terrain profile - gently rolling hill

[Stan Zaslavsky]

Hi all,

have been working on this terrain project - struggling to make a smooth rolling hill

 

my method was to create a large plane and then use soft selection to pull up and smooth out .. but it's coming up pretty sharp ..

 

this is a kind of a profile i'm trying to create:

 

i've tried the graphite tools .. but not exactly sure which tool to use to get this happening

 

any tips welcome

[Justin Hunt]

how dense is your mesh? and does adding a turbosmooth modifier help?

 

You could also use the paint deform tools set to relax to soften the curve

 

jhv

[MrCAD]

Did you try FFD modifier yet ?

 

I am sure it could be helpful

 

good luck

 

Meher

[Stan Zaslavsky]

hi justin

i made the mesh reasonably dense - and tried a turbosmooth - see results below

its ok - but if i can start with a nice curve first - i will then have a much easier way of deforming other parts of it

 

MrCad - I've had a look at the FFD modifier - challenge is that only parts of the terrain need hills, other parts are flat or are dipping - so would i need to separate the mesh and add FFD to individual parts?

 

thanks for your comments guys

[MrCAD]

use the meshselect modifier and apply FFD on selected areas..rest would remain flat

 

Meher

[Bruce Hart]

Hi Stan

I often find an easy way to do terrain modelling is with spline cages with the surface modifier. Draw a series of splines in the shapes you want and then connect them with other splines so there are no more than 4 sides to each vertex patch. You can have 3 sides too, but 4 is preferable to maintain quads. It's helpful to right click the spline object properties and turn on show vertex ticks, so they are always visible. You then attach the splines together, and apply the surface modifier. If you find the mesh disappears completely click the flip normals checkbox. If you have holes in your mesh, it will most likely be due to having more than 4 spline segment edges, or you have not snapped a vertex to another properly. Also - don't bother welding the vertexes together - they only have to touch one another (or nearly touch in a small range) for the patch to close, and you may need to adjust the vertex handle tangents of the segments.

 

The Cross Section modifier can be used in some circumstances to join the spines together before the surface mod. The surface patch that is generated has scalable resolution topology too. Hope this helps.