3DS Max: How to create realistic terrain for beginners

hey what is up guys Branagh productions for another 3ds max tutorial today we're going to be going over how to create a ground terrain inside 3ds max using the simple plane using a simple plane and using built-in plugins inside 3ds max so also on that note I want to go ahead and point out that I have reached a thousand subscribers I'm very excited about it so I want to say say thank you to everyone that has supported this channel and this is your first time coming across this channel why don't you go ahead and hit that subscribe button where I frequently do visual effects animation stock footage and a few other things here and there so alright let's go ahead and begin so I'm going to go ahead and select my top view and I'm going to drag my plane too hard not too difficult for the purpose of this tutorial I'm going to change the color I'm going to give it like this tan color I must scale my plane this is this is a pretty fun way of creating ground trains you don't need I don't know if most people realize but you really don't need other plugins to create a ground train just by simple modifying with map textures that are built inside 3ds max and a few modifiers we can get you rolling out to cool terrain so as soon as I get done creating my plane I'm going to go to the modify tab and I'm going to change my length and width segments I'm going to go to 200 that could be just a little bit too much for the size of my plane so I'm going to drop it down to 100 that's pretty good that's a pretty decent amount of planes segments okay so under the modifier list I'm going to select displace under D as in this place okay so I'm going to select the luminance Center I'm going to go under image and I'ma select map under map I'm going to select I'm going to be under the standard section and I'ma select smoke once I get done doing that I'm going to hit M for material editor I'm going to go to the modifier tab I'm going to hold and right click left click excuse me I'm going to drag this all the way over here we're gonna select instance and we're going to hit okay sweet okay so let's see what happens when we go ahead and change the strength okay notice how we're already getting something pretty cool oh yeah we're getting this very rocky looking terrain here pull this up here notice how it's already looking really really really rough like a this looks like Mordor like I feel like I could see Frodo and Sam right now walking over to Mordor or something so if we bump up the strength look even how much more rockier it looks you got you got helms deep somewhere around here somewhere you got you can make this to whatever you like so this is pretty cool I think that already looks sweet in my opinion I do this quite often I do this quite often when I'm creating some type of terrain every now and then I'll use a plugin if I'm trying to create something a little bit more realistic but this isn't bad at all okay so let's say that we need more flat area say that you don't want you want more of a valley this looks like somewhere you're just you're like Frodo and Sam you're the ring bearer right now we don't want to be the ring bearer we want to be something else I don't know what okay so I'm gonna chain I'm going to keep material editor open and under the smoke parameters I'm going to change the size so when I scale up you're going to notice a lot of things change oh wow yeah we're already noticing so much changing look at how everything is kind of flattening out so notice as well on your map editor right here it's enlarging the texture so let's keep going see what happens notice how it smooths out there we go so now we have a much more smoother look right here now we have something like the I don't know why I'm using so many reference to lower the Rings but this was like the plains of Rohan I don't know I don't know where this is coming from I really don't it's kind of late so let's bump up the strength and see what happens look how cool that looks now like now it's just getting much steeper now this literally looks like helms deep you know when you see Gandalf writing down and you know I have no idea why I don't know why I'm just trying to find cool things to talk about but notice here on your texture look at look at how you can see the solid you know grayish white looking area and you see your black and then you see your white so that's pretty much representing the depth of what we have right here so this area right here is obviously going to be the valley where Aragon is going to be at and Gandalf is going to be right here riding down to save them okay so anyways we can go ahead and change we can we can shift this area by using the phase section right here and if we move this whoa that's not supposed to happen oops let's see offset okay just ignore what I was doing I think I'm using the wrong map channel actually what I was trying to present but yeah so you can use this map texture to create something like that so the higher you go the more flattened it's going to go okay so let's say we need to go back to Mordor we're going to change this back to like Oh see what happens if we change it to 50 yeah look at that that just looks chaotic that looks like just like chaos so we can experiment with other things here let's go ahead and change it to a noise a lot of times I do use the noise modifier okay look how it looks different I'm going to go ahead and drag this map I'm going to change it I'm gonna put it to the instance I'm gonna put it as an instance in the second excuse me in the second slot okay so we need to adjust this to get the darker areas solid dark right right I'm gonna change it to turbulence I'm going to size it up notice how it's already changing and then you're going to see that change right there as well so if we change the high section that's going to change a lot of things notice how that happens okay so when I affect the low notice how a lot of the areas have just gotten completely flat this is a great way to create flat solid valleys if that makes any sense like complete straight ground planes just for a great spectacle view so if we want to add more mountains so to speak we're going to change the size of it and bring it bring that down and then we're going to mess with the high your mess with the low as well okay so as I pull down the low as I bring that more look at the material data right here so same thing again the black represents the flat areas and then your lighter grade colors represent the higher terrain so you can create some very very cool unique custom terrains off of this now what I was trying to do on the last first material I was trying to phase it where you can change the texture of it so to speak so under phase I'm going to change it and notice how you got it running through different type of things right here so you can completely create so many different type of model unique while this one looks really cool you can create so many different terrain models just built inside 3ds max it literally takes I mean tops without me talking about Gandalf and Eragon and Lord of the Rings and Frodo and Sam literally it'd take you like two minutes so yeah this is how to create a ground terrain this is pretty much for beginners so you can add a cool v-ray son and a v-ray sky and you'll have a spectacle a very pretty looking scene if you don't know how to do that check out the video after this one where I teach you how to use the v-ray Sun and sky for beginners so anyways this is your first time coming across my channel why don't you go ahead and hit that subscribe button or if you only do animations visual effects and I release stock footage for free so yeah I hope you guys learned a lot but yeah this is how to create ground terrain with built-ins built 3 guess so my name is brandon pop engine productions and i'll catch you guys later hope frodo and sam make it all right later guys

Channel: CloudVision Productions

Views: 95,611

Keywords: 3ds max, 3ds max tutorial, how to create terrain, realistic terrain, how to model, animation, adobe after effects, model animation, cinema4d, blender

Id: 9ob8x7GPZAM

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 07 2016