A Meski DTE Terrain Tutorial

for Bryce 4 and 5

©Meski 2003

May not be distributed without the written consent of the author

The slightly adorned (with trees) image above is straight out of Bryce 5 with no post work or image processing.

Note:  The downloads will work for Bryce 5 Only.  I am working on the Bryce 4 Downloads but they are not ready as of this posting.  If you can't wait, you can follow this and still have it work in Bryce 4.

One of the first things we must decide is whether we are going to create a standard or a perspective terrain ( I don't know if that is what they are called but that is what I call them. ).  A standard terrain is just a mountain that you pop into the background.  A perspective terrain is one terrain that makes up the entire foreground and background.  The advantage of the perspective terrain is that the detail in the foreground to the background is automatically scaled by perspective for you.  The disadvantage is that the material for the terrain must be designed in such a way as to not blow up in the foreground.  I'll show you some tricks later to help with that issue.

Download Resources Bryce 5 Only
Includes - material, starter elevation maps, and sky.
In this Zip File:
MeskiDTETut.bsk - Sky
MeskiDTE_Tute.mat - Mountain Material
MeskiDTE_Tut2.brt - Finished Elevation Map for this tutorial
DTE_Start1.brt -  Starter Elevation Map

Download Resources Bryce 4
Includes - material, starter elevation maps, and sky.
In this Zip File:
MeskiDTETut.bsk - Sky
MeskiDTE_Tute.mat - Mountain Material
MeskiDTE_Tut2.brt - Finished Elevation Map for this tutorial
DTE_Start1.brt -  Starter Elevation Map

 

Setup - Working With Perspective Terrains

1.  Switch your view to the top and scale a terrain until it is very large.  Click the little up arrow to bring the terrain to the surface.  The camera and the grid for the ground plane should look like the image below.  They should occupy an area in the upper left grid square of approximately 1/4.

2.  Move the corner of terrain until is just covers the camera.

3.  Click on "E" to enter the Terrain Editor.

a.  Click on "New"

b.  Select Massive Resolution from the drop down

c.  On the keyboard, hold the Ctrl Alt keys down and hit "O".  Your screen will most likely be different and that is OK.

d.  Hold down your shift key and click on the text "combination" in the lower palette.  Thanks to Madmax_br5 (www.3dcommune.com) for this tip!

e.  Import "DTE_Start1.brt" and then select it.  Click the check.

f.  Your editor should look like the image below.  If "Filter", "Noise", and "Phase" are not showing on your screen, click the buttons on the bottom and display them.  We are going to be using them.

 

Next - Giving Your Terrain Character