Terragen home Terragen™ 2 TG2 main TG2 FAQ TG2 images Forums Image of the Week

Terragen™ 2 FAQ This is the official Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for Terragen 2, the forthcoming major new release of Terragen, completely rewritten from the ground up. Other Terragen 2 links: TG2 main page TG2 Image Gallery If there is anything you'd like to see mentioned in this FAQ, please send an email with your questions to terragen@planetside.co.uk In the following items Terragen 2 is referred to as TG2, and the current version of Terragen is referred to as TG. Contents General - What is Terragen 2? - What does "TGD" mean? Is TG2 something different? - When will TG2 be available? - What will TG2 cost? - Will there be a free version of TG2? - Will TG2 be available for Linux? - Will TG2 be able to render this or that natural phenomenon? - Will TG2 be a complete general-purpose 3D program? System Requirements - What will the system requirements for the Windows version be? - What will the system requirements for the Mac version be? - Is the Mac version going to be available at the same time as the Windows version? - Will TG2 require a powerful graphics card, and will it benefit from one? - Will TG2 take advantage of more than one processor? Upgrading - Will we be able to upgrade from previous versions of TG to TG2? - What will the upgrade pricing be like? - Will there be an upgrade path from the free version? Rendering - What are render times like? - Will it be possible to pause and resume rendering? - Will there be a realtime preview, showing changes to a scene? - Will TG2 support specular textures, for making surfaces look shiny/wet? - Will Terragen be able to render on a render farm? Terrain - Will TG2 be able to render fractal planets and landscapes without any heightfield terrains at all? - Can we use more than one heightfield? - Can terrain have overhangs in TG2? - Can TG2 handle caves and arches? Sky and Clouds - Will TG2 allow multiple cloud layers? - Will TG2 have volumetric 3D clouds? - Will the 2.5D style clouds in the current TG still be available in TG2? - Can we look at clouds from above? - Can we have clouds in valleys, or mountain peaks poking up through clouds? - Will it be possible to represent different types of clouds? - Can clouds from one layer go through other layers? - Will TG2 still have the "black horizon" which TG skies can have if the sky cover size is not set large enough? - Will we be able to have starfields and the like? How will they be generated? - Will TG2 be able to render atmospheric effects such as rainbows and halos? - Will TG2 have heavenly bodies such as moons and multiple suns? - Will TG2 be able to export panorama/skybox type images? - Will TG2 be able to do lens flares? Vegetation - Will TG2 support vegetation? - How will TG2 support vegetation? - Will TG2 be able to render a lot of vegetation? Could I make a pine forest, for example? - What methods will there be for positioning vegetation? - How detailed will vegetation models be? That is, would vegetation viewed at close range look convincing? Water - What changes are there going to be in the water system compared to TG? - Will TG2 allow multiple water levels? - Will TG2 let us render rivers? - Can the water be animated? - How dynamic will the water be? Will it have force and direction, for example? - Will it be possible to render underwater scenes? - Will it be possible to turn water on and off, like you can turn the sky or landscape on and off in TG? - Will TG2 be able to do waterfalls? Compatibility - Will we be able to use our existing TG terrain files in TG2? - Will we be able to use our existing TG world, atmosphere and surface map files in TG2? - Will TG2 support GIS type vector data, such as shape files? - Will TG2 be able to save/export HDRI images? - Is it possible to export an entire scene to another 3D app? - Will we be able to load .OBJ or other object files? Animation - Can TG2 scenes be animated? - Will TG2 be able to render animations on a render farm? - What sort of licensing arrangements will there be for render farms? General    Back to contents What is Terragen 2? Terragen 2 is a completely new landscape rendering application with a new renderer that has been written from scratch. At it's core it is far more powerful and flexible than TG v0.9, and it gives us a much better platform for future development. You can find more detailed information about TG2 here. What does "TGD" mean? Is TG2 something different? TGD was the codename for our development version of Terragen 2. It was called that because it represented the fourth iteration of the Terragen rendering technology. We are no longer using the name TGD and Terragen 2 is now the official name for our next generation application and renderer. When will TG2 be available? The first Tech Preview version was released on December the 15th, 2006. You can find more information about the Tech Preview here. The final version of TG2 is expected to be released in 2007. What will TG2 cost? Prices have not yet been decided for the final version of TG2. There will be more than one edition of TG2, and we anticipate their prices will be competitive with similar applications. The TG2 Technology Preview is available for purchase. You can find pricing information here. Will there be a free version of TG2? Having a version of TG that is free for personal non-commercial use has been very successful for us, and we would like to continue that with TG2. There is a free for non-commercial use version of the TG2 Technology Preview available. You can download it here. 