How can I make functional custom terrains?

harbordourn

Hey! The way I usually learn anything about 3D design is through experience and failure but in regards to creating custom terrain, I feel like I don't know enough to even make an attempt in the first place. I'm familiar with UltraScenery and other internal DAZ scripts/programs to generate environments--they're wonderful tools that are capable of doing so much, however they don't seem to be capable of helping me in the one area I am looking for at the moment. I am trying to design a house surrounded by a forest. I know how to use tree assets and scripts like UltraScatter to disperse plants across a scene, but what I don't understand is how to lay out a base terrain with varying shapes, dips, curves, that mimics the uneven, unpredictable nature of the ground in nature. I've experimented with d-formers and weight modifiers and that very well may be the way things are done, I just figured I'd ask you guys if you know how high quality Daz published artists create base terrain shapes for their products. I'd guess they're using fancy external softwares and importing them back into DAZ somehow but I actually have no idea if that's the case or not. 

 

As an example I've been looking at the way the terrain curves and dips in this asset https://www.daz3d.com/house-in-witches-wood (by the amazing publisher KindredArts) and wondering how the hell they managed to make those basic terrain features? Is it just DAZ experience with d-formers and other internal tools? Are they making things in another modeling software? I'm not asking for perfect confirmation on that artist in particular's methods, I just want to know what direction i should head in so I can start messing around with making these types of terrains! Thanks, guys :)

felis

PAs are using external tools to do the modelling, and then import in DS for texturing and if it shall have rigging.

You can do a bit inside DS with DFormers and others, but it is very limited.

Pickle Renderer

If you're talking about grassy knolls and so on, you probably just need to make a plane in Blender, subdivide it and then go into sculpt mode to make the terrain you want.  The problem will be how you texture it of course as making a decent, professional job of that is not an easy thing. 

Gordig

Houdini and Unreal Engine both have very advanced terrain creation tools, and they're both free to use. Houdini is not at all intuitive to use and has a pretty steep learning curve, but if all you're doing is creating terrain, height field tutorials are pretty easy to follow along with.

Also, Daz owns Bryce, which can frequently be had for next to nothing, and Vue is now free. Those are both dedicated terrain creation programs, albeit not the most up-to-date.