Relief Object

The relief object is very much like a plain, in that it gives you a textured surface which you can manipulate to achieve the affect you want. Since it is a parametric polygonobject, it is possible to change the properties of the relief object and see how those changes affect the surface.

The relief object is very good at producing instant landscapes, which you may find useful if you're developing a computer game, or need to render an outdoor scene.

Using the properties of the relief object, it is possible to achieve some very complex and detailed results, since the relief provides built-in random texturing and contouring routines. The image below was generated using a single relief for the landscape, and a single plain for the water. A light was added for the sun, and the sky was a very large sphere. Final touches such as the lens flare and sky haze were added using Photoshop after.

Properties

  • Sections Width: Specifies the number of sections the width of the relief will be made up of. Defaults to 100. The higher this figure, the more detailed the relief will be.
  • Sections Depth: Specifies the number of sections the depth of the relief will be made up of. Defaults to 100. The higher this figure, the more detailed the relief will be.
    Note that the above two properties determine how many individual 'squares' make up the entire relief. By default, 100x100 = 10000 polygons. Bear in mind that increasing these figures exponentially increases the amount of CPU time any 3D scene will take to render or edit.
  • Width X: The width of the plain.
  • Height Y: The maximum height of the plain's highest peak.
  • Depth Z: The depth of the plain.
  • Noise: Determines how 'noisy' the surface of the relief will be by mixing in an low-pass (smoothed) source of randomness.
  • Turbulence: Determines how 'turbulent' the surface of the relief will be my mixing in an unsmoothed source of randomness.
  • Texture intensity: Determines how much of the texture map will be mixed into the surface of the relief (allowing you to provide your own source of noise - see texture below)
  • Sea level: Determines how high the sea will be (ie, the level at which the bottom of the relief stops and goes flat)
  • Plateau level: Determines how high the plateaus will be (ie, the level at which the top of the relief levels out)
  • Edge at sea level: If ticked, the relief will not descend to sea-level at the edges. If you do not need a coast-line, you would probably turn this off.
  • Texture: Use this to specify a texture bitmap to use (see texture intensity above)