We started with creating web templates, then icons and photos for those templates, now trying to expand to broader graphics, illustrations and photo packages. Somewhat like stock graphics but bundled together. We are looking for any type of images that we can produce or acquire for distribution.
For example we work with illustrators who create thousands of icons and illustration on every topic imaginable. We also work with 3D designers who put together various scenes from variety of 3D models we purchase, then simply render them. We also work with graphics designers that assemble various composites in Photoshop.
One of the topics we'd like to cover are landscapes and outer space, which obviously we cannot easily photograph. When I found Terragen I assumed that it's a product for quickly generating variety of terrain and planetary scenes, but I'm just starting to understand that there are no predefined scenes here and not a marketplace for them, like for 3D objects.
Someone pointed to me that I could just purchase E-on Vue and various sceneries from
http://www.cornucopia3d.com/store.php?first=1&sel_dir=Scenes&level=0&sel_type=Scenes. Those scenes seem to be great, created by veterans of the software, and probably each took long time to create.
I wish Terraview offered similar ready-to-go scenes because that's what many people may need, not a complicated software that requires long time investment to create something great with. I opened Terraview, tried to understand what to do, then closed it in 15 minutes.
And I'm assuming that 10 years from now we'll see even better products that do more out of the box. Vue seems to be more successful and investing heavily into making advancements. For example their Ozone plugin advertises 100 predefined atmospheres:
http://www.ozone-plugin.com/I also just found SpaceEngine and it already seems much easier for some scenes - just navigate around the universe and take snapshots.
At this point I've come to understand that Terragen may not offer sufficient value to us on its own, without a lot of work involved. But I'm still open to ideas ad proposals. For example someone may have developed some scenes and just sell us distribution rights for X number of images for $Y dollars.
I guess "where the art fits into our business model" may be irrelevant if we're simply offering to pay for whatever anyone may want to sell us. That's the perfect business model for many freelancers we work with, though again, I understand that producing great results with Terragen may be much more labor intensive to be comparable with other types of illustrations we acquire. I'm still open to ideas, while in the meantime moving onto testing other solutions, some of our freelancers may also start manually putting together some cool terrain and planetary composites in Photoshop (there are tons of great tutorials on the web). I just wish Terragen was built to easily fulfill that growing need :-)
Thanks,
Paul
