Megaterrain plug-in documentation for 3ds max

1. Creating a terrain object

To create a terrain object:

1. On the Create panel, click Geometry.
2. Open the Geometry List and select Megaterrain.
3. On the Object Type rollout, click Terrain.
4. Click the viewport location where you want the terrain to be. If you drag the mouse, you can move the terrain around before releasing the mouse to fix its position. The terrain is now part of the scene.
5. Set the creation parameters.

2. Simple terrain with standard 3ds max material.

If you do not need a very large terrain you can create it using standard 3ds max material only:

1. Open Material Editor.
2. Select Standard 3ds max material and apply it to a terrain object. 
3. Open Maps rollout.
4. Set Displacement to any map you wish (bitmap, noise, etc...). This map will be used as a height-field for the terrain.
5. Set any other maps you need (Diffuse Color or Bump, for example).

The simple terrain is ready. Now you can set terrain size and rendering parameters if needed.

3. Terrain object parameters rollout.

Length, Width

    Sets Length and Width of the terrain object.

Min/Max Altitude

    Sets minimum and maximum altitude of the terrain.

"Get from Height-Field" button

    Retrieves terrain parameters (Length, Width and Min/Max Altitude) from a height-filed. This works only if a heigth-field Megatexture is applied to the displacement map of a terrain material.

Max triangle area

    Maximum triangle area. This parameter is used for adaptive tessellation of the terrain mesh during rendering. The lower value you use, the better quality you get.

Tessellation level

    This parameter determines quality of the terrain mesh in a viewport.

"Update" button

    Rebuilds a terrain in a viewport. Use this button to manually rebuild the terrain when you change the displacement map.

4. Use of Megatextures.

To render very large landscapes you must use Megatextures. Create a large height-field and a diffuse map in any terrain editor and then convert it to MGT format using Megatexture Constructor. (Megatexture Constructor manual is here.)

In 3ds max, create Terrain object and apply Standard material to it.

Assign Megatextures to Displacement and Diffuse maps of the terrain material:

1. In the Maps rollout, click the Displacement map button. Material/Map is displayed.
2. Double-click Megatexture map.
   The Material Editor is now at the map level, and displays controls for the map parameters.
3. In the General rollout, click the Megatexture button.
   In the appeared File Dialog, choose the height-field Megatexture you created before.
4. Do the same steps for Diffuse map of the Standard material.

Now select the Terrain object and, in the parameters rollout, click “Get from Height-Field” button to retrieve terrain parameters (Length, Width and Min/Max Altitude) from the height-field Megatexture.