This tutorial is great for someone who has good Photoshop skills. The whole point to this method of modeling is to use a gray scale image to control the depth for the geometry in Strata. It's quick and easy too.

The first step is to use Photoshop to make a grayscale image that will be used to make the geometry in Strata Pro. I was going for a Mayan type of carved head thingy. Something you might see in one of there temples or something. The white areas represent the high points of the model and the black areas represent the lowest point of the model.

Now that we have a map that we want to use pick the filled rectangle tool in Strata to make a 2d plane. Once the plane is made rotate it up so it is positioned like this.

Okay, now we need to convert this primitive rectangle into a Bezier Surface. Click on the convert button in the tip icon bar and choose Bezier Surface in the dialogue box. (Displacement maps only work with Bezier Surfaces)

From the Resource windo select new and choose Displacement from the drop down/up list. Next you will see the Displacement dialoge box pop up. Cick on the Map button and browse to the grayscale map.

It should look something like what you see below. Then click Load to load the image.

Now that the image is loaded we need to set the Sampling and the Max Height. Sampleing is the amount of polygons Strata will use to creat the geometry. The more polygons the smoother the geometry looks but it slows your machine down too. Max Height is distance in the geometry from highest point (white) to the lowest point (black).

All that is left now is to apply the new displacement map to the Bezier Surface. After the displacement map is applied, bingo, you get this! Pretty cool huh?

Okay, back in Photoshop I have created the image map and the bump map for the Mayan megolith. See below.

Click on the New button in the Resource pallet again and choose Surface Texture. Load up the image map and the bump map the same way the displacement map was loaded up. It should look something like this.

Now apply the Surface Texture you just made on top of the displacemtnt map. Your Texture tab should look like this.

Add a couple of walls and you have the beginings of a great ancient environment.