Call for new getting started guide...

[jjfranzen]

I am just getting back into TG2 and the joy that is, and things have changed SO much since beta (yes, that's how long I've been away) that even the latest new users guide is out of date as the planet already starts with full terrain.  Does anyone have any advice on a good website or even book on really getting your teeth sunk into TG2 and what she can so?  Cheers,

J^2

[Henry Blewer]

This forum. Terragen.org, Terranauts. The WIKI for Terragen 2. There are some very good tutorial videos on YouTube. The Ben McDuff tutorial pdf here http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7733.0

[rcallicotte]

Don't forget about this - http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?board=14.0  Studying others' work and even re-doing something with what you have been graciously given by another user is an excellent way to understand.

[FrankB]

The planet is still just a plane sphere upon TG2 startup... unless you are using the NWDA Default Scene, that is.

[Oshyan]

Not that much has changed with the basics, but I agree an update to the Getting Started/First Scene doc would be good.

- Oshyan

[mhall]

How about a Default Scene where the Node Network features liberal use of the Comment/Note node to explain some basic concepts to those new to the interface?

Just a thought.

~Micheal

[Oshyan]

Also not a bad idea. We've contemplating the idea of a different default scene. One problem with that is it needs to serve at least 2 purposes. 1 is to provide the very basic scene for people to start their own scenes with, and that includes everyone from basic to advanced users (even advanced users would not necessarily want to start with a blank scene as there are many nodes used in the majority of scenes). The 2nd purpose could be instructive, but this might get in the way of the more general purpose, so that would need to be addressed. It's definitely something worth thinking more about.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

Why not make several 'default' scenes. It's easy enough to just load a preferred default scene, although strictly it wouldn't be default anymore. Maybe adding a button with several choices for 'default', and put 2-4 default scenes in the basic folder.
I like it as it is, easy enough to click a few nodes in the field. But I can imagine for some folks it would be handy to have a little more guidance in the early start, thus the note system would be good, indeed.

[Oshyan]

Certainly having several "starting point" and/or example scenes would be good, but you start to see the complexity. When we have that we need a system to make obvious that those options exist, something to switch between example scenes. It's a good idea, it just means it's more work than simply creating an example or tutorial scene. For now we need to keep the default scene as clean as possible, but in the future we'll have more options.

- Oshyan

[Draigr]

Once I've gotten enough of the terrain generation basics, I'd be happy to do a basics tutorial. But first I'll do something I know about, Skydomes.

Terragen seriously does have a lack of detailed documentation. And no. Scanning forums is not a good alternative. But then, it's an immensely complex program, and because of the render times, also very time consuming to do a tutorial for. Something that's already very time consuming. Having a wiki that has more than 20 tutorials would be very nice. Especially considering how a number of the current tutorial links are now dead. A fact I noted a while back in an older scene.

At least Terragen isn't as bad as UDK though. . Seriously, until this year, there was almost no useful information on it. Though there was an overabundance of useless information.