Anartist

This isn't some huge mod atm
It's more an ongoing experiment in landscape optimization
I want to do an adventure game eventually with it,
but the process created a second idea for a large vehicle adventure instead of a deathmatch or ctf
I have multiple goals but I'm mostly experimenting with terrain that isn't udk, that I can generate then build in detail that the terrain system in UDK doesn't create or which causes too much fps drop.
The static mesh with normal map seems faster than a similar sized udk terrain.

I'm hoping to try another step in the normal mapping process with zbrush
and make the terrain generator generate a bit more optimal maps, since I don't even use the mesh from it,

I use the normal map in max on a fairly dense mesh plane, export to zbrush, use zbrush tools to make everything vehicle friendly and create little pathways

then at this point I was exporting the mesh out and decimating

Instead I think my process is going to focus on using zbrush, as the dynamesh is basically a mesh that retopologizes with decent results. I'm still experimenting with the zbrush pipeline for normal mapping

For this particular landscape which I was aiming for a vehicle size landscape that didn't grind to a halt at a couple of percieved kilometres in size, without using the UDK terrain system, using instead the output of this multimap terrain generator I'm using, I found max to smooth out the mesh a lot made the vehicle more fun.

Th easy slopes were on purpose, and then I'm thinking I can use this low poly smoothed max mesh displaced and apply a normal map of a higher res modification of the terrain in zbrush where I can increase the detail of the edges and do detail texture painting.

keeping the origin smoothed max terrain and replacing the texture and normal maps for import to the udk.

sounds like a lot, but a terrain this size can really grind, and I actually want the static interior space to be 4 times this size in the end without much LOD swapping