i have a problem in doing a terrain in max 6. i get the contours but it never shows it properly. is there a easier way to do terrains??
pls help!!!
erkan
Here goes my 1st post.
You can try with Dreamscape, it creates very realistic hi-poly terrains with good scalability. I’ve just finished a huge Urbanization project using Dreamscape+Vray+Forest plugin and it always worked well.
hi… The Terrain thing has never worked for me either … this is how i do it..
First create your splines, Attach them together and do a cross section in the spline Modifier..
Spline’s
Cross Section
once that is done add a Surface Modifier to the cage of spline’s…
Once that is done you can convert to pole or what ever you like to edit further…
Use terragen and export to max,
grettings
Javier
he is talking about using the terrain mod in max … so how much is terragen ?
free, as far as i know.
why doesn’t he use displacement? it’s easy as hell with it.
very true .. 
i mean - your method rocks as well - but displacement… you know 
displacement may be good…but its pretty difficult to figure out where to put objects that need to interact with a terrain when it is only generated at rendertime
well guys thanks for your comments
i was doing a beach club for USA, rhode island the thing that i used the same thing like NATTY wrote but then i had to do patches cuz my building wasnt sitting properly. so when i made Patches it didnt work that good. i had to fake a lot of things. but my boss and the clients were screaming cuz they loved the animation but i wasnt satisfied inside.
i wish MAX creators deal with this key. by the way i am now doing a animation for a school complex exterior and interior animation. and i have 3 weeks to complete it. i am rendering the animation in NATTY’s render scene for “grazing sheep” but it didnt work well for fast renderings. Natty do you have a faster way to deal with animations(render scene settings)
and why does the animation come up to 600MB in vray renderings and it takes 150 hours for 1000 frames in vray style renderings. pls help
usually i get my terrains as splines for contour lines and i havent had any problems as yet with the terrain object under the compound objects section
for my terrrain I usually use Form-z’s terrain tool.
it’s simple to use yet quite powerfull, and most important it allows for an accurate translation from the landscape contours to a 3d mesh.
I then export the mesh to max.
paul.
cocolas…the max terrain works the same as formZs…but is faster and has more options, and is parametric so you can fix/change things without regenerating the whole mesh
I tried the max terrain as well…but didn’t like it…I might have to mess with a bit more…IMO, it didn’t seem as intuitive as the form-z one…
paul.
why does the animation come up to 600MB in vray renderings and it takes 150 hours for 1000 frames in vray style renderings. pls help
your using GI …so you have to expect your render’s to take some time !
you need to send your work to a render farm that will turn your work round in a day… not 150 hour’s.
yeah but who can afford 6 dual Xeons? *jealous*
we get our first one next week…it will solve all of the worlds problems!
problem in rendering
thanks natty . i rendered the scene iwthout GI but it came up with no light but it has one direct light and 4 vraylight reflected to the ceiling. so now it renders so fast but the result is bad.
pls help.
these are the settings
mate, could you pleeease post your settings a bit larger? can’t see anything on your screenshots.
however you need gi to illuminate your room. a little lesson about gi:
gi makes sure that light is bounced from object-to-object. without gi your light hits an object (for example a wall) and is “dead”. the wall completly absorbs your rays. if gi is checked your wall will reflect your rays and it will reach another wall. the depth of secondary bounces controls the count how often it will be bounced. the different multipliers regulate the intensity. however this is the reason why gi was developed. you can fake a radiosity with a few omnis, but this method is out or for those people who have less money:). well, anyway, you need gi for interiors lest you don’t want a black room.
http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/cwis/research/graphics/CGRG.PUBLICATIONS/BiDirRad/propboth.gif
erkanriza, Gees man … i think you took me to literary !!! … I think you guy’s that are new to GI expect things to happen as fast as scanline.. you really need to learn the product you are using and understand what is happening in your scene.. nothing personal dude …
And i think this has gone way off topic .. perhaps you should start a new thread !
Just wanted to chime in a bit…Terragen is free for non commercial use…but its only $99(commercial) to buy if i remember correctly.
There is a program called Quickgrid that makes terrains from point cloud data. Can’t remember the website but its free for up to 25000 points. works well…a little too complex for my liking but hey thats just me. Now i haven’t tried this myself but i’ve seen a couple of people drop cloths over renderable splines using Simcloth or Reactor. Might be worth a try…not entirely accurate i suppose. Hope it helps.