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. Will TG2 be able to render this or that natural phenomenon? TG2 is a renderer whose main purpose is to be able to render natural phenomena in a convincingly realistic fashion. Although it will not be able to render every aspect of the natural world in the first release, we aim to continue adding a broad range of features over time. For the first release we would like to cover all the basics, particularly those things which TG most noticeably lacks. TG2's highly flexible and modular architecture will then allow us to work on everything else in a much easier fashion than is possible with TG. Will TG2 be a complete general-purpose 3D program? TG2 will not have a complete set of modelling tools like you might see in general purpose 3D software, although it will have modelling tools specifically related to what it does best: terrain, atmosphere and water, as well as basic tools necessary to handle imported objects. We'll play to our strengths and leave the sophisticated modelling tools to the very good other apps which do that already. System Requirements    Back to contents What will the system requirements for the Windows version be? We're still evaluating this. However, the absolute bare minimum would be any Pentium/AMD, and 256Mb of RAM might be enough. But we may have to increase these requirements by the time TG2 is released. As always, the faster the CPU and the more RAM you have, the better. We don't yet know what versions of Windows we can support, but Windows 2000 and Windows XP will certainly be supported. What will the system requirements for the Mac version be? At this stage, the only clear one is that TG2 will only be supported on OS X 10.4 ( Tiger ) and newer. A system capable of running OS X 10.4 should be fine for TG2. It may be possible to support OS X 10.3.9, but that is still to be established. TG2 for Mac will be a Universal Binary, suitable for use on forthcoming Intel based Macs as well as PPC Macs. OS 9 will not be supported for TG2. Is the Mac version going to be available at the same time as the Windows version? Yes. Each version of TG2 will be built from the same code, and versions for each platform should be available simultaneously. Will TG2 require a powerful graphics card, and will it benefit from one? TG2 will not require a powerful graphics card. However, you will certainly benefit from having one, much more so than with the current version of TG. TG2 uses OpenGL on Windows and the Mac for drawing graphically intensive parts of the user interface, such as the 3D Preview and the network view. It is not used for final rendering however. Any recent graphics card should stand you in good stead. TG2 does not currently take advantage of the shader capabilities of advanced cards, but it may do in the future. Graphics card technology is still changing rapidly so it's hard to predict where things may end up by the time TG2 is released. Will TG2 take advantage of more than one processor? This has not been implemented yet, but we hope to provide full multiprocessor support in TG2. Upgrading    Back to contents Will we be able to upgrade from previous versions of TG to TG2? Yes, you will be able to upgrade from a registered version of TG to TG2. What will the upgrade pricing be like? If you have registered TG, you will get at least the current cost of registration off the price of TG2. For example, the current cost is $99 USD. Even if you registered for the older price of $79 USD, you will still get a discount of at least $99 USD. Will there be an upgrade path from the free version? No, upgrade benefits will be available to registered users only. Rendering    Back to contents What are render times like? Currently the TGD architecture is a fair amount slower than Terragen v0.9 would be with v0.9 on default settings. This is because TG2 will be much more powerful and flexible than v0.9. There are many optimisations still to be done, and we think that by the time TG2 becomes a final product it will only be slightly slower than v0.9 for equivalent types of images. We think the advantages of TG2 will far outweigh any noticeable difference in render speed. Will it be possible to pause and resume rendering? This an often requested feature, and we will consider adding this functionality to TG2. Will there be a realtime preview, showing changes to a scene? Yes, TG2 will feature a realtime 3D preview which shows all elements in the scene and which updates as you make changes. Will TG2 support specular textures, for making surfaces look shiny/wet? Yes, it will. Will Terragen be able to render on a render farm? Yes. Please see the Animation section of the FAQ for more information about this. Terrain    Back to contents Will TG2 be able to render fractal planets and