Applying a Texture Map to Terrain

In this tutorial I am not going to teach you how to make a terrain. If you are not familiar with a proper way to modeling a realistic looking terrain please learn it before you are trying this. I have submitter a tutorial on “Make a realistic landscape (terrain)”. That tutorial may help you to have a good understanding of modeling a terrain.
First of all model a terrain using any method you like. If you are using a plane to model the terrain, adjust the Length and Width Segments where it should be in the final render (you may not able to change the number of Segments after starting texturing part).

Select the terrain object and apply VertexPaint modifier to it. VertexPaint dialog will appear (most probably on the left side of the screen). Select the paint colour as pure black, press the Paint button. Then a circle with cross lines will appear around mouse pointer when it moves to viewport. Draw something on your terrain (don’t worry if what you draw is not visible). Go to VertexPaint dialog, there will be 4 buttons on the top of the dialog, see what will happen when turn on each of these buttons. In some cases you may see your brush stroke on the terrain, in some cases not. Keep the best way you prefer when painting the terrain (I prefer Vertex colour display – shaded).

Now we don’t need the brush stroke we have sketched early. Turn on Erase button and erase the brush stroke completely. At this point you should decide how your terrain looks like and how much maps you’re going to use for the mapping. In my tutorial I am going to use 3 maps; 1 for grass, one for ground/rocks and other for snow. I will use and rock texture for mountains, grass for flat areas and snow for mountain peaks.
Mark the mountain areas in dark colours; you may use Opacity and Size of the brush to control the flow of the brush (you can change it later on).

Press M to open Material Editor, select a material slot and apply “Mix” Map as the Diffuse colour. In the Mix Parameters rollout set Brown and Green colours as dark and light colours respectively. Apply Vertex Colour map as the mix colour map, apply the material to terrain and render it.

Click the None button in front of the Brown colour slot under Mix Parameters and apply a “Mix” map again. And apply White and Brown as Map #1 and Map #2 respectively. Apply a Vertex Colour map as Mix Amount Map. Turn on Use curve option in the Mixing Curve group and adjust the Upper and Lower values as you like (you may fine tune them later).

Render the image and see how it looks like now. Now you are in a position to apply maps. You have to prepare repeatable textures using Photoshop before applying them. However I am not going to describe you how to prepare repeatable (slim less) textures here.

Prepare 3 slim-les maps for snow, rocks and for grass and apply them by just clicking the None button in front of each Colour slot. The maps for each colour will be as,
White –> Snow
Brown –> Rock
Green –> Grass
Normally no need to go for high quality maps, 512×512 maps will be enough, if you need further quality go for higher ones. I have used following maps (512×512) with few tilings.

Render the scene to see how it looks like.

Go to VertexPaint and add more details to finalize the terrain. It is up to you to make it more realistic by painting minor details on VertexPaint. This is how my terrain looks like.

Hope you will get the same result as I got (or even better). Try this method for texturing other geographical areas such as deserts. I would like to receive your feedback, and help you if you faced any problem.

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