An Advanced Terrain and Megatexture

This guide will show you step by step, on how to create a detailed Megatextured Terrain.

Introduction

For this tutorial you must:

• Have a modelling package that can export as LWO 0r OBJ
• Have basic modelling skills
• Have basic mapping skills, as in A Simple First Map

This tutorial covers:

• Steps to create a detailed terrain mesh.
• How to assign the Megatexture
• How to add the terrain mesh to a map
• How to make a Megatexture
• How to compile a Megatexture
• How to add Water to a map

Programs used in this tutorial are:

• Mudbox
• World Machine
• Lightwave
• Maya (only used briefly)

Other similar programs can be used instead of these, but wont be covered in this tutorial.

This tutorial does not cover in detail:

• How to use Mudbox / ZBrush / World Machine / Blender / Lightwave / Maya / 3DSMax

If you already have a terrain mesh, and do not want to use Mudbox and World Machine, skip to Prepare Terrain for Megatexture .

Mudbox: Shape the Terrain

Mudbox Layers

These are the basic steps for sculpting a terrain in Mudbox.

• Create a plane, and subdivide (but still keep a low tessellation).
• Change any tools you use to have the edit Direction set to Y axis.
• Create a new Layer, and sculpt the rough layout for the terrain.
• Subdivide again to as detailed as you want (or can).
• Create another layer, and sculpt more details into the terrain.
• Export to OBJ.

Convert Mesh to Heightmap

This step is needed if you want to import your current terrain mesh into World Machine.

• Firstly, rotate the terrain mesh. In Lightwave, rotate -90° around the X axis. For 3ds Max & Maya, rotate +90° around the X axis.
• Cap any holes in the mesh, and triangulate. Using a machine with an nVidia graphics card, run the following command in the ETQW console to get the heightmap (where [model] is pointing to the relative path of the .lwo, .obj or .ase mesh):

RenderBumpFlat –floatHeightmap -size 2048 2048 [model]

• An .r32 (raw 32-bit) heightmap will be saved into the same folder as your model, and this heightmap can be used in World Machine.