Hi all. I had a play yesterday at importing a model and using it as a terrain in Max. It's not perfect, but the idea works fine and considering the terrain is just one object with one single diffuse texture + the other pbr ones of course, looks pretty nice.

Of course it wasn't as easy as importing the object in and plonking it down

Yes, using terrain mesh as the terrain in GGMax looks pretty cool, I myself have got really nice results, especially with wet terrain and swamps.

Nice one dvader, I'm interested in terrain side, would be good to see more from tgc with what's going on with terrain ..

Yeah I am hoping for big things with terrains, but we will see. For certain the engine has the grunt to handle a good amount of polygons visually, just don't try collision with such a high poly count! Max dies badly as soon as you try to run the game. But if TGC can get terrains looking as detailed as this with the advantage of textures that aren't stretched as big as the map things are looking good!

But I was fairly happy I got this in and got it so I could walk around as well At first thought it would be a fly over only.

Some advise if you want to create some awesome terrains, axis game factory pro, has a voxel terrain editor which allows you to create a terrain as well as caves and every thing else you may need, which you can export, however the initial polygon count is going to be pretty high.

So you would need to run it through a model editor and apply some none destructive polygon reduction first. I used this method a while back when I created caves for the previously RPG maker app they had.


I am in the mood to experiment a little now

What I would like to see is how well the terrain model blends with the actual terrain, in classic it wasn't very good, the actual terrain often looked worse then the terrain model some times lol

Mesh as the terrain can integrate fine with the scene.

yes , I am experimenting with Axis Game Factory 3.0 at the moment. Enjoying the experience. At last something to get my teeth into.

This looks a great thread with useful experiments and good results

Are these actual GG terrains? I'm not working with MAX, but in Classic, AI characters were not able to walk on different meshes surfaces than the pre-set GG terrain ??? How does this work in MAX?

Hi GoDevils. "in Classic, AI characters were not able to walk on different meshes surfaces than the pre-set GG terrain ?"
I Wonder if something changed because a couple years ago, I remember observing what was certainly ( I think) soldiers on top of a building. It was kinda a funny experience, but believe it or not they seemed to stay put up there just staring down over my position. Of course they got excited after I slung some pebbles at them. I Haven't seen the same sight since, (they looked like some rowdy characters), but that happened in the GG historical context of one time actually.

Oh yeah, now I remember. Yes it was soldiers for sure sitting on the top of a landing probably just guarding some huge boss meeting, or something presumably very important we have to imagine. That's not to say that they couldn't have been pretty bored being up there so long, and coulda sure been gossiping about stuff- whatever maybe these political states-- you know "these uncertain times." Maybe they where discussing getting all the benefits we are entitled to or something. Well, I was just walking across the bridge about 40 meters away, and since there was concrete pillars under construction where I stood, I decided to plink at them with just an old sling shot I had with me. Believe it or not, I was able to knock them out one by one with just that old sling shot I had found out in the woods one day. I did find the pebbles on the bridge itself- luckily. Most surprisingly enough though, to take em out ---- was just ONE shot each! Now that's a funny one. Well, truthfully they did start to come down the stairs and shoot through the window, but still they where thinning out quick -- a whole cluster of soldiers taken down by a kid with a sling shot. lol

And then I went on my merry way.

They've pretty much always been able to walk on meshes up to a certain height (i think it was about knee high iirc), you just had to add a line to their FPE's, forceimpossibleobjects or something like that, and this was improved a few years back when Lee added some zones that act as a kind of rudimentary navmesh that allows npc's to walk inside the zone on top of buildings and such.

I think Pirate Myke had them chasing him up an imported mountain but cannot seem to find the video.

Just tried a couple of peeps on the map. They do go up the hills but the collision mesh I have made is probably not as good as it could be

I wouldn't suggest this method for a game but thought it an interesting experiment. Max copes pretty well once it's loaded up (takes awhile to get running on my system). Getting 60 fps on my now old video card and could probably add a lot more scenery before it would struggle. I reckon with a well made low poly mesh instead of the rough and ready one I have made, it would work pretty well.

You can see the object is fairly high poly.

@ GoDevils


I didn't do this level thinking about a zombie chasing me, but this can help you find out the answer to your question.
Just blend your terrain mesh with the GG terrain to match.
Try to give a clear path to the AI, they usually can avoid obstacles but till a certain point, in my case the terrain is uneven, there is no the path to go to the end of the level, as I said before I don't think about Z chasing me.
You can even place wp over the terrain mesh.

PD: Running GG Xmax here, but I think it does no make the difference.
HTH.