new terragen beta out

[paulselhi]

here's the link, it installs over previuos versions so if you want to keep them the install acopy of .8x in a new dir and update with this new .908

many new improvements not least front to back rendering which really speeds things up ( which means easier and faster animations ) and some really cool water effects

here is the link :

http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/download/temp0908/tgupdate0908.exe

note this a pre release beta avialable to TG afficionados, once the bugs afe ironed out it goes to the planetside page

and that is where you can get the current release (which you will need) www.planetside.co.uk

For those not in the know, terrgaen is the most photorealistic landscape generator around with the ability to make movies !! and it's FREE :D :D

[paulselhi]

here is quick eaxmple ( took uner 5 mins to make and render, compressed so a bit of a drop in quality) gives an idea how the water effects have improved.

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/watertest.jpg

and here is another this time with a stiller lake, this took about 3 mins, with a 1 min render, so a movie of say10 secs at 30 fps (300 frames ) would take 300 mins = 5 hours. Sounds a long time but believe me in animation terms that is fast !!!, rember this would reduce if the image was smaller.

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/lake.jpg

[paulselhi]

here is a little experiment with a TG image and lightning dome in photoshop

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/ligtning.jpg

yup i know i spelt it wrong, oh well.....

[Croc Hunter]

Sometimes you can't upgrade from a beta version of software.
I guess it's true if you've overwitten a progy with beta too ? So I'll leave it to you diehards to iron out the bugs first. :D
Nice scapes Paul.

[paulselhi]

all terragens are still betas that is why they are free, when v 1 comes out it will be an official release so it will cost however they will still have a limited free version

so yes you can update your curreny v.8x with this new one

[MinDBenNdER]

you got me really interested in trying out Terrgaen.
i'm going to download it this weekend.

have you ever tryed making under water landscapes using it?

[paulselhi]

don't forget to d/l v 0.8x from planetside then upgrade via the link i mentioned


TG cannot do that as such. however you can set the camers angle so there is no sky and then adjust the atmosphere to get and underwater look

alternatively there are plugins for exporting the terrains to max, cinema, lightwave and truespace

i find it best to camera map, i.e import a TG mesh then render in TG and use that image for the mesh texture. the advantage of this is that the TG scene can interact with a cinema scene, things can cast shadows and you get better fly throughs

you could also just have the TG image on a plane in the background, or even a background image, this tends to get clear results as you can scale a plane to the image size

This does mean that i have to do a frontal projection meaning the image stays put, showing the same view even if the camera moves

alternatively i can make a movie in TG and then use the avi or mov file as a texture in cinema, scripts will synchronise the camera views between TG and cinema, or max etc