Mini-Tutorial: Drawing a Mountain Range

This is one of the most common scenarios you may often need to execute.

There are many different techniques to create a mountain range. In this specific scenario, let’s say we need distant mountains covering our horizon. This is often needed for a skybox or background.

To start, we create a new Mask node and draw several rough circles. We will turn each circle into a mountain. It is important to keep them separate for the moment.

Once the mask is ready, apply Apex to turn them into sharp spiky shapes.

Clamp the Apex output to a reasonable height.

Add a bit of Displace to make the shape slightly randomized instead of the clean slopes we had before.

Next apply Apeture to beef up our shape. I also used an inverted version of the previous node (with Autolevel post process applied) to mask the Aperture so only the bottom was expanded.

Next, we add a generous amount of Sediment. This will help connect our separate mountain peaks.

Finally, a bit more displacement to add some shapes to the smooth sediment slopes.

And we finish off with low powered but high duration Erosion (note the settings).

It is important to have a “fat” terrain before applying lots of erosion. Erosion eats away at your shape making it less than the original shape. If it is precise before Erosion, it will become too thin. But an inflated shape when eroded with a high duration (and low strength) gives you more realistic (and controllable) results.