Working on Terrain

Since I want the final animation to happen above a terrain instead of in the space, I have been looking for tutorials and different techniques to create terrains in 3ds Max (which so far has made me miss UDK's terrains).


So far I have found 2 different main ways of creating terrains:


1- Creating a plane and using the modifier DISPLACE on it with a SMOKE or a NOISE map. This results in the plane becoming bumpy but I think this technique would be better for a dessert terrain or a mountain terrain and not a forest terrain which is what I am looking for.


2 - Creating a plane, convert into a editable poly with enough length and width segments, and moving its vertices up and down to shape the terrain as desired. I find this option more suitable for a forest.


Scatter Compound + Foliage


A very nice way I found to add random foliage to the terrain, in order to make it look like a forest, is using the SCATTER COMPOUND which will instance the object I want to scatter (a tree or a bush for example) all over the map. I found this tool very convenient because it let me choose how many times I want to instance the object and in which way I want it scattered (area, randomly, following edges, evenly, etc...).


Here is a test:

The negative side of this technique is that if I add a lot of vegetation, even if the polygon counter remains the same, the frame rate of 3ds Max decreases significantly.