Terragen Tutorial

For Beginners

So I've noticed that Terragen is becoming more and more popular for EV landing pics but many have problems getting started on texturing. To try and help fix this I've made a small tutorial complete with pictures to help get people started.

Here is the Tutorial

Terragen seems to be a powerful tool, but the user interface leaves much to be desired. To be truly useful, it's going to need all those surfacing options to be adjustable on the fly with the preview window updating as it goes.

Dave @ ATMOS

actually, I like the way it updates. You can immediately see how much terrain is affected by your texture without it having to render.

The main thing I want terragen to do better is to make all those maps zoomable. That would make it a lot more useful.

Nice tutorial Raga, it's a good intro to Terragen.

I agree, it's an excellent tute! 🙂 I'm just one of these picky nuts who has odd tastes when it comes to application useability. Bryce spoiled me rotten, I guess -- it may well be unstable, inordinately slow and very hard to use to get photorealistic rendering, but it does have a Kai Krause interface. Of course, that means it was both revolutionary and damnably odd. 😄

Dave @ ATMOS

man, I hated bryce's interface. it drove me so crazy that I couldn't use the program. Lightwave has spoiled me for graphical interfaces. Why use giant pictures that are a pain to decipher when you could just use words that take up almost no space? Would it really be that hard to release different skins or something for different languages?

Kai always did create a stir with his interface design. Some people love it, some hate it. 🙂

I like LW, too, but for different reasons.

Dave @ ATMOS

pipeline, on Nov 1 2004, 08:07 AM, said:

I agree, it's an excellent tute! 🙂 I'm just one of these picky nuts who has odd tastes when it comes to application useability. Bryce spoiled me rotten, I guess -- it may well be unstable, inordinately slow and very hard to use to get photorealistic rendering, but it does have a Kai Krause interface. Of course, that means it was both revolutionary and damnably odd. 😄

Dave @ ATMOS
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Werd.

sparky, on Nov 1 2004, 03:14 PM, said:

man, I hated bryce's interface. it drove me so crazy that I couldn't use the program. Lightwave has spoiled me for graphical interfaces. Why use giant pictures that are a pain to decipher when you could just use words that take up almost no space? Would it really be that hard to release different skins or something for different languages?
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Humans are generally visual. People using graphics software are even more so :p.

Thats funny, I rember making a topic for a Terragen tutorial, not about weather Bryce has a nice interface 😛

Sorry, Raga. 🙂

Terragen is a good program, but I'd like to see the little mini-pictures (of the texture editors) bigger, so I can see exactly what's going on, as well as the ability to apply textures to only certain areas. The UI is pretty good, if cluttered. Exposé helps a lot, though. Bryce, on the other hand, is pretty, but it is hard to manipulate objects that you thought you were done with a while ago (and had rotated) because you can't change object scales in relation to the object, and only the world.

Hopefully Terragen 2 will be out in the next year or two, and will be able to put in rocks, trees, etc.

Rashingo, tutorial looks good!

~Dimpfinator

Terragen is good for basic landscapes, but I've yet to find a way to realistically add structures like buildings to a Terragen-created landscape.

Now, if a Terragen-like plugin were available for Cinema 4D, that would rock.

Actually, I probably just don't know enough about Cinema 4D, period. I have yet to figure out how to specify that a model be rendered using a designated image as the background. Wonder if that's even possible.

try:

http://www.gamingsan...topic.php?t=664
http://www.gamingsan...topic.php?t=674

made them. quick start to terragen. really helpful i think. made it for absolute beginners so no experiance is requireed.

Lindley, on Nov 10 2004, 11:12 PM, said:

Terragen is good for basic landscapes, but I've yet to find a way to realistically add structures like buildings to a Terragen-created landscape.

Now, if a Terragen-like plugin were available for Cinema 4D, that would rock.

Actually, I probably just don't know enough about Cinema 4D, period. I have yet to figure out how to specify that a model be rendered using a designated image as the background. Wonder if that's even possible.
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Try looking at this:
http://www.planetsid...resources.shtml

You'll be surprised of what follows plug-ins

sec222, on Nov 11 2004, 08:23 PM, said:

try:

http://www.gamingsan...topic.php?t=664
http://www.gamingsan...topic.php?t=674

made them. quick start to terragen. really helpful i think. made it for absolute beginners so no experiance is requireed.
View Post

All the pictures in those seem to be dead links.

The Real Darth Bob, on Nov 14 2004, 10:37 PM, said:

All the pictures in those seem to be dead links.
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Yup indeedy

They work perfectly fine for me...

UE_Research & Development, on Nov 14 2004, 06:45 PM, said:

They work perfectly fine for me...
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What browser?

The first one's fine, the second one not so...

And Ragashingo, nice tutorial. I likes it mucho.

IE 6. And I'll confirm Requiem.

The first one works, the second one doesn't have pictures but you should still get the idea. il fix it soon.