How would you approach this landscape as a 3D Model?
wancow
Posts: 2,708
http://austriaangloalliance.deviantart.com/art/Gentle-Waterfall-349887046
I'm looking at this waterfall, and I'm thinking it would be a neat 3D Model... I'm curious to know if you were assigned to do this as a project, how would you approach it in Hex?
Comments
I wouldn't touch it with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole!
Seriously, Hex isn't the best program to even think about that kind of modelling in...heck, I wouldn't even try it in Blender.
Something like Bryce, Vue or Terragen...(something that can use a heightmap or is made for landscape modelling). Then once the geometry is taken care of...maybe import it into something else for texturing/rendering/using as a set piece...but no, not your average modelling app to build it.
Out of those 3 I would choose Vue everytime. The Terrian scuplting tools are just awesome IMHO.
Nah Bryce rules OK
OOOO Bryce vs Vue flamewar coming!!! Yeehaw! Can I watch?
MJC quoteth the single most obscene line out of a song connected to Dr. Suess...
Well, we know where your mind is...
But back to the original intent of the thread.
Hex is pretty good at making small things, even some pretty big ones (buildings and vehicles), but for organic or large scale items, it falls flat. It's really a drawback of all modelling apps. They have a range of things they can do well and things that are borderline or outside of that range; those are hard to impossible to do convincingly in that program. There isn't one app that does it all.
And for things like terrain, it is a lot easier (both on ones sanity and getting convincing results) to use a specialized app made for that kind of modeling. Bryce/Vue can both handle it with ease. Terragen can, too, but probably isn't as easy to use, out of that group (it's kind of the Blender of terrain apps...very powerful but not all that easy to use).
I bet it would be easier to do in Zbrush (or even Sculptris) than it would be in Hex.
But having made it in Bryce why would you want to render it in DS.
Ah, OK. I started with Bryce, so I guess I just got used to adding my figures to the scene, rather than the other way round, it's just the way I have always done it, right back to Br2. Well Br 3 really, as I didn't start adding figure till I bought P3 which came out around the same times as Br3.
I forgut all about sculptris!!! which I have!!
Whoops, see below. :red:
Both Vue and Terragen can export the terrains...not necessarily easily, but it can be done.
Here comes my choice for the Terrain. World Machine followed by Terragen both employ nodes by the way. :)
Not that I set these up, as I'm in the middle of doing the fustrating thing doing a terrain in Hexagon. :roll:
Did a few test renders, now to attack the terrain hopefully to make it a bit more realistic. :-S
I would approach it like two porcupines getting intimate - very carefully:)
But seriously, any app that can string together three verts to make a poly could do that waterfall - whether the user is capable of doing it is another matter entirely.
In Hex I would use a highly tessellated cube or three and shape it using the sculpting tools.