Creating Rock Formations
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Rock formations can look really cool when done right, and there is a quick and easy way to do them. But just a warning that, depending on how large the rock is and how much detail you put into it, they can take up lots of polys.
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First of all, you should have a general idea how the rock should look when it is done. Like how it is curved, if it's slanted or whatever. After that, make the general shape of the rock (like the image to the left) on the ground (or ceiling). This face dosen't have to be convex because it will be erased in a bit.
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When you get a face you like, extrude it. I usualy do extrudes of 10 and 15. Staggering the extrudes make the rock look more random. Stop extruding when you get to a height you like. If you forgot to check 'delete base face' while you were extruding, go back and erase all of those faces. Remember to keep the top one though.
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Now for the fun part. Switch your grids on all three views to 5 units and then start moving your verts randomly around. Don't move them too much in one direction (move one or two verticaly too), maybe just one or two spaces at the most. You should move the verts generaly inward tward the center of the rock. Afterward, D3Edit should look something like the image to the left.
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Now I'm sure all of you have realized by now that the object is chock full of bad faces, were gonna fix that right now. Go into face mode and highlight your whole object. Now click on the 'Triangulate Non-Planer Faces' button  . Wow, look at all those new faces, highlight your object again and hit the button again. Repeat until D3Edit says that all faces are planer. It should take 4 or 5 times. Since your faces are already marked, might as well texture them.
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After that, look at it through D3. Sometimes the verts got moved into bad positions and flattened out a few faces so then you go back into the ORF file and either tweak the rock or start over. Either way, this technique is a fast and simple way to make cool looking rock formations.
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