I may be a programmer but that doesnt mean I have no artistic talent. On the contrary I was an artist before I was a programmer, and I understand a lot about it, and I can still draw and paint pretty well.
If you want the gobi desert then remove the rocky bits, make the heightmap depth even greater so the hills are more pronounced, then have a more grainy fine sandy txture like the image cheese posted, then shade in appropriately, put in some blueish light and reduce its intensity, increase the suns angle and make the hills have shadows prerendered, and paerhaps cheese can give you a nice skybox with a view similair to that in the second shot......
Infact if you do do that I reccomend you switch to sm3 and put in a small amount of reflectivity in the ground, not enough to make it shine like forbs metal heck but enough to give it that silky look
Map in progress..
Moderator: Moderators
Sorry I will explane what i mean better... close up in teh forgriond of the image it looks like hot sex... but check it out in the top right to middle right... theres loads of sharp angles that look unatural. Those were the ones I ment looked odd. if there was some way to get rid of those then it would look good everywere.
aGorm
aGorm