"Generating a realistic surface with Terragen and Maya" by Berthold Grünhagen

Are you searching for a method to generate a realistic surface or landscape maybe for a background in your Maya scene? Of course you can generate an object-file using 3DEM (Digital Elevation Model) files with millions of polygons. I will introduce you to a more simple way.

You need 3 cg-tools to realize it:

Autodesk's Maya,

3DEM (http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem.html)

Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/).

Maybe you will need Photoshop or GIMP to resize the maps.

Before we can start you have to install a plug-in for Terragen called "For Export Only".

You can find it on http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jomeder/feo/index.html.

An installation guide is also there.

You can generate a 3D terrain in Terragen for yourself, but I prefer want to get a realistic surface. In the internet you can find many terrain-files for Terragen.

If you want to get real terrain got to some of the sites you see here:

http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem/finddems.html

You have to spend a little time for searching the right one, but you will get astonishing results!

I downloaded a terrain of Mt. St. Helens .

You can download my ressources here.

In the next step open it in 3DEM with this setting.

You can also use a multi-load by selecting the files you need if you have a greater area splitted in many peaces.

I want to get the full terrain. Herefore I have to set the Lat-Lon Gid in Geo Coordinates off.

For texturing go to File - Save Map Image (here sthelens.bmp).

For the height-information goto File - Save Terragen Terrain and here I choose Entire Terrain (our file is StHelens.ter).

Start Terragen and load it via the button Open and choose StHelens.ter .