“Generating a realistic surface with Terragen and Maya” by Berthold Grünhagen
Are you searching for a method to generate a realistic surface or landscape maybe for a background in your Maya scene? Of course you can generate an object-file using 3DEM (Digital Elevation Model) files with millions of polygons. I will introduce you to a more simple way.
3Dtutorials.sk recommendation:
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You need 3 cg-tools to realize it:
Autodesk’s Maya,
3DEM (http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem.html)
Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/).
Maybe you will need Photoshop or GIMP to resize the maps.
Before we can start you have to install a plug-in for Terragen called “For Export Only”.
You can find it on http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jomeder/feo/index.html.
An installation guide is also there.
You can generate a 3D terrain in Terragen for yourself, but I prefer want to get a realistic surface. In the internet you can find many terrain-files for Terragen.
If you want to get real terrain got to some of the sites you see here:
http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem/finddems.html
You have to spend a little time for searching the right one, but you will get astonishing results!
I downloaded a terrain of Mt. St. Helens .
You can download my ressources here.
In the next step open it in 3DEM with this setting.
You can also use a multi-load by selecting the files you need if you have a greater area splitted in many peaces.
I want to get the full terrain. Herefore I have to set the Lat-Lon Gid in Geo Coordinates off.
For texturing go to File – Save Map Image (here sthelens.bmp).
For the height-information goto File – Save Terragen Terrain and here I choose Entire Terrain (our file is StHelens.ter).
Start Terragen and load it via the button Open and choose StHelens.ter .
Thank you so much for the tutorial! This is very helpful as I’m trying to create terrain for my animation, although it might be a bit too high poly =)
Can we used this method on a slightly lower poly mesh?