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While trying to find some information about low-poly mountain, I end up finding this image explaining the material the person used to make his mountain and I thought it look really cool, but it was with 3DS Max:

enter image description here

I tried to replicate it with Blender with no success. Can anyone point out how to make something like that with Blender?

EDIT: With the Ant Landscape, I got this :) enter image description here

brasshat
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Enigme
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  • Congrats, that's the better solution to make mountains. Btw, you may also consider to triangulate the mesh to make better low-poly look. – Leon Cheung Nov 19 '13 at 05:38

3 Answers3

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In fact, it's more like a question on how to use the Displace modifier, since your image shows the man was using a Displace modifier with a texture to generate that in 3DS Max.

Although different softwares got different steps and flow on getting the same result, Blender got it's way to do this, there is Displace modifier in Blender, too, and also, can be controlled with textures, vertex groups, and even more freely by using specific images. You can also use it several times to accumulate as a combined result. As shown below:

enter image description here

Leon Cheung
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  • Thanks for the answer, I tried using the Displace modifier with the textures you used but it doesn't look at all at what you have: http://i.imgur.com/J7fI0oS.png (with a grid) and http://i.imgur.com/u3Az4zJ.png (with a plane).

    Could you elaborate a bit more? Thanks!

     – Enigme Nov 19 '13 at 05:23
  • You are welcome. I used grouped vertices to limit mountain area, after seeing your image, I guess something needs to optimize on the vertex group. To be hornest, such way is complicated and needs more tweaking than the addon that iKIsR mentioned. So I personally suggest you use it, and it seems nice on your updated image. :) – Leon Cheung Nov 19 '13 at 05:56
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    The thing to remember with the displace modifier is that it "displaces" geometry - it doesn't create geometry. To get a detailed result you need to subdivide the mesh enough to show the detail. A subsurf modifier or two with high subdivision levels before the displace modifier can be helpful for that. @Enigme - try increasing the strength of the modifiers or the brightness/contrast in the textures (under colors). – sambler Nov 20 '13 at 09:29
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Leon's answer is correct, you can use Heightmaps along with the Displace modifier to achieve this but depending on the level of control and flexibility you might want, a much better way to do this in Blender is to make use of the Ant Landscape addon.

Open Use Preferences, go to Addons and find it under Add Mesh.

enter image description here

In the 3D viewport, add a new object with ShiftA > Landscape and play with the settings that appear in the Toolshelf. BlenderCookie also has a tutorial (archived) on how to use this.

enter image description here

To achieve the lowpoly look while editing the object, keep your subdivisions low and to achieve the lowpoly look after. You can triangulate the mesh with CtrlT and also make use of the Decimate modifier.

Community
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iKlsR
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3

It's probably better to do it with a displacement modifier (like Leon said), but it is possible to create a "mountain" with just materials in Blender Internal (the only issue is you can only see it when it is rendered).

Viewport: enter image description here

Rendered: enter image description here

The trick is to use the displacement slider under geometry in the textures tab:

enter image description here

You can also do the same thing in Cycles:

enter image description here

The node setup: enter image description here

Make sure when you do it in cycles to enable experimental settings in the properties, and to set the displacement to true in the object data tab:

enter image description here

CharlesL
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