Im not sure if this has been asked already. What im looking to do is create mountanous terrain with apath leading to a building that is built into the mountain. Using patches is out of the question asit would take too many.

The question is how do i create the terrain. should it be a static mesh created in an external 3d program and them imported into d3, and if so how do i make the mesh collisionable so it can be walked on. would i have to leave holes in the mesh so that i could create my internal sections for the player to get into?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hey....sorry for not being on here, I've just bought a new flat and the net isn't yet up.

Uisng an 3D programme to make your model is the way to do it. In Unreal they used models and thats how I would do it also. Maybe using maya or Zbrush to get the normal map out. If you made your model you could easily greate roads and blend textures together if you UV map your terrain. If it was a big piece of landscape you could have 4 or 5 textures for the model to keep the quality there. I plan on doinga farm environment and thats how I would do iy, I would probably even bake the lights on to the textures aswell so it looks more outdoors too.

Marcus

Well, I've already created my terrain model in 3ds max and textured it with two textures with material id's and a multi subobject material.

The question now is, how do I get it from max to doom. what export format do i use, am I supposed to write a material file and how do I do so. Finally, how do I make the model collisionable?

Export the model as a .ASE I made a tutorial on getting models into doom3 but to be honest theres loads of tutorials to get it models into doom3.

just setup a mtr file for your textures like you would. Open up the .ASE model in notepad and change the textures destnation so its finding the textures into the pk4 file.

(instead od C:\\, you usually have \\base\(followed by your texture path in the pk4 file)

The load up the model in the editor. You don't need to create a .CM file for it as when you compile the model it will automatically have collision on it. To set a model to have no collision (faster compile times) you have to set it in the model's attributes in the inspector window otherwise it's solid as a default.

The only real time I use .CM files is for models that a dynamic...like say a new weapon's pick-up model. When you die you drop the weapon you are equiped with. If it doesn't have a collision model then the game usually results with a crash.

hope that helped chief.
Marcus.

Ive got my terrain up and running, so to speak.

Once again, thanks for the help.