How to make a very realistic, detailed landscape in Anim8or – The Bongle Method

 

  1. Download terragen, at planetside.co.uk
  2. Start terragen, make it create a new landscape by clicking on the generate terrain button (it’s bolded, in the view|landscape)
  3. Adjust it as needed, using the controls at top of landscape window(since this is how to make it in anim8or, I’ll let u figure it out, but it’s real easy, involves left/right clicking)
  4. When satisfied (you can use preview button in the view|rendering controls), you click on export in the landscape window.
  6. Choose to export into LWO (lightwave) format.
  7. Open anim8or, import the landscape
  8. If you want, go into point edit, and cut it into 4, put it into other object files to save system memory (these are BIG files, and take a good video card/lots of memory
  9. Go to terragen, and in the rendering controls, change it so that the camera position is 3840m x position, and 3840m y position.  It should now be looking directly down if you render a preview.
  10. Changed the “fixed height above surface” property of the Camera to be progressively higher until you can see the entire outline of the terrain in the preview window.
  11. When you can see the entire terrain in the preview window, change the image size properties to 512x512.
  12. Render the image.  May take a while.
  13. Save the image as a file.
  14. Import it into anim8or, and resize it (using the UV button) so that it fits over your terrain.
  15. My Terrain texture.  Notice the poorly lopped off edges.
  16. If lined up properly, it should not show any black areas near the sides, and the shadows should be more or less lined up with the hills they represent.
  17. If you want to get fancy, you can adjust atmospherics in terragen so that they have a sunset glow or the sun is directly overhead (eliminating shadows).  Terragen is a very powerful program, and is quite fun to play with.
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