posted 03-20- 09:01 PM               

The Tutorials will expect a basic level of Max knowledge from the user, but lets face it, if you're not to sure, then building a terrain isn't a good starting point lol

posted 03-20- 09:02 PM               

1: Create a 512x512 texture map of the terrain area you want to build, this must be in greyscale and will be used as a displacement map, using White as high points and black as low points. There is no good way to explain a displacement map for our terrains, and it takes a great deal of trial and error before you get the knack, but a good displacement map will make building the terrain much much easier. (I’ll be more specific about this in a later tutorial)

2: In Max
Set your Units setup to 1FL = 1 Mile.
Make a Patch Grid using Quad output. Set the height and width segments to 10, and then set the Length and Height to 40.01 both, then Align the object to the centre of the World.

You now have your grid, current Poly count is 7200.

Now, the very tedious part – in the Modify tab, convert the Patch Grid to Editable Mesh.
Using the Face Select and starting in the bottom left hand corner of the grid select a square of 3x3 segments and detach them, name this Object00, then working left to right bottom to top detach each 3x3 segment block until there are none left, after naming the first 3x3 segment you don’t need to name any others, Max will correclty name them for you now.

OK, you now have a grid split into 400 smaller grids, named Object00 to 399

OK, now select all the grids, and in the Midifies tab, select Displace. In the Image section, under Bitmap clck on the button that says None and browse to the displacement map you have made and select it, do the same for the part headed Map. Now, go the the section headed Displacement and in the Strength give it a value of 1 and you will see the terrain made for you. As a rule, you will not use more than a value of 1 as this creates a terrain with peaks of around 2 miles, fine for the himalayas, but not for most of europe To check the height of your terrain, select a row of tiles and go into the Utilities Tab and select Measure, you will see that the X is 40.01, the Y is 2.001, and the Z value give the the height in miles.

If your terrain is to high, lower the value put in the Strength, is it’s to low, raise the figure. This is where the displacement map becomes so very important, if not done well you will see hills where you didn’t want any, just go back and edit your dispalcemant map, and then reload it into Max to see how it looks now..

OK, we’ll say you’re happy with it now, the BIG problem is you now need to centre each tile on the WORLD X,Y Axis NOT THE Z. I haven’t found how to do this using Max 3.1, so I export the terrain in 3DS format, load it into Max4 and centre it, then export the centerd terraion back to Max3.1.

Once centred, select all the tiles, and in the Modifier Tab, use Mesh Select, and select everything, then Texture map them with any terrain texture, it doesn’t matter that it’s not the right texture, or that it’s mapping the same texture to all tiles, we do this just to get the proper texture co-ords onto all the tiles.

You now export the stacked/mapped terrain tiles as an Object, but do not use the Material settings at all.

Now you can open OPS, select a base terrain to edit, and import the tiles into the corresponding tile in OPS, because we named them starting fro Object00 this is easy, select tile 0 and import object00 into it, and so on untill all 400 have been imported. Be Warned! There are rows or “mirror” tiles, usualy 3 or 4 rows around the outer edge of the terrain, these must not be touched, they have the same number as the tile their texture mirrors, meaning, there could be 4 tiles name 0, make sure that you start with the innermost terrain tile 0, you will see what I mean when you look at the terrain in OPS

For more detail on the terrain, use double the segments when building the Patch Grid (this will raise the poly count though)
You can Optimise the terrain once you are happy that the terrain looks how you would like it to, this will keep good deatil and very much lower the poly count., using a setting of 9 in the Face Thrash will about half the number of polys used.

posted 03-20- 09:16 PM               

I’ll work through this Turtorail based on a single tile, since for multiple tiles you simply have to do the same thing more times over, this example assumes that the tile material is land and you want to add water, but it could just as easily be the other way round.

1: In OPS select the the tile that needs to be land and water, probably a coastline tile or a river bank, and export it as an object.

2: In max, import the tile and texture map it with the correct terrain tile texture, this lets you see excatly what needs to be done.

Select the faces that are covered with water and detach them (you may want to move some of the Verts so that the faces match better to the water, but DO NOT move any verts that are along the outer edges of the tile.

Export the tile now.

3: In Ops, import the land portion of the tile back into the same tile in the terrain, there will now be a gap where the water should be. Copy the tile, and paste it onto the Group underwhich all the terrai tiles are listed. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and make sure the tile has the same name, if not, rename it back to how it should be. Now export that tile as a LOD

Using Lodhack (part of Parfile Tools by Hippie) change the material of the LOD file to Water. This is done by placing the LOD in the same folder as Lodhack (or vice versa), opening a DOS window and running this command:

Lodhack <lod name> material 2

Now close the DOS window and go back into OPS, select the tile that you patsed previously and Import the LOD that you just change (it’ll look screwy cause OPS doesn’t like LOD import, no worries), now, go to Import again, and import the Object file you exported fro mMax, but select the Water part this time. Now the water part is the correct shape, and in the right place, there should now be no gap. Save the SM file, and you'’e done.

This can all be done using AC3D, and would actualy be quick since you could export the split tile from AC3D as LOD files, then convert the water one to water material and import it straight into OPS, you wouldn’t need to export it from OPS as a LOD to convert it to water.

Do this for each and every tile that needs changing.

posted 03-20- 09:26 PM               

OK, first you must have a basic picture of the area you want to build the terrain for, and it should be to scale (40x40 miles).

Resize the image to 512x512 as this is the max size that 3DS max will accept. For a first attempt at a Displacement map, you can use a color map of the area, and convert it to a Greyscale map, You should select any water areas on the map and make them pure black, also, rivers should be widened otherwise Max will not give you a river, but something more like a V with a single vert at the lowest point, this isn’t good if you want to make it look realistic or add water later.

OK, the heighest points on the terrain should be the lightest moving down to black for the lowest, you should try to work in shades of grey rather than using white. Using a Gaussian Blur will help stop very steep points appearing when applied as a disp. Map in Max, unless they are what you want ofcourse.

You can save the map as a bmp and then call it up when Displacement mapping in Max.