Ok, I am trying to make a few decent terrain maps. I’ve tried it in Blender with some decent results. So basically what I would like to know is this. Could someone post some hints and maybe a screenshot/example of how to do it well in Blender, or is there a free or relatively cheap tool that people here like to use for terrain generation?
Done.
Listed for non-commercial use only 
Next!
Is it really necessary that you use a terrain map?
In blender you cant really do this but in maya the mesh paint tools are great for this. You just drag a push or pull brush across the mesh and in no time you can create mountains, valleys, ect.
Bill
For the record “Me no understand tech talk for 3d stuffage.”
I just want to make terrain. And I don’t have the kind of money to get Maya 
Editing a giant mesh to do so in Blender is a bit tough, so I was hoping someone here might have some tips, or an app designed for it. I tried out terragen, not sure how you are supposed to import it into Unity, and of course that whole for non commercial use thing.
Well you should go with blender then, are you using that system of making a greyscale which pushes or pulls the verts a certain distance?
Nope, no idea what that is. I am new to Blender as well, but it’s free 
and fairly easy so far for me to grasp.
So by that do you mean like greyscale maps? or actually making a 3D terrain? If it’s a actual 3D mesh terrain whats the method your using to make it?
Do you have AIM? It’s easyer to have a conversation on that. 
Grabbing the verts by hand and using the proportional edit function. It is a royal pain in the ass.
Lall I hope that works well for you, for any one else who wants to know how to do terrains with a hieght map, this seems to be a good tut. Check it out
Bill
Except that whole not working thing it’s awesome
Anyone else have any ideas?
Unless you register for $99.
You can try it out. If you make a killer app and want to distribute it, drop the cash.
Oh didn’t know it had a register option yet.
How do you go about importing the file?
Well, keep working on it. So will I. We will master the beast.
Bill
I’ve mostly figured it out in blender, but I keep getting stuck at the bit where you actually deform the mesh. I end up with a little island in the middle and then nothing. It does seem to follow the height map I uploaded but on a really small scale. When I render it theres this little bump in the center and the texture renders properly.
I find the quickest and easiest way to make cool looking landscapes in blender is to get a plane; subdivide it as many times as you want detail/size; turn on proportional fall off; and just grab vertices up and down. Proportional fall off has several options on how the surrounding vertices are affected - sharp, smooth, round, curved etc. And, whilst dragging you get a circle showing how many vertices around are going to be affected in the first place.
Summarised:
Make planeSubdivide plane several timesTurn on Proportional fall offGrab vertices and drag up and down
Easy!
But very time consuming and tedious for large terrains.
It is a shame there isn’t a tool to just drag over the verts to raise or lower them.
I am close with this height map crap. I just can’t figure out why it’s behaving the way it is. Instead of morphing the whole mesh now it is only doing a little piece in the center. I doubt this is it, but I will be doing a test in a few minutes to see if the image resolution has something to do with it.
I’ve made terrains in just under a minute with that technique. The time consuming bit is texturing, which isn’t really solved with the other stuff.
Perhaps if you use vertex weighting, and have a high mesh and a low mesh you could just brush over the low mesh to get closer to the high mesh. Basically, what you described…
http://orange.blender.org/blog/the-amazing-incredible-monkey-brush
If I can actually figure out how to do that then yes this would be ideal.
Well I would still love the exactitude of painting the terrain, but that would still work out very smoothly.