Most of the map im making is interior ao I dont need alot of terrain. But what im trying to do is make a cople of hills around the area that is out side to give players a vantage point to see inside and maybe hide behind. Now the problem im haveing is how do I go about creating these hills? I was going to use gensurf and make a small terrain map but isnt there an easier wa?y (just seems like alot of work for a couple of 8x8 hills :) )

Beav,
Using GenSurf is one of two methods you must use to create terrain. If you have not read the
Terrain Creation And Texturing document by Raven
Software that comes with both the SP and MP Sof2
SDK's I would suggest you start here. Then go to the tutorial section and read Narc's tut on terrain.
And then ask some questions as required.
The most important thing is to understand how to
create a heightmap from the original bmp map you make for GenSurf (a greyscale bit map). Though
the document mentioned, is fairly well written, it does not explain step by step how to actually create a heightmap THAT WILL WORK CORRECTLY. Most of us have had to experiment a bit as how we use our available Photo Editor tools to create the heightmap (Alpha Map). Once one understands the basics it is not to hard to do.
Also carefully read the document by Raven titled
SOF2 Shaders. It must be understood how shaders work in order to create a alpha map which has the proper colors(binary progression of powers of two..... white=255, black=0 with greyscale values between, 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2....) in order for the shader file that you choose to create the proper textures at any given area on the terrain.

In short, there is no easy way out as far as creating properly textured terrain. But I can assure you that if you ask questions on points not understood, that people at this forum can help you.
Narc's tut contains a workable example.

I had the same question as you, and found out that the answer was no. You must be willing to experiment with alphamaps, Gensurf bit maps, and examine the metashader file, for instance, to learn how the whole process comes together.
Hope I have not turned you off with this answer. But it is a set of truthful and accurate statements regarding basics on terrain creation. Figure on at least a few days on front end learning and probably
a week or more of experimentation to get it figured out. Once you have made a few maps using a different number of pure colors in the alpha map,
and a shader that has the equivalent number of main textures, it will all come together.

grb (George).

heh wow thanks -a lot of info (seems the learning never ends :P. I have experemented with making heightmaps for gensurf a bit -it does seem quite complicated and I think I will wait untill I have more free time and then take a look
thanks again :)

george i think you meant alphpamap? -- yes we now know there is something finnicky in the compiler so if anyone has a problem with the alphamap being rejected as improper use irfanveiw to reprocess the file... even though the file may show it is in the proper configuration select convert to greyscale then resave the file and the problem will go away. also yes there was supposed to be files that go along with the tutorial but foyle didnt post them and i recently formatted my hard drive and i make no backups so it is gone sorry.

Narc,
Yes I meant alphamap. Do I have the tut you sent me regarding map making that you lost? If so let me know and I can send you the original you sent me, so that you can continue sharing it in the forum.

And Beav, you did not make any response. If you are still interested in pursuing making terrain with GenSurf, let us know. I assure you with a little help we can get you onboard. Bottom line is, we
all appreciate that all members are not interested in pursuing some of these things and willing to put a lot of time into learning how to do it. And this is not meant to be negative or putting any one down.
I for one tend to be a darn fool and get sucked into this sort of stuff, then spend a lot of time trying to learn how to produce something that appears to have meaning. Of course in my case I feel I have learned enough with the help of mostly Narc, to
actually be at a point where I can now make maps with some neat things in them. But it has required quite a bit of invested time.

grb

if you still have them they were the 2 zip files and email messages i sent regarding terrain. one was the badly formatted html of a terrain tutorial with example map/files. the other was the metashader breakdown and blendtest example.

Yeah I am still interested in it -just a little busy on the work front latley and the girlfriends been after me to spend more time with her ("We never seem to do anything any more, you never take me anywhere" -you know the drill ) Im planning to play around with the gensurf plugin when im done with this current map. Ive had some ideas for a cool outdoor theme with a few buildings to hide in. Now if only the day had 30 hours instead of 24 maybe I could get something done :P

Depending on how high and how complex your hill has to be, you might be able to use a patch mesh for this too.

Brutus,
Are there any docs available that describe how to use "patch mesh"?
Sounds as if it may be a useful tool to modify existing terrain maps generated by Gensurf.

grb

A patch mesh is basically a plane that only has 1 side that you can manipluate along various axis.

curve->simple patch mesh in SDk

Hit V for vertices. Click on any vert to turn it blue and start manipulating.

If you hold the shift key while selecting, it will select along the entire length in 1 direction.. ie.. all verts along the X axis that line up with the one you're selecting.