Mountain Range Data

#1 Recreate how? Where?
For TGE terrain, all you need for the height data is a 256x256 16 bit heightmap texture. In the US, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has mapped the North American continent at 10m to 30m intervals. There are other sources for other areas and planets.

My procedure is:
3DEM merge and crop -> save as Terragen .ter -> Wilbur -> save as PNG Surface (select 16 bit)

"3DEM" is a tool that can combine multiple data sets of US Government heightmap data (someone once said that all the interesting locations are in the cracks between maps ;) ), and crop them to desired subsets.
www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem/
"MicroDEM" is another such tool.

One source for the zipped USGS Spatial Data Transfer Standard "SDTS" format data that is usually convenient is:
www.mapmart.com/
This is a useful source of USGS 7.5 minute Quadrangles as DEM in SDTS zipped tar format.
Although it looks like you would be paying for this data here up until the very end, it is $0 and no credit card is required. (Some data is purchased, but not the zipped SDTS format data.) This data is a xxxxx.tar.gz (zipped). Many tools can use the zipped format directly. They are about 3MB each to download.

Mapmart.com home page, then select Digital Elevation Model in vertical button arrays.
www.mapmart.com/DEM/DEM.htm
page down to the section for: USGS SDTS Digital Elevation Models (DEMS)
Click Begin Search to select quad.

To find which USGS "Quadrangles" you are interested in, try:
data.geocomm.com/quadindex/

You can get the terrain data (Digital Elevation Map - DEM), and also Digital Raster Graphic (DRG) data (The colored USGS topographical contour map) and also Digital Orthophoto Quad (DOQ) (aerial photo) registered to useful coordinates (Latitude/Longitude or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)). The important point here is that you can get the DEM, DRG and DOQ for the same custom area, saving you most of the cutting, pasting, comparing and shifting headaches.


Digital Raster Graphics files
www.geodata.gov/ Then select maps, then "USGS DRG"
Better: www.terraserver-usa.com/ogcwms.aspx Can cut to UTM coordinates square for TGE. Provides both DRG and DOQ (B&W).

There are other threads on this site dealing with this topic also.

Wilbur is a tool useful for working with 16 bit heightmaps
www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/wilbur.html

Roadmaker can be used to cut road grades into mountainsides via editing heightmaps.
www.shapemagic.com/roadmaker

For more info:
www.terrainmap.com/ - enthusiasts review site and blog.
Wikipedia for a first look at meanings for new technical terms.