Low poly mountains

SaboR1996

hey, i'm sort of new to the whole polycount forums, so i'm not sure where i should have posted this

I'm also new to to a lot of modelling, mainly 3DS max, i know basics just not working low poly efficiently

i need techniques on creating low poly mountains, mainly for a game i'm going to be working on for the next few months and i need the terrain set out low poly, its going to be a low poly low texture styled game hopefully for PC

I've tried to use height maps, they don't give the best effect in low poly.
I also tried to create my own height maps, and yet again not best of effect

any help would be great!

cryrid

How lowpoly (shader limitations, etc), and what kind of style?

SaboR1996

Well, my game is going to be quite a large game world, i want to keep the terrain under say something like 2000 (not sure how many i should have, this wont be the whole game world)
I want it to be quite basic but large
also i don't really get shaders, i am quite new
im looking for several different styles, such as like volcanoes, regular snow mountains, quarry type mountains, plain mountains etc
im not looking for anything over the top like mass amounts of normals and displacements etc

Goat Justice

There are several different ways to do this... it kinda depends on what engine you're using, what look you're trying to achieve, and how the mountains fit into the player's view of your environment. If height-maps aren't cutting it look wise, you'll probably have to model out either the specific area or some general purpose mountain chunks that you can crash together when wold building. There aren't really any special tricks to that sort of low poly modeling... start with a very rough shape, and extrude, cut, and add edges till you get something that works.

if you have an example of the type of look you're going for, that might help with more specific advice.

SaboR1996

http://www.digitalweaponx.net/UE2009/SnowTest.jpg

here is one i found when looking through the polycount forums, this kind of style

Blubberblase

i do mountains with procedural shaders using high poly planes and displacement:

takes only a minute to do and by changing some settings in the shader you can get a lot of different forms, just experiment till you find something you like.
Texturing can be done with another procedural shader though you will need to know how to bake maps if you want to use those in a game engine
hope this helps

SaboR1996

Thanks dude, this sort of worked, i also i found out good ways to make seamless mountains from this!