The official Terragen question/discussion thread.

Well, since Terragen seems to be getting very popular, and I've seen a couple threads pop up there about it, I thought I'd start a single thread for all the comments and questions about it to be brought into.

I'll start off with a question I have.

Is there anyway to make the size of your terrain larger? In some animations I do with it, it just seems to small of an area.

 

Well I wanted to start out with a question of mine, but I just figured it out.. lol.

 

Alright, AJ. I'll play you're game, your rogue.

I have a conundrum for you. A riddle if you will.

Is Terragen free? If so, where? If not, how much is it?

 

yes terragen is free...cant think of the site though, do a google search for it, if you cant get it of their site for free I can find one that has it for free...

 

Sure is free! Produces photorealistic landscapes

Here you go!

Enjoy!

 

You can on ly prodice etrrains up to 513 x 513 units in the free version.

However , what you can do is adjust the point spacing of this to anything you like.

For instance, if your spacing is set at 1 meter, you largest terrain will be 513m x 513m, or 263,169 sq meters. The defaul setting is 30 meters.

This option is located under the main terrain window. The number will show the width of the terrain being displayed.

Another thing to remember with terragen is that it scales the images beautifully. No matter what size terrain you have, or the distance of the camera to the surface it always looks good. Try setting up a camera very high looking down, then the same image with the camera barely above the surface to see what I mean.

The best solution I have found to creating larger terrains is to use cuts. The problem only arises if you want either a very long tracking shot, or a hugh panorama.

Everything I have done has been done with low angles or cuts.

I am still trying to find a way to 'tile' terrains in post production effectively.

Hope this helps.

Pete

 

Actually in the free version, I haven't had a limit. I put in 10,000m and it still did it. Rendered great (as usual)

 

Was there an earthquake when you wrote the first line of your post Pete?

 

Daft - Possibly.....

Anonymous - The limit isn't in the scale you set, it is in the terrain grid points you have available.

You can have up to 4097 (why not 4096?) in the registered version.

I think the difference it will make is this...

If you want a terrain scaled at 1 meter per grid point, the unregistered version will only allow you to create a terrain 513 meters wide.

If you could set this to 4097, you could set a terrain over 4 kilometers wide!

I think this becomes more important if you are working within other applications to specific measurements.

For instance, if I wanted an X-Wing (12 meters long) to fly over the ground it would soon run out of space if I was using a 1 meter grid point spacing on a 513 meter terrain. I would have to chance something somewhere.

To be honest I haven't noticed many problems when working with Lightwave. The plug-in I have converts the point spacing back and forward so everything works ok.

*reviews post*

Hmm...did that actually help anyone?

Pete

 

ok i have 3 questions so ha! anyway a)how do you actually change the height of the camera, b)how do you create atmoshperic effects (clouds etc) and c)is there a way to create animations of the landscape? thanks

 

OK, I have three answers for you..

1) In the rendering controls window there is an xyz camera position. BUT, below this there is a 'fixed height above surface' field. The tick should be removed from this box if you want to vary the camera height. It is useful when you want the camera to always be, say, 10 meters above ground level.

Important: If you are animating the camera this should ALWAYS be unticked, you can end up with some strange results otherwise.

2) Clouds can be created using the clouds window (buttons are on the left). There is also a control panel for atmosphere. I'm not sure what effect you are after but you will be able to set things like fog colour, density, red-shift, haze etc. terragen can also render volumetric lights so you can have shafts of sunlight beaming through clouds.

3) The easiest way to animate is by using Campath. You can get a link to it from

www.planetside.co.uk

It is SO easy to use in fact that I'm not going to tell you how. but if you have any problems post here.

Pete

 

Actually, I have found that Terranim gives more control over animation than CamPath does. It's actually even easier then CamPath

 

You think so? Cool. I don't even use Campath much anymore. Most of my anims are done via Lightwave now.

Pete

 

Ah, lucky, I can't, I have to use 3dsm

Even if I could get it into 3dsm 4 I'd lose the realistic clouds/water/terrain(textures)

 

Are there websites anywhere that have ready-made terrains? Ones that look more real than the random generator?

I'm looking for something very specific, and it's really hard to make it using the little generator that it has, even when I get in there with and adjust the heights using the little + - doobreys.

And I agree with A_J in that I would like to have great textures and lighting effects in LW, because that's the best part of Terragen, and if I can't recreate that easily in LW there's little point in importing them.

 

Don't forget that with work you can get better results in LW or 3DSM, but considering the ease with which you can produce them in Terragen you have to wonder if it is worth the effort for the end result.

Terragen can import various file formats. I don't remember but I am sure there is a way to get DEM files into it. (DEM's are topologically acurate images of places that can be rendered, so you can look at a hill on Mars, for instance)

I'll have a check around and get back to you.

Pete

 

Do any of you have links to pages with pics of your work. I'm interested to see how my work compares to everyone else's.

 

Ptx . . . . . . . .
I think I have figured out how you can solidify your name in the
TFN.Theater HALL FO FAME . . . .


PTX's OFFICIAL TERRAGEN TUTORIAL


Maybe you could do one of those screen-capture video things that everyone has been talking about latetly . . .
(ala Ryan_W).

 

I have a terragen question, too.

Always I render a created landscape the rendered image is totally blue. I don´t know what´s wrong. I changed the camera position and I tried to render many different landscapes...always the same...blue!

help!

 

You can see some bits I have done with Tgen and LW at

www.nutleys.com/petes.html.

Darth_Bone, can you e-mail me your world file and your terrain file and I'll have a look?

superpete@btinternet.com

Pete

 

So, does that mean NO PTX TERRAGEN TUTORIALS ???

 

What should I do the tutorial on? Terragen basics?

Pete

 

Yeah ... exactly.

 

Darth Bone, have you tried raising the Camera's hieght?

 

Ptx .........
Whataya think about the Ptx Terragen Tutorials idea ???