Creating Skyboxes with Terragen 3?

[vinny]

Is Terragen 3 able to export skyboxes? What's the maximum size per cube face? Do you guys have any tutorials around?

[Oshyan]

Terragen 3 has a Spherical Camera output function which is useful for most of the same purposes and can generally be converted to a cube map. It is generally better because no stitching is required. If you want to output a cube map directly, there is no built-in functionality for this, but you can certainly output the cube faces manually fairly easily and even do so sequentially using animation capability (animate the camera between each of the 6 needed positions, then output a sequence).

- Oshyan

[vinny]

What do you mean by "generally convert"? Do you know any tools for converting to a skybox? What format does Terragen export to?

[TheBadger]

I believe there is a tutorial in one of the many threads discussing skyboxes. It covers Terragen 2 methods, from before the introduction of the spherical method in T3.
You will have to search for it though. IT was just written instructions.

[Oshyan]

Terragen outputs to standard image formats, TIF, EXR, etc. It does not output directly to any skybox format. You would need 3rd party software to handle that. There should be a number of options, though I'm not aware of any specific ones to recommend. Hopefully others can chime in with what they use.

- Oshyan

[vinny]

I'm interested in buying Terragen, but without a proper Skybox export workflow in the 3 version, there are not many reasons to choose this instead of more complete solutions like Vue.

[TheBadger]

I'm interested in buying Terragen, but without a proper Skybox export workflow in the 3 version, there are not many reasons to choose this instead of more complete solutions like Vue.

Ahh yes. It makes a lot of sense to spend a ton more money for a product that gives lower quality results just because one simple task is automated. Smart thinking.

[vinny]

Lower quality? The whole feature set is quite similar. And, yes, having an "Export Sky" feature that automatically exports cubemaps, spheremaps and others is a huge addition to the software.

[paq]

Hello,

When creating skybox with terragen you will face 2 problems :

Either you choose

- the spherical to cube map, but you will have pole distortion problem. (It's often easy to fix it by hand, but it's still annoying especially if there is lots of details in the top aera)
- Your render 5 or 6 images, and you have to deal with a sticthing software.

I find ptgui very handy for this job, and works very well in 8 or 32 bits. Ptgui can output any kind of projection you need.
Once you have your setup ready in terragen and ptgui (as template), it's a really fast and reliable solution. You can also spread the rendering of the 5 images on different computers to speed up the task.

Sure it's not an easy 'out of the box' solution ...

[TheBadger]

Hi Vinny, sorry if I sounded snippy. Probably I should learn to only post when I'm in a good mood (but who am I kidding, Ill never learn  )

The feature sets may be similar as you say, but that should not be your main method of comparison. It is not enough to simply say that both Vue and TG make procedural terrains (just for example). The question is at what quality and what limitations. In both cases (and in general) Terragen is a more powerful program depending how you look at it. Just one example would be, can you populate in vue, billions even trillions of instances. OR millions of high Polly objects? Can you populate a raw sculpt from Mudbox or z-brush or Mari with tens of millions of polygons each? And then go from a photo-real near pebble close up, to outer space at real world scale (including multiple planets) with as much stability as I do? In TG you can. Of course you must ask your self if that even matters to your needs.

TG is also regarded as harder to use. That is, people claim that they have an "easier" time with Vue. But That's true of Daz3d too, but I still prefer to animate in Maya. See what I'm getting at here?

But yes, Vue obviously has more bells and whistles, the problem IMO, is that those additional features tend to be  (or lead to) amateurish results regardless of the quality of the user. Planetside has made it abundantly clear that their focus is on (and really, only on) Photo real results, and on those feature sets directly related to photo real landscapes. And this is easily verifiable by comparing the "best" vue images with the "best TG" renders and strictly looking at the question of "photo realism".

But there is no shortage of complaints here in the forums about TG as you may know. But whats really interesting about that is, as you may have also noticed, there is NO shortage of interaction and responsiveness from the Terragen Staff. In fact, getting in depth responses from the makers of TG on tech issues is a daily activity here. And this is in addition to a highly diverse and real world professional user base, along with a quite large number of all around geniuses (I do not included my self in that line up by the way).
All of these things are important things to consider.

So when I say its not good to pass up TG just because your need is not automated, I mean to ask why would you take a Vue Sky over a TG sky, just because you have to do a little more work?

Anyway, I am biased on this topic as most around here are. But if you have not already seen it, there is a video comparison of Vue and TG, that may be useful to you. : (pt1 of 4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkbcJ7fjIcw&list=PLSGXnsEtGDVdOgxf_vXqz3IMzD3TDzR57

A better and more in depth view of things than you will get from me. Hope it helps you make the best decision for your self.


Oh, and in addition to PTgui, you may also want to look at AutopanoPro And GigaPano from Kolar. I use autopanoPro and am very happy with it. But if all you want to do is cube maps, Kolar products may be over kill. www.kolor.com

And OF course (as in everything) I could be wrong, but that's what I think... For whatever its worth.

Cheers.