Ski Park
polycounter lvl 9
So Im modelling a ski park scene for the Iphone, it needs to be 5,000 to 6,000 tri's, and im wondering what would be the best way to model it? poly by poly or a heightmap? and how would i do it with heightmaps?
Replies
there are tons of free available perlin noise based height map generators to get random generated maps. Something like this:
world machine
http://www.world-machine.com/
is my personal favourite because it can also simulate erosion and some other fancy natural effects to make the terrain more realistic.
Another free tool is:
http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/
yet another one:
http://www.geofrac2000.com/
and most of these tools are the same (even sandbox from crysis) they often rely on the same filters.
I googled this tutorial that should cover what you need for that:
http://www.webomator.com/making-displacement-mapped-terrain-with-world-machine-and-3ds-max/
other methods:
brush tools and paint your own terrain (edit poly has some primitive brush tools at the bottom), alternatively do it in Mudbox or zBrush with some custom brushes to get the natural altering details.
You can use splines to lay down your layout and then apply the sweep modifier to do the basic paths. You can then grow from there, adding ramps and the surrounding environment on top of the basic paths. Applying textures onto this would be piece of cake.
This might help: http://www.inspiredrealms.com/racetracktutorial.html