Landscape products for in-game use

zbrush_newbie

Hi All

I`ve been asked to create a lush mountain landscape with waterfalls,lakes,etc rolling into the distance. Any suggestions on whats a good terrain editor for doing something fairly quick, ie a weeks work and exporting into maya. The user wont get too close to the landscape, its more of a 3d panoramic surround.

So far i`ve tried out terragen, geocontrol 2 , L3DT, world machine and VUE .
To be honest L3DT is the only one I felt didnt require a week of learning how to use it and its cheap. But I would like something that has control over object placements within the landscape ie billboard trees,rocks,etc.
Also useful to have export layered textures and normal maps.

something with elements of these two images i`m after producing.




Any suggestions?

Thanks

NAIMA

Have you considered modeling the landscape by hand inside a free game engine editor like UDK or Cryengine? you can still create a basic shape there then export the heightmap and import in another terain editor like worldmachine or others and apply filters to add realism then reimport back and tweak more etc ...

zbrush_newbie

I havent use the UDK or Cryengine modelers, will have a look. I`ve modelled a landscape in maya, which I`ve now exported the heightmap so I can get it into the terrain apps.
I have come across wenda`s tutorial for worldmachine which looks interesting, so i`ll give that a go.
Thanks