Any guides or tutorials for creating a ground mesh in 3dsMax?

[cherub]

I'm having a bit of a problem with trying to make a ground mesh in 3dsMax for importing into Openzone. I either get an access violation, or my non flat plane in Max shows up as flat on import. I know my way around Max decently, but I'm hoping someone could give me a quick guide on making something that will be able to be read by Openzone. The more specific the setup in 3dsMax, the better as the only thing I can seem to get to import into Openzone is a small flat plane.

I guess all I want to create is a hilly ground mesh with a gradiant color scheme for the highs and lows if that's possible. Thanks in advance.

[saveus]

the "import 3ds as ground mesh" dont work well.
when i tried to use it , had the same problem , had a flat square

for make ground with greyscale bmp ; you can directly in oz.

a) make a bmp 64x64 in 256 greyscale (white is up an black is down)
b)check the "use BMP heightmap" in the create zone windows

for make the bmp map you can use some software like terragen, bu personally
i prefer make a very basiq img like this
http://supervision2.filnet.fr/froggy/ftp/images/tutogrd/tugr000.png
and work on it with oz after

for sample the river on my zone after directly with ground funtions on groud menu


http://supervision2.filnet.fr/froggy/ftp/images/tutogrd/tugr001.jpg
http://supervision2.filnet.fr/froggy/ftp/images/tutogrd/tugr002.png
http://supervision2.filnet.fr/froggy/ftp/images/tutogrd/tugr003.png

[Windcatcher]

That's how I did all of my zones: I first made a heightmap as either a .BMP or Terragen .TER file, then created a new zone and told OpenZone to use the heightmap. The problem with importing a .3DS file as a ground mesh is that the grid squares in the ground mesh are 64 units on a side, so a lot of the detail of the original .3DS file is lost. OpenZone takes the average height to try to figure out what the height at the grid nodes should be, which isn't necessarily what you want.