# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > 3D modeling (map elements and height maps) >  What do you think about this terrain

## lmbarns

I've been playing around with making meshes for terrains in Blender. I just threw out some buildings and stuff to populate it. I was thinking of doing some dark decaying ruins but the textures of the terrain are more bright and happy so I should do something different.

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## mearrin69

Pretty cool. Animal treats?
M

Edit: kudos to you for being able to grok Blender. It's like alien tech to me. I have used a lot of 3D apps (Silo, Maya, 3dsMax, trueSpace, and many others) but could barely do anything in Blender for some reason.  :Wink:

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## lmbarns

> Pretty cool. Animal treats?
> M
> 
> Edit: kudos to you for being able to grok Blender. It's like alien tech to me. I have used a lot of 3D apps (Silo, Maya, 3dsMax, trueSpace, and many others) but could barely do anything in Blender for some reason.


thx, yea I like 3ds max more than blender but I can't afford to use it commercially. 

The animal treats, go button, and dashed rectangle are from a kids game I'm making and since I threw the model out in the game engine and I didn't want to go through disabling the elements. This is some of the basic controls from the game:

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## mearrin69

Cute. That's a fast elephant. Smart too, cuts the corner. The pig's a road hog, though.  :Smile:  Is this something you're planning on distributing when done?

Anyway, I'm interested in seeing how your terrain develops. I've been thinking about turning one of my city maps into a real 3D map for rendering/flythroughs, etc.
M

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## lmbarns

> Cute. That's a fast elephant. Smart too, cuts the corner. The pig's a road hog, though.  Is this something you're planning on distributing when done?
> 
> Anyway, I'm interested in seeing how your terrain develops. I've been thinking about turning one of my city maps into a real 3D map for rendering/flythroughs, etc.
> M


 Well you drive the elephant by holding down the go button, so you can cut corners  :Smile:  There's actually 30 different rideable animals, from goats to donkeys to giraffes and horses. lol

I made a tutorial for making these terrains but it never made it through moderation. Here's a quick rundown of my process: 
Start with a grayscale heightmap: 







Then flip the texture image horizontally and vertically 

Here's  one of britannia from ultima online:


Once you have both a grayscale image and a textured version of the same image, you go into blender and do these steps:



In blender you use the heightmap to displace a plane, then use the textured image you made to give it texture which gives stuff like:

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## lmbarns

I made another video that makes the same terrain in Blender but splits it into 4 chunks so it can be used in mobile video games without being too many polygons: 



It begins with you already having a heightmap and texture shown in my first video. Also it takes the fbx files you create in blender into Unity 3d game engine where you can put the meshes back together and add the textures.  Simply drag a character controller prefab included with unity onto the map and press play to have a playable level for a video game..

At the very end it shows how to make a pattern (dirt, grass, stone, etc) and use different brushes to blend it in on the texture. You could use it to make 2d maps or clean up textures adding extra features like blended stones and stuff. Or add desert sand ground, mud, trails, etc

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