Terrain in 3Ds max

solidshark91493

Hi again polycount. Ive mainly stuck to making vehicles in max but I wanted to make a mountainous scene with a sort of "deadly road" on it. Im looking to make something like this:


And even though ive tried searching I havent yet found any idea on how to go about it. Any advice would be appreciated.
From what Ive seen many people use a plane and add some sort of displacement map to it but Im not sure if this would work.

Synaesthesia

A displacement map would work, but it would be a bit tedious to paint it I imagine. You could probably pull it off with ShapeMerge otherwise.

/SM would kind of simulate how the engineers built that road, so you'd get a similar result
//It's carved into the terrain, so you should be able to finagle some good results from it

solidshark91493

Synaesthesia wrote: »

A displacement map would work, but it would be a bit tedious to paint it I imagine. You could probably pull it off with ShapeMerge otherwise.

/SM would kind of simulate how the engineers built that road, so you'd get a similar result
//It's carved into the terrain, so you should be able to finagle some good results from it

Well, right now Im trying to figure out how to make the mountain geometry. I dont know how to make maps to use as displacement. I do think that might help me lay the road out itself and cut it into the mountain. Im also looking to make a small little creek that flows over/next to the road (for more treacherous driving) And a couple washouts. So this could get complex pretty fast .-.

roxursox

If you're looking for a starting point, Displacement would be the way I'd go. Displacement uses grayscale, with white being the highest point, and black the low.

Height maps work well if you can find one that suits your needs, or try a heightmap generator.

Once you have the map applied to the mesh, add a "Displace Mesh" modifier. Use "Custom Settings" and "Subdivision Displacement" to increase the level of detail. To increase power, increase the value next to displacement in your material, then click "Update Mesh" in the "Displace Mesh" modifier. If the geometry is too spiky, increase the blur in the map settings, and update mesh.

solidshark91493

Well Im following a tutorial on getting a piece of terrain off google earth and into 3ds max. so Ill see how that pans out I believe it converts the image to a displacement map for just that.
As far as the plane goes, what do I do there, no segments? I need to be able to modify the terrain a lot. Thanks so far
Edit: ok well this is as close as Ive been able to get. Google earth seems to keep getting a big dark spot on a huge chunk of it. What can I do with these?

cptSwing

Terrain creation tools such as World Machine or Terragen might be helpful for this.

Maybe after creating your terrain and your road, this will help as well: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/ant-stitcher-fast-and-easy-way-to-connect-two-meshes-in-3ds-max

solidshark91493

I Have world machine but I havent been able to figure out how to do what I want from it.. What is terragen?