landscapes without any heightfield terrains at all? Yes. Procedural terrains can be freely mixed with traditional heightfields. Entire planets can be created using procedural terrains and/or heightfields. Can we use more than one heightfield? Yes. You will be able to place multiple heightfields wherever you want on a planet. Can terrain have overhangs in TG2? Yes, they can. Overhanging parts of the terrain are no problem in TG2. To see an example, click here ( new window will open ). Can TG2 handle caves and arches? It should be able to, though this hasn't yet been tested. Caves are basically dents in the terrain and they should be possible using TG2's displacement mapping system. Arches are somewhat tricker, but at the very least they should be possible by importing 3D objects and texturing them to match the terrain. Sky and Clouds    Back to contents Will TG2 allow multiple cloud layers? Yes, it will. Will TG2 have volumetric 3D clouds? Yes, it will. Will the 2.5D style clouds in the current TG still be available in TG2? Yes, they will be. You can use a mix of 2.5D and fully 3D volumetric clouds in the same scene. 2.5D clouds do have some advantages over 3D clouds such as being faster to render, so if you can get the effect you are after using 2.5D clouds then you can still use them. Unlike in the current version of TG, the 2.5D clouds can be placed at any level and they can be below the highest point of the terrain. Can we look at clouds from above? Yes, the clouds in TG2 are visible from any vantage point, from down on the ground or from out in space and all points in-between. Can we have clouds in valleys, or mountain peaks poking up through clouds? Yes. In the current version of TG clouds can never be in front of the terrain. In TG2 this restriction is removed and clouds can be at any height, allowing cloud filled valleys, lone mountain peaks poking up the through the clouds and all the similar things you would expect to be able to do. Will it be possible to represent different types of clouds? Yes, the cloud system in TG2 will be very versatile. We will likely provide presets for a number of different cloud types. There will be a variety of ways to define cloud shapes as well, such as using masks. Can clouds from one layer go through other layers? Yes. Will TG2 still have the "black horizon" which TG skies can have if the sky cover size is not set large enough? No, the sky in TG2 is global. Wherever you look that should have sky there will be sky. Will we be able to have starfields and the like? How will they be generated? This is something we're looking at. We would like to have the facility to use real star map data, but of course generation of fractal starfields is certainly something we would include. Will TG2 be able to render atmospheric effects such as rainbows and halos? This is something we're considering. Will TG2 have heavenly bodies such as moons and multiple suns? Yes, TG2 can do this already. Will TG2 be able to export panorama/skybox type images? This is a very frequent request and we are strongly considering it. Will TG2 be able to do lens flares? Some lens flare effects may be added in the future but we do not consider this to be a priority. Certain bloom and glow effects are useful in anti-aliasing very bright edges in images with a very high dynamic range, so they will likely be included in the first TG2 release. Vegetation    Back to contents Will TG2 support vegetation? Yes, we are aiming to support vegetation from the first release. How will TG2 support vegetation? Initially TG2 will support vegetation by importing 3D models from files, such as OBJ files. It may not feature any built in vegetation generation tools, but will probably have tools to help you get the most out of the imported models. Will TG2 be able to render a lot of vegetation? Could I make a pine forest, for example? TG2 is being designed to be capable of rendering many, many individual vegetation elements. As many as you need to make the scene you want. Forests should be no problem. It will do this in an efficient manner using as few system resources as possible, utilising techniques such as instancing and high quality billboards. Instancing is a method for reproducing a single model many times while using very few resources. A model can have variations such as rotation applied so that it's not obviously the same model. Billboarding uses pregenerated images of a model applied to a very simple collection of polygons. This can allow further away items to be rendered very efficiently. Traditionally there can be problems with using pregenerated images, such as the lighting looking odd. TG2 will utilise a number of techniques to avoid these kinds of issues. What methods will there be for positioning vegetation? There will be two basic methods, manual and automatic. Manual placement will allow you to position vegetation exactly how and where you want it. Automatic placement will let you use a variety of ways to automatically distribute vegetation. You wouldn't want to have place a whole forest by hand. Initially you'll be able to use controls similar to the surface map system in TG, where you control placement using parameters such as