Learning 3D, Questions Options

[HERD]

Instead of a nice girl like in tut, got Shaquille O'Neal.
When converted to poly or mesh, tons of vertices appeared (why?),
had to edit as a patch. Mesh smooth did not work well either because of it.
Is there a way in Max to stop a process, if I know I’ve made a mistake?
(Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn’t work)

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[Sir-Kill]

look in to displace (WSM), displace approx, and displace. for more info.

what I like to do is to create a grayscale map in 2d black/dark gray background.
paint on with white opacity set at about 10-30% and just draw out some places where higher elevations will be (the lighter the higher) don't make this to complex for you first go round.
then since some times that is 'to perfect' I take a small smudge brush and smudge some of the elevations so there are streaks.
save and use that as your displace map.
now the more dense you map the higher the detail but it is going to cost you a bunch of wasted polys if you do not create you mesh correctly.
if you take a plane and give it 100 length and 100 width segments that will a fairly dense mesh depending your render size you would be at 20,000 polys and it will not be detailed enough where you need it.

we will make a (dry) river bed
so lets start out with a plane with 1 and 1 segments.
load your map you made in the diffuse channel and add that material to your plane. make sure you have the 'Show Map In Viewport' depressed.

under "edit geometry" in either object mode or sub-object mode (vert. edge, poly) you will find a cut button depress that and cut new polys where you need elevation changes. 2 lines should be good for now, on either side of the river.

if you look at the image the purple lines are the original edges.
Red are vertices
blue are the first lines you cut
the green are the connecting lines. to create these go to vertice and select 2 vertices you want to connect and click connect. repeat as needed.
select all edges that have the pink dashes and hitting the box next to connect (you chose the number of connections (3 should be enough) the connect button will remember your last choice). these are the light blue lines.
finish off cutting in (pink lines) making good quad sided geometry. (we are just roughing in for now)

now add a 'Displace' modifier.
in the image area under bitmap a button says none click it and load you displace map that you made. you can skip the none button under map.
to make the geometry show elevation change the strength to what to you seems correct.
It is real rough now, so lets click edit poly in the stack (under displace modifier) under the 'Subdivision Surface' rollout, uncheck 'Isoline Display' and click 'Use Nurms Subdivision' make iterations 1.
render and the geometry should be much smother.
still a little rough? then uncheck the Nurms. and cut in more geometry.
you can add in more, represented in orange, note the oval shape cut if you do something like that is is good to remove the edges with orange dots to again keep everything quad sided
since most of the excitemint is at the edges of the river bank you might want to add more geometry there (dark red line).

you just keep adding geometry as you see fit. if you hit the 7 key it will show a poly count for the object you are working on try to keep the plane to <1000 polys.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Oct 15 2008, 03:01 PM