Where to start! Beginner Questions

Started by Artofgp, July 03, 2017, 06:51:44 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Artofgp

Hello everyone, my name is Gabriel Perez, and I am interested buying Terragen. I have downloaded the trial version and I am enjoying it so far! I am a concept artist and a matte painter so my use for it would be for backgrounds and full CG scenes with custom model assets.

1st Question: Where do you guys download/buy your vegetation assets? I am looking around the library in Terragen and I can't seem to find any form of trees or grass assets. Any help with this would be highly appreciated!

2nd Question: Are there any users here that use Terragen for Matte paintings and or concept art?

3rd Question: In what way did you learn Terragen? I find Terragen quite complex at the moment. I am ready to start looking for some tutorials online! My best bet would be to start looking for some on Youtube.

I can't think of any more questions but any help would be appreciated!

Gabriel

masonspappy

Welcome to the Forums!

1)  Vegetation assets vary.   Often purchased from Speedtree or xfrog (which has some freebies you can use) and some of us use various programs (eg Blender) to create our own vegetation
2) Nope
3) Learn by trial and error, youtube videos. But mainly lots of folks frequent these forums for advice, tips and to display our work


Artofgp

Quote from: masonspappy on July 03, 2017, 08:05:03 PM
Welcome to the Forums!

1)  Vegetation assets vary.   Often purchased from Speedtree or xfrog (which has some freebies you can use) and some of us use various programs (eg Blender) to create our own vegetation
2) Nope
3) Learn by trial and error, youtube videos. But mainly lots of folks frequent these forums for advice, tips and to display our work

Thank you, Masonspappy! Speedtree looks like the best contender to creating trees in my opinion. I will look into that.

BTW, can Terragen create sophisticated erosions and terraces like World Machine? I haven't really spent a lot of time to experiment further but that would be ideal for some of the scenes I need to create soon.


Kadri


Welcome to the forum.

About question number 2:
There are some users who work for movies who don't post all the time.

masonspappy

Hmmm..., Kadri's response  made me realize that my answer to #2 was quite correct.  I'm sure there are other folks around here who use Terragen for Matte paintings and concept art. I'm just not one of there.
Apologies for being somewhat misleading

bobbystahr

#5
Quote from: Artofgp on July 03, 2017, 08:50:43 PM
Quote from: masonspappy on July 03, 2017, 08:05:03 PM

BTW, can Terragen create sophisticated erosions and terraces like World Machine? I haven't really spent a lot of time to experiment further but that would be ideal for some