Terragen 2

[WILL]

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I'm sure that many of you have seen or even used a terrain generator in some capacity, but I seriously doubt that you have seen too much at this level of detail before.

Terragen 2 by Planetside Software is an amazing piece of software that will render just about anything you want from space, terrain or sky. This software, which is a complete rewrite of Terragen is now the primary development focus of the company.

The new version will have such features as;

• Modular, plugin-based architecture
• Cutting-edge adaptive subdivision renderer
• Production quality anti-aliasing and motion blur
• Render entire planets, sweeping vistas, tiny rock gardens, or anything in between
• Add multiple heightfields to your scene. Use procedural terrains that can span an entire planet

The core technology of TG2 was used in such feature films as 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis and 2005's Stealth!


[size=9px]"Terragen 2 features an advanced hybrid micropolygon renderer with powerful multi-angle displacement capabilities. It has a versatile procedural engine that can be utilised to apply subpixel-level detail to almost any aspect of a scene. Terragen 2 is capable of rendering billions of polygons in a single scene."[/size]


[size=9px]Checkout the Terragen 2 Technology Preview at www.planetside.co.uk![/size]

[NecroDOME]

I know the product, and only I can say: HOLY F*CKIN' CRAP!!
I mean, you don't have to go anywhere to make a nice picture from a mountain (or mars)!!

Mars: http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen...ars_movie.html

[jasonf]

I've been eagerly awaiting this software, considering how far it's come and its price.. it'll be a worthwhile purchase.. did anyone check out the video of the plane?.. all CGI.. WOW!!!

[michalis]

This is a magnificent piece of software, and version 2 getting done is a great news.

A real pity that it's not open-source, and no Linux version. And it doesn't run well through wine. It's the only non-open-source component that I use for developing 3D games... I may be an open-source fanatic, but there's simply no open-source equivalent existing (does anyone know about one ? Let us know !).

[WILL]

I'm sorry to say this but, if this thing was open-source, it would not be anywhere close to as nice as it is shown here.

Simply put, this is a direct result of commercial enterprising. Noone would have all the time or the resources to put something as powerful and as consistant as this together. The project would have reached 'good enough' long ago.

[cragwolf]

Pretty please let's not turn this thread into one of those boring open-source debates!

One thing I'd like to know is why and how would one use Terragen for developing 3D games?

Also, for Linux users, from the Terragen 2 FAQ:

Will TG2 be available for Linux?

We will almost certainly have a command line render engine for Linux. The decision about a full GUI application is yet to be made.

[michalis]

Pretty please let's not turn this thread into one of those boring open-source debates!

OK, agreed

One thing I'd like to know is why and how would one use Terragen for developing 3D games?

For making skies. You represent a sky as a cube with 6 textured faces. The cube is rendered at the beginning of each frame. The player is always considered to stand in the middle of the sky cube, and player rotations rotate the sky cube. That's easy and efficient (since you just render 6 textured faces, you can even disable depth buffer using) way to render the sky.

Now, the only problem is: how do we generate 6 textures of the sky that match together ? Making them manually, or by post-processing real skies photos is almost undoable. So it's easiest to just render the sky. Every renderer allows you to just render 6 pictures from the same camera position, and with camera angles set to exactly 90 degress.

But this means that you need a program that can nicely generate (and then render) the sky (with nice clouds, with sun, with atmospheric effects, with some terrain etc.). That's Terragen.

[chronozphere]

# Render entire planets, sweeping vistas, tiny rock gardens, or anything in between
# Add multiple heightfields to your scene. Use procedural terrains that can span an entire planet

Render entire planets... Rendering video's... awesome. :clap:

I'm sure it will be very usefull for my project(s).