Video Tutorials: Terragen for VFX

Started by Kevin Kipper, March 30, 2021, 09:21:32 PM

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archonforest

Dell T5500 with Dual Hexa Xeon CPU 3Ghz, 32Gb ram, GTX 1080
Amiga 1200 8Mb ram, 8Gb ssd

Kevin Kipper

Hi Everyone,

The next installment in our video series "Terragen for VFX" is now available on the website!

https://planetside.co.uk/terragen-tutorials-for-vfx-section4-texturing-mountains-cliffs/

In these three videos we explore the process of texturing the landscape's mountains, cliffs, grasslands, meadows and snow covered peaks.

Part 20 - Texturing Mountains & Cliffs
Part 21 - Texturing Grass & Meadows
Part 22 - Texturing Snowy Mountains

We hope you enjoy these videos and learn something new!

Kevin

WAS

I was curious, is this series going to branch out with new scenes made? I mean, will we get other stuff focusing on different aspects, such as ground-level distribution and realistic surfaces?  Not trying to bash on these, as these are amazing. Just curious because I know some peoples work here is absolutely stunning when it comes to groundwork distribution of plants. I am even curious how these are done

Dune

They are very informative and clear, and should get new users on the road real quick!

WAS

My quickie videos have gotten hundreds of new views (literally like from 20-40 views to 600+), likely due to these videos hitting YouTube. More people are definitely searching Terragen on YouTube.

Would really like to do more but I need a new CPU. If I cut CPU cores to record, TG is painfully slow to even demonstrate with. I could do it if I had a 1080p monitor, but I have a 4k ultrawide, and 1080p isn't supported and fuzzy and blue toned.

Kevin Kipper

WAS, it's great to hear that your videos are getting more views. 

In answer to your question above, yes, we're very interesting in developing additional tutorials and content that highlight different aspects of Terragen, or of specific interest such as the ground-level distribution or even more realistic surfaces as you mentioned. 

I encourage everyone to submit any ideas for topics that you're interested in learning more about, and we'll start looking into them to determine the best way to explore them in more detail, whether it's a video or wiki page tutorial.


Thanks!

WAS

Aweomse! I am definitely interested in ground distribution. Maybe something like a farm plot, which takes into account architectural objects and distribution of plants around them. I have setup a simplistic way of just mixing 3 types of vegetation (or more with secondary masks) with RGB mixes, which works pretty good, but also very chaotic and I wonder if there are better ways to do this. And at 32 years old, I'm really ready to just be shown. :P :'(

PS I realize in retrospect a lot of our users are a lifetime older then me... I just mean I've been using TG for years since TG 2 came out and some areas still make me shy away years on.

Ariel DK

Your last 3 videos about Render Settings was really useful, keep going!
It would be nice to see some specific masking methods in TG  :)
Hmmm, what version of Terragen does God use?

Kevin Kipper

Hi Everyone,

We've just released the final six videos in the "Terragen for VFX" series! 

These videos explore the render process in Terragen, covering topics such as the Global Illumination pre-pass and Render Layers. We'll walk you through the Renderer's parameters that determine the final detail and quality of an image.  We'll also introduce a way to create specialized matte passes for use in post production, as well as how to setup an animated spherical environment render in order to use the rendered image sequence as a light source for a 3D scene in a third party software package.

Part 23 - Render Settings: Global Illumination
Part 24 - Render Settings: Quality & Details
Part 25 - Render Layers
Part 26 - RGB Matte Elements
Part 27 - Spherical Environment Render
Part 28 - Foreground Clouds Card

We hope you've enjoyed this series and learned something new!

Kevin

aknight0

Excellent videos, I've really enjoyed watching them, and I always learn something new!  The GI info in video 23 should really be added to the documentation, even just a transcript of what you said and some screenshots would be a big improvement over the current docs for some of the parameters (I'm looking at you bounce to the ounce).

Kevin Kipper

Thanks for that feedback, aknight0.  As a matter of fact I'm updating the Planetside wiki documentation on a daily basis, prioritizing the pages with outdated or missing documentation and example images.  We'll definitely incorporate the information from the videos to these pages as we get to them and perhaps even including example projects.  We appreciate the feedback, please keep the ideas coming!