Uncle Sam and I discovered a professional terrain creater that most people don't realize is at their finger tips! Using only Blender (done on V. 2.46), you can sculpt and texture a terrain easily. Here's how:
Start up Blender and then delete the default cube. Press SPACE, mouse over Mesh, and click Plane.
Press TAB to switch to edit mode; make sure all the vertices are selected. Click the Subdivide button 4 times.
Click the Mode combo box, and select the Sculpt mode.
Almost Done! Make sure the Editing button is pressed, click the Set Smooth button, and then click the Sculpt tab. This is where you modify the brush size, and other attributes. They look good, so now use the left mouse button to draw onto the plain.
Neat, huh?
You can now use various other tools to sculpt the terrain.
Add-increase the slope of the terrain.
Sub-decrease the slope of the terrain.
Grab-great for making sharp edges, cliffs, and caves.
And other tools.
Thats the first step! Have fun messing around and creating a landscape.
However, now the terrain needs a texture. Thankfully Blender comes with a texture painter! This second part assumes you are using the model from the first half of the tutorial.
Locate two textures. I will be using a rock and a snow texture. Make sure the terrain is selected, then click the Shading button, and then the Texture button.
Click Brush, select one of the texture channels, and click Add New.
Click the Texture Type combo box, and click image. Now click the load button and locate the first texture. Now use these steps to load the second texture into the second texture channel.
Click the Material button, and click Add New. Click the TexFace button.
Right click the black line below the header that is above the Buttons window. Click Split Area and then
click near the center of the screen.
Click the Window Type combo bow for the right side of the screen and select UV/Image Editor.
With the mouse on the left side of the screen, hit TAB, then press 7 on the num pad to switch to top view.
With the mouse still on the left side, make sure all vertices are selected, press U and click Unrap.
Now click the Image menu on the right half, and click New. Set the width and height to 1024x1024 then click OK.
Also click the button that enables texture painting.
Now click the Mode combo box and select Texture Paint. Click the Editing button.
Turn opasity all the way up, increase the size to max, put the falloff to max, and increase spacing to about .85.
Click the set of arrows next to the Add New button and select the rock texture. Now use the left mouse button to draw onto the terrain. Make the whole landscape rock for now.
Select the snow texture, and draw it onto one part of the map. Now turn falloff down to .4 and draw around the edges of the snow to smooth it out.
Now to export the model and texture. Click the File menu and click Export, then DirextX. Select "no smooth" and "swap zy" and then click Export All. Save the file to wherever you wish.
Click the Image menu on the right side and click Save As. Save it to any location.
To load it into DBP, look at Uncle Sam's post below. And that's it!
Happy coding.
EDIT:
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LIGHTMAPPING TUTORIAL:
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OK! Light mapping is figured out. I'm not using radiosity like I thought I would, mainly because it was too complicated.
So lets start:
Begin by creating a simple terrain like the one below. If any help is needed, look at the tutorial on the first post, or ask me questions!
Split the screen and set one side to the UVImage Editor mode.
With the terrain selected, go to edit mode, select all vertices, press "U", and click Lightmap UVPack.
Make your options similiar to those in the image below. Make sure the margin is about .3.
Move the default lamp to a close position near your landscape. You can add multiple lights if you wish.
Press CTRL>ALT>B and click Full Render.
And there you go! Notice the UV image on the one side has a texture drawn on it. Export this image and the model to your DBP terrain project folder, load the image, and use the "Set Lightmapping On" command to put the lighting on your terrain. (Note: it is vital that you export the lightmap BEFORE you export the object file.)
End of tutorial!
