with lots of subs and have that conform to the terrain. Then delete the terrain. Then I will go in an paint with teh poly paint tools. Gets me a nice mesh.
I do much like Sawyer says, but I apply a normalize spline modifier before I use the terrain command and go through and clean up any tight areas that may have caused “kinks” in the splines. I mainly use the Relax paint deformation once the terrain is an editable poly, brush size is important in this step as well as a consistent mesh, much like the plane step that Sawyer outlined.
If I have a height dependant material transition, such as the banks of a pond, I will use a mix in my diffuse and bump slots with a gradient in the mix channel and my maps I want to transition between in the other 2 slots. I use 2 UVW’s set to different channels on the terrain, one for the surface textures, and one for the gradient, which I use a planar UVW rotated and fitted to the profile of the terrain. I make the gradient visisble in viewport and adjust the color 2 position until I get the transition I want, which you can adjust further through the planar UVW map set to it.
I hope I havn’t confused you too much 