ok so i followed the steps to create a terrain. the only problem now is that when i drag it into cryengine after importing it from 3ds it is invisible. there is nothing there and i don't have anything checked on the checkboxes for hiding various objs. idk what is wrong now but its irritating me.

If you can't see the object in wire frame mode then make sure there is no errors in the mesh, and no errors in the exporter dialogue. I had this once, just restarted max, then reexported again. Wasn't sure what happened but fix it.