good cliffs

[spookers622]

i was wondering how to make good-looking cliffs if you used a heightmap. A normap doesnt seem to work to well which i'm pretty sure is because my cliffs are too square and are basically a zig-zag pattern along the edge from a bird's eye view.

[Con]

If I were you, I wouldn't use a height map.

If you insist, then to make them look better you just need to put in a little effort to move the vertices out of that grid pattern or better yet simplify the cliffs along their length so they're comprised of less vertical sections, then add detail.

[Vicky]

Adding some noise (with fractal) can give fairly nice effects too.

[thehoodedsmack]

I find that nurbs surfaces make nice cliffs. But there's usually a lot of cleanup after converting it to an editable poly/mesh etc.

[spookers622]

thnx, i appreciated the input. I would redo the cliffs completely, buti have tunnels and stuff going through them already. The reason i used heightmap in the first place ws to get the basic shape of the cliffs (noticable from a bird's eye view) easily.

[jngrow]

a combination of soft selection and noise, well, at least thats how i do it.

[spookers622]

If I were you, I wouldn't use a height map.

whatd you use in valhalla? extrude? attached seperate object? NURBS surfaces? creating faces?

[Con]

Maya is more akin to sculpting/box modeling/subdiv modeling, so that's how I made my cliffs. Initially, my terrain for the level was a 10 sided cylinder with the sides as the cliffs. I just kept cutting the faces and moving verts until I had the desired detail level. It's what I do with all my cliffs, whether the flat surface begins as a primitive or an edge extruded a few times along my cliff line.

[spookers622]

o i have a free version of maya. i havent used it yet but i will now... of the maps ive seen, a lot dont have great cliffs; i think you should make a tutorial to show people to go beyond the limits of 3ds max.

[Con]

You can do the same with 3ds max, I just find it harder to use.

[spookers622]

not too keen on making a tutorial lol?

[Con]

Maybe I'll make a tutorial later.

[Chewy Gumball]

The method of modeling doesn't have much to do with the program used. Only the tool names, layout and option names would be different. With an obvious exception being zbrush/mudbox. Not going to be doing multi million poly sculpting in max/maya very much.

[soccerbummer1104]

yea.. ive found that even with a pretty darn good computer such as mine max even starts to super lag once i get over 200k pollys. zbrush tends to handle it much better though.

[Llama Juice]

Why would you need over 200K polys?......

[spookers622]

to look good lol, that's what normal maps are for

[jahrain]

You can't apply a normal map to an entire level's cliff as they need to be tiled... The best method for cliff modeling is to create the basic shape of the map in a subdivided box, delete off the top cap of the box, and then subdividing and splitting polygons then moving around edges and vertecies to shape in details of the cliff.