Step 1: First you need to draw your landscape from a birds-eye view in Adobe Photoshop using only Grey Scale colors. Here is an example of a Displace Map for a canyon . The way the Space Warp works is it uses the lighter colors of the map as the higher ground, and the darker colors the lower ground.

Step 2: Now you must save your map as a 'JPEG'

Step 3: Open up 3D Studio Max. Make a detailed Quad Patch Grid with 'Width Segs 10' and 'Length Segs 10'

Step 4: Now make a Displace Space Warp roughly the size of your patch grid. Now bind the Space Warp to the patch grid using the 'Bind to Space Warp' button.

Step 6: All you need to do now is fiddle around with the 'Strength' and 'Decay' of the Space Warp until you get the effect you are looking for. Remember that the more polygons you have on your patch grid the better the 'Space Warp' will be.

Here is an example of the above Displace map applied to a patch grid

• Adding lighting to a scene will dramatically improve the look of your models.
• Also try adding a little bump mapping to your landscapes, but not to much or it will distort the texture map
• Try not to include detail that isn't necessary. For example if there is a very detailed model to far away from where you will shoot your animation then should replace it with a low polygon model. This will cut down on the amount of power your computer needs to run the file.