Im creating a water scene with the camera very low to the water and in the background i would like a silhouetted mountain range but i have no idea how to go about creating it!
for a very basic inside blender
ANT plugin
are you on windows ?
there is a program called " wilbur" that makes landscape heightmaps
( also runs in wine)
a quick example ( i was working on this for something else yesterday )
a ant baked displacement map
eroded in wilbur and imported as a displacement map
a 8 bit normalized copy of the 32bit float heightmap
Im not really looking to make anything that advanced just something vaguely mountain like to sit way in the background where it doesnt really matter about the detail all that much since i will also be using DoF
then use a image / photo as a background
Its rather difficult to find just a plain mountain range image plus it would ruin the look of the scene since i am using Pro Lighting Skies. I would much prefer to model the mountains to an extent.
The easiest way is to do what JohnVV said, then just run a decimator modifier on it to make it lower poly. Alternatively, just sub-d a plane several times ond drag verticies around with proportional falloff activated Alt+O.
import bpy
from math import *
from mathutils.noise import *
obj = bpy.context.selected_objects
for ob in obj:
for i in ob.data.vertices:
V = i.co
V.z = 0
V.z = hetero_terrain(V/15, 1, 2, 5, 0, 6)*3
ob.data.update()
Run this script after you select the big subdivided plane (with scale applied).
silhouetted mountain range
Use proportional editing.
This is a nice way also, from Cynicatpro
If I read your original question right you are wanting more the basic shapes in the distance than actual detailed terrain. (Terrain party is awesome though!)
what ive done for the effect you are looking for is take a cylinder and size it very large in x and y with a z height that suits your picture. The large x y size means you get some parallax if you are animating but if it’s for a static pic that won’t matter.
Then I tweak the vertexes at the top of the resized cylinder to give mountain effects. Textured withe some noise, color variation and an appropriate bluish tint and you have a distant mountain effect.nuse a couple of these at different distances for more parallax effects if wanted. Fairly simple this approach but it can be all you need if the distant mountains aren’t really the focus of the picture.