Making Terrain?

[Hydra]

i was wondering if any 1 could give me some advice on making terrain, ive had a mess about but ive always had problems or it looks too blocky. it would be nice to hear from map makers who have made terrain and how they did it.
Yes ive looks at many tutorials on it, but they speak like you like you have a basic knowledge of terrain.

ive tryed maing terrain in 3dsmax, but importing it failed. ive tryed making lots of brushes and moving the verts, but its limited and you cant multi selcet verts (to my knowledge you cant, might be worng).

any experenced advice will be gratefull.

[Thorn]

You could use 15x15 patch meshes and turn the compile thresh in q3map2 at 0.1

The other way would be to use Socks terrain tutorials using Brushes(The method used in Ancient Remains if i remember correctly.)

[Survivor]

You can multiselect verts but that method should only be used for small amounts of terrain. Larger amounts are better done with patch messes. I think the ancient remains thread contains links to how dasprid did it and it's one of the best looking methods around.

[Hydra]

ah, thanks for the advice, ill go have a look at that tread now   :wink:

[TRaK]

Dasprid used the methods detailed here :

http://simland.planetquake.gamespy.com/pages/articles.htm

It's not too hard once you get the hang of it.

[DarkRogue]

If you want an example of patch mesh terrain take a peek at gloom_b2 I used it extensively for the floors and ceilings while using the simland tutorial for many of the walls.

The problem currently with patch meshes is that the models graphic has the nasty tendancy to fall through mesh objects. ie. take the crates on tremor, the appearance that turrets/eggs are built inside them is due to this error.

For some they never see this issue and the model draws where it should. Most however get a glitched visual. Anyways I rambled a bit, this effect occurs with the patch mesh used in gloom_b2. Eggs and teles tend to fall through the patch mesh (at least graphically) to the enclosing chaulk brush below.

While a patch mesh terrain looks 100x better than a phong shaded series of regular brushes...it's a really buggy technique used at a mappers own risk. For a more stable experience definately follow the simland tutorial or look into the gensurf(sp?) tool gtk can use.

[Lava Croft]

Do not use patch meshes for terrain, they are not suited for it. Either use the method explained by Sockter and used by Dasprid, or use the old method of 'trisoup', just create a grid of equally sized square brushes and clip em all diagonally, leaving you with a fancy grid of triangular shaped brushes. Now you select verts and start pulling them in any direction. While the trisoup method is easier, the method used by Socker has a better endresult, certainly when it comes to r_speeds. Whatever method you use, be sure to use a phong-shading-shader to make the terrain appear more smooth, as shown in Ancient Remains and Sokolov's Space.