I am planning to create a large terrain measuring about 10 miles square though only about 20% only required very detailed rendering. I was therefore intending to assemble the scene from four separate terrain objects only one of which will be have a high poly count/ very details contours. Is this a reasonable strategy. I intend to use the contour lines to mark the physical separation between these objects, then align them to conceal the joins. Reasonable so far. Is there anything I need to pay particular attention to as far to modelling or texturing when I get that far. Any comments will be gratefully received.

One trick I’ve heard of people using with terrains is to make a plane object with a number of segents above the terrain and Conform it to the terrain. That way you get a nice neat quad mesh, instead of all those nasty little triangles that don’t smooth well and have a rediculous poly count while not looking that good. With the plain mesh, you can select an area of polys and subdivide just them for areas of high detail, leaving the rest lo-poly.