IntroductionThis tutorial is intended to help you create nice sets of dunes with Terragen 2 or 3.
We will try to generate single dunes (barkhanes), fields of barkhanes, or linear dunes.
My method offers two major profiles (dunes and sand domes), that you can combine to get nice views of sandy deserts.
At a smaller scale, you will also be able to create sand ripples drawn by the wind on these dunes.
Please note that this tutorial is NOT a scientific study about dunes formation !
Even if it is based on certain obvious rules (the incidence of the wind), the reality is far more complex.
My choice was to create these dunes with trigonometric functions, for aesthetic reasons.
The real dunes could be modeled only from much more complex calculations, including some parameters I'm not able to use with Terragen : incidence of surrounding reliefs (rocky hills for example), obstacles like plants, or fluctuating winds.
PrerequisitesTerragen version : v 2.2.23.1 or higher.
In the previous versions, there was a problem with the Perlin 3D Scalar node : spikes appeared in renders when using multithreading.
TutorialHere is the first part of this tutorial, with the .tgd files.
The second part in a few days (I hope).
Comments and suggestions are welcome !
[Edit 2014.06.04 : tutorial PART 1 v1.2 + files][Edit 2014.06.06 : tutorial PART 1 v1.22]