Terrain is hard.
The terrain-generation tools that are available in free 3D modeling software are mostly designed to create big terrains - mountain ranges, continents, and so on. But, my model needed a terrain that's maybe 5 miles by 5 miles. To complicate matters, for the terrain upon which buildings and streets would rest, I needed to be able to sculpt terrain with precision.
In my low-end software world, there was no one-size-fits-all solution. After a lot of research, I realized that I needed to use a variety of methods to generate my terrain in pieces, and import them into Sketchup (if needed) to scale them and fit them together.
Here's a summary of the different terrains that I created.
The mountains gave me fits. After lots of trial and error, I finally decided to create them using the fractal terrain generation tools in Bryce 7, which are blunt instruments at best. Getting the fractal mountains to make a plausible transition to a seabed *where I needed them to transition* was just wickedly difficult. That was the part of the project where I longed for feature-rich higher end software that lays out of my economic reach.
The little islands are also Bryce fractal terrains. These were much easier to make to my satisfaction. I used the "erode fractal" feature to make nice rocky promontories.
I exported the fractally created terrains from Bryce as 3DStudio format meshes, which I was able to import into Sketchup. I then used Sketchup tools to scale them and make them fit. Well, "make them fit" is a stretch. I smoothed out the most egregious seams.
The mound-like island, upon which rests the lighthouse and the gladiatorial arena and other city structures, was created from a mesh that is available in Sketchup called a TIN. I made a small-grid TIN and shaped it using Sketchup tools to accomodate where streets and buildings would go, and that took a lot of fiddling. But the results were good.
The gently sloping terrain, upon which rests the mainland portion of the city, was grabbed from a geospatial database, imported into Sketchup, and scaled to fit. The real world location is somewhere along the coast of Baja California. I was only able to make limited use of terrain grabs from a geospatial database, since the resolution of the databases to which I had access isn't very high. But the resulting mesh was perfect for wherever I needed a relatively flat terrain, like a sandy beach.
I also needed a seabed. I had thought, "Hey! I can grab a seabed from a geospatial database!" Turns out, I couldn't. Instead I used a large grid size Sketchup TIN. and shaped it without too much effort.
Oh, I wanted to say something about my seabed. I was looking forward to cool results from a seabed as seen through semi-transparent water. Mostly though, results were meh. Like, shadows cast on the bottom that were just distracting rather than cool, or depth-sensitive rendered water that resulted in a wierd looking seabed. I am getting ahead of myself, though.
Here are renders of the untextured terrain without a water plane, which makes it kinda hard to figure out what you're looking at. Once the water's in, it'll hopefully make sense. Pictures were rendered within Sketchup using Maxwell Fire.
More to come......
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