HaloMods "Classic" Read-only Archive

Hi, its been a while but Ive decided to get back into level design again because I just purchased 3ds max 9.

OK so here's my question. Is it possible to add a smoke map with a strength of 50, to the bottom of a level and have it compiled and stuff like that into a halo map once its all complete ?

I'm following the tutorial but would like to use smoke maps for good looking and easy to make terrain.

Any more question on what I mean just simply post or PM me.

Thank you for any input.

You mean, like a displacement map? You can paint a grayscale image of your proposed level terrain in an image editor like Photoshop. Next, create a box in 3ds Max, convert it to an Editable Mesh. Select all faces, flip their normals. Tesselate the bottom face a few times, enough so that you have around 2,000 or more triangles, so the terrain will look smooth. Next, select all the faces you tesselated by using a planar threshold, which will enable all faces to be selected in one click (must be in Polygon Sub-Object of Editable Mesh to activate), with regards to the degree of the threshold. Next, with all the tesselated faces selected, apply a "Displace" modifier, and select the bitmap you created in Photoshop. Now you can adjust the strength and such, so that your level will have mountains/hills, looking organic.

Alternaively, you can convert the Mesh to an Editable Poly to paint deformations in the level geometry with a Wacom tablet or your mouse, but you must convert the model back to an Editable Mesh when you're done. You can adjust the falloff values using a graph, which will let you sculpt your terrain with precision. Soft Selection is a feature all Modeling methods possess, which will help if you want smooth interpolation of near sub object components when you're moving vertices, faces, etc.

Another method of creating and editing terrain is by using NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational Basis/Bezier Splines) surfaces. NURBS produce smooth looking surfaces, but need to be converted to an Editable Mesh (and probably optimized with the Optimize modifier) when you're ready to export the geometry.

If you have objects such as rocks or structures that need to conform to gravity and terrain realistically, you can use the Havok reactor physics engine in 3ds Max. Press ALT+SHIFT+Right Click to bring up the reactor quad menu. You can adjust object properties, like Mass. Objects like terrain and rocks are concave, and should not be simulated as bounding boxes. Simulate all objects as Concave Mesh, to produce realistic results. (A non moving object will float in space, with a mass of zero) You can create a rigid body collection and add all the objects you want to simulate to that collection, then click Preview Animation. (Use the reactor utility in the Utilities Panel, or the quad menu) You can create keyframes of the animation, but in this situation, just Update Max from the preview window when you see the objects come to rest realistically. Of course, you'll have to connect the objects together by creating faces later, to satisfy the sealed world rules, but this is a good method if you want an object to rest on your terrain in a realistic manner. Another approach is to use space warps and deflectors to simulate gravity, but reactor produces the best results with an easy set up.

Finally, use Smoothing Groups when creating terrain. Typically, just selecting your hills or mountains and activating Auto Smooth with a threshold of 45 degrees will effectivly smooth out the model, without actually subdividing it into more faces/polygons, thus not affecting performance while the level runs in Halo.

Hopefully this information will help ^_^

You hit the nail on the head. You defently when out of your way to help me with this. Thanks alot I appreciate it.