Fractal Planet shenanigans

[caekdaemon]

I stopped using Terragen for a year, and I've gotten really, really rusty.

Now, I decided to come back to Terragen for some rendering, which I do enjoy the outcome look. I wanted to continue from my last project, but it died with my hard drive 

I tried some simple planet renders to try and restart my old spark for Terragen, but I've hit a snag.

How the hell do I make continents?

All I get when using the power fractal or alpine fractal is exactly that, fractal. A render from space makes the planets surface seem completely unrealistic. There are no major landmasses, just chains parallel to other chains that go around the world.

It looks terrible, and I was hoping it would be possible to make realistic large continents. Then I could throw on some cloud cover and sea's and all that good stuff.

[Gannaingh]

http://www.nwdanet.com/buy/7-preset-packs/37-class-m-planets-and-planetary-rings-pack

That should get you started off pretty well, welcome back.

[caekdaemon]

http://www.nwdanet.com/buy/7-preset-packs/37-class-m-planets-and-planetary-rings-pack

That should get you started off pretty well, welcome back.

Thank you, but I can't seem to find the download button on that page

It does do what I need though. Sorta. I was hoping to find a tutorial on how to do it myself, but I can try and reverse engineer the methods used in that once I find out how to download it 

[j meyer]

Something else to look into
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7231.new#new

[Hetzen]

There was a discusion on how to define a PFs scales, and a good answer was that the lead in scale is your continent size, feature scale is your coastal break up, and smallest scale is your detail.

You might want to look at the colour output only of a PF on a planet so you can mess around with the scales to see quickly the shapes they influence. Set a high contrast and turn down the noise near to 1, then set your scales. Warp is another tab that can help to get interesting tectonic shapes.