Terragen 3 Imports

[Gaveeebruce]

Hello all

I'm very new to Terragen and still learning the basics, i need to know basically what the software's limits are. I've got a few questions if anyone would know the answers that would be wicked.

Firstly I'm creating as much of a game i possibly can for a project for college i need a scene and some assets. My question can i make assets in terragen or is it mainly landscape based (when i mean assets like huts and things for players to interact with) ?
Next question if i can't create assets are there any possibilities i can import objects into Terragen from 3ds max or mudbox or vise versa am i able to transfer a terragen file too unity or 3ds max ?
Next question I've seen a lot of artists work for terragen on youtube where a camera pan's around a scene and showcases is there a feature or an add on where i can use a playable character and walk around my environment which I've created in terragen like what unity offers ?

Thank You

[Dune]

Welcome, first of all. If you are new to TG, you're aiming high  Let me tell you what I can tell you; you can't really create assets in TG, unless you mean things like rocks (you can procedurally mould some stuff from displacable cubes). But nothing like huts or people.
You can import them very well though; best is an obj file. You may have to reassign some textures, so check that out after importing. TG works in meters, so try to get your obj's in meters (Poseray is a handy in between). You can save these assets as (native) tgo, which can be loaded in subsequent sessions easily, including all added procedural nodes.
Having playable characters would need a different app, IMO.
Exporting terrain is possible with the micro exporter, but I have no experience with that.

Hope this helps.

[red_planet]

Dune is correct.

From what you write, you would like to be able to do a realtime walkaround. Whilst these are possible in Max or Unity, it's not really feasible in Terragen (yet!). You would need to create your terrain and then export  for use in Unity or Max.

The Planetside Wiki has good info on how to use the micro exporter.

http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Micro_Exporter

Edit,

I just did a quick test and discovered that the geometry from a test scene that had Strata and Twist & Shear shaders applied had a very high poly count. You would need to make sure that any geometry/mesh ypu export can be manipulated efficiently in real time to achieve sensible frame rates in your target application. Frame rate will be dependent upon the processing power and memory you have available, CPU and GPU.

If you only want to provide a background environment then you can make use of the spherical render camera to generate an equirectangular image for use in environment shaders in Max or Unity.

[Gaveeebruce]

Thank you to you both for the fast response's I think I'll just create a scene/ environment within Terragen to show case what my level and designs would look like with rocks and tree's etc etc and leave the other stuff like the modelling for mudbox, 3ds max and unity.

[TheBadger]

As it is now, you can't really go from TG to others in a good way, but there are a number of ways to get to TG from other soft.

So you can bring in a vector from all your other apps to TG, but you will have many problems going to those apps from TG in any good way.
The exception would be to export the terrain as an object just to use as a reference, in say maya, which works very well.

There are a number of threads on this. Since you said you use mud, then this thread will be a great start for you.
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,16110.0.html
It is 18 pages long and includes some tester files in there. You will get much info from the thread.

Lastly, it has also been discussed in the forum, that TG should have better export options, including but not limited to vector output. TG4 will soon be here!! But no word yet if vector output will be included.

[Gaveeebruce]

Does anyone have a rough idea when Terragen 4 will be here ?

[Oshyan]

Second Quarter of 2016 (between April 1st and June 30th, basically).

- Oshyan