height, slope, fractal noise and with the probably addition of an aspect/directional control. You will also be able to use masks to control where vegetation appears. Our main goal is to introduce a rules based ecosystem facility, where vegetation can be distributed acoording to environmental factors such as altitude, water and shadiness. Due to TG2 being based around planets geographic location could also be a consideration. We're not sure how much of this kind of system will be implemented in the initial release of TG2 though. How detailed will vegetation models be? That is, would vegetation viewed at close range look convincing? That will entirely depend on the models you use. TG2 will not initially have vegetation generation tools of its own, although it will have tools to enable you to get the best out of third party vegetation models. Water    Back to contents What changes are there going to be in the water system compared to TG? Water is still in the early stages. We intend TG2 to have a similar (if not better) level of water quality to TG, but with the advantage of being completely open to all sorts of manipulation. For example, once basic water is there, you could use whatever heightfield or terrain manipulation tools TG2 has to manipulate the height, shape (including overhangs/rolls), texture, colour, reflectitivity, transparency, etc. The water system should be very flexible. Will TG2 allow multiple water levels? Yes, it will. Will TG2 let us render rivers? Yes. On a basic level, the standard manipulation tools should allow you to provide heightfields and/or masks to define rivers. We're not yet sure what form more sophisticated tools will take but we have a lot of ideas we can experiment with. Can the water be animated? Yes. Internally nearly every parameter in TG2 can be animated, including those controlling the water. Virtually all aspects of the water should be animatable. We've yet to decide how much animation functionality will be exposed in the different editions of TG2. How dynamic will the water be? Will it have force and direction, for example? Initially we don't anticipate that there will be any simulation-type aspects to the water, such as force and direction. The water will have extensive animation capabilities however, so convincing fakery of many effects should be possible. Water simulation is a complex topic, but it's certainly something we're interested in. Will it be possible to render underwater scenes? Yes, it will be. Will it be possible to turn water on and off, like you can turn the sky or landscape on and off in TG? Yes, that should be possible in TG2. Will TG2 be able to do waterfalls? Yes, it certainly will at some point. Compatibility    Back to contents Will we be able to use our existing TG terrain files in TG2? Yes, TG terrain files are fully supported in TG2. Will we be able to use our existing TG world, atmosphere and surface map files in TG2? TG2 is a completely new renderer which is radically different to TG. This means that internally everything works differently to TG, and it will be hard to correlate settings in one with settings in the other. However, TG2 should have tools to import older files from TG wherever possible. Will TG2 support GIS type vector data, such as shape files? Yes, TG2 will support GIS data, although to what extent in the first release is unsure. However we are very interested in making TG2 useful to GIS users. Will TG2 be able to save/export HDRI images? Yes, TG2 will support the OpenEXR format at the very least, and likely other formats. In future it should also be easy for third parties to support other formats through plugins. Is it possible to export an entire scene to another 3D app? This is currently undecided. You will certainly be able to export elements of scenes, including highly detailed geometry. Exporting highly complex surface or atmosphere shaders would be a more difficult proposition. We are very interested in making the integration of TG2 and more general purpose 3D apps as straightforward as possible. Will we be able to load .OBJ or other object files? Yes. TG2 will be able to import 3D objects in many formats. It will be extendable via plugins to allow support for formats which we don't directly support ourselves. Animation    Back to contents Can TG2 scenes be animated? Yes. Internally TGD allows you to animate almost any parameter, whether it's camera motion, lighting conditions, texture settings, or whatever else you'd like. We haven't yet decided whether some animation capabilities will be reserved for the high end editions of TG2. Will TG2 be able to render animations on a render farm? Certainly. We haven't decided about building network rendering facilities directly into TG2 itself yet. Most studios already have their own network rendering infrastructure, and there are a number of freely available systems for other people to use. What we may do is pick a freely available system and provide everything needed to easily use TG2 with that system, including support. For example, TG2 Mac will almost certainly support Apple's Xgrid system. What sort of licensing arrangements will there be for render farms? That is currently undecided.