HaloMods "Classic" Read-only Archive

Well I'm trying to get into terrain modeling and character modeling, but the way I usually do things doesn't really produce good results. What would be a good way to model a very curvey surface? Like a face or hilly terrain?

BTW what's a spline? I hear it all the time but no one ever mentions what it is.

you should not know what spline means. If you start with splines, you will become addicted to a bad modeling technique. Like sonictag. But he's worked with it enough for it to become mediocre. Plane modeling is better.

Oh ho ho ho, I resent that!

I use spline networks with a surface modifier, or i convert them to nurbs and create nice surfaces with lots of control, this means that I never end up with faces over 4 sides.

You read my tutorials, that technically isnt pure spline modeling, that is basically creating a surface built from a spline, which is basically the same as creating a load of edges around it in any polygon mode and perhaps capping it, and then you use EM or EP to edit it.


Ok, to make a face I find it easier to spline model it, but hey, im weird.

As katarn said, use plane modeling. If you really want to know how, then I will show you how. Also perhaps try Nurbs or even Patch modeling (although patch modeling is so similar to plane modeling, just you work with a ready nurms'd surface.

With terrain you can do a number of things, but generally you would start on a plane with say... 25x25 segments, then you can do a number of things to that:

Displacement modifier - gains you a reasonable ammount of control using a bitmap to define the Z axis.

Noise Modifier - gains you hardly any control, but it does create some good bumpy surfaces.

Manually doing it - You can manually move faces up, use soft selecting to create more "hilly" surfaces (just change the fall-off of it) and this gains you all of the control you need.

there are alot of techniques but generally, these are the ones you should use and I would reccomend not using the noise modifier.

You can then Extrude hills, cut them, manually displace them how you choose, create tunnels (please dont use boolean!! To do this well you want to create a cut in the mesh you want the tunnel to come from, then extrude, rotate ect until you get to the other enterance/exit.

for corvey surfaces i would use the displace modifier.It make very nice results

soft selection is the best terrain technique imo. Faster to change than displacement, and noise just sucks.

Yeah I know noise just plain sucks. Plane modeling? So you would have to do alot of etruding edges and moving vert's around right?


You would be able to create a face with the displacement thing right?


Also, I just spent 4 HOURS working on a scene, and my fucking cousins come and unplug my power chord (undetected) and crash my compy a couple minutes later due to power failure! The SCENE is now corrupt!

I spent all morning on that to. So a spline is a line? Like the Line tool in max? Just draw a line and a bunch more then create faces off of them?

Also why not use boolean? It works fine for me. I usually boolean a hole where I want it, delete the vert's on the edges of the hole that are the left overs from edges that were already on that face. And then create poly's between where the missing vert's were.

Boolean makes really bad geometry,

And you really cant make a face from the displacement modifier..

Although you could try!

sonictag wrote:Boolean makes really bad geometry,

And you really cant make a face from the displacement modifier..

Although you could try!

i did a map with the displace modifier.Wait maybe i can get a pic in a sec

Ok here:

are you looking to somethin like that?Notice that this map is cheap and its mine

Jeez wow that's pretty good partick! Those look like real mountains!

Two more questions, what do you mean by boolean making bad geometry? Like, what does it cause?

For using the displacement modifier, how do you use it? What colors mean what depth? I can't check it out now as I'm at my grandparent's house .

well...if you are going to make terrain...i would make it one face at a time. like make some verts & start out with a few faces. or you could make a plane, tesellate it & move the verts one by one or few by few-whateva floats your boat(lets hope it don't sink!).

i dunno, there r plenty on techniques...everyone has their own "style" & what not. I say u should just play around with it & hope for the best...it takes time & practice .


--Scooby

displace modifier?go to paint make a blank map and make black spots where you wantr to have your mountains.You vcan make some black spots not so intense so in 3ds max make a Plane(or for hek i think you choose the bottomk of the skybox) and then go tro the modifier stack and choose displace modifier.Go to bitmap:none click on none and go to your bitmap that ytou craeted in paint then at the top there is a val;ue at zero.Change it to +100 to have more likly mountains and -100 to have cliffs.I'll [post a tut soon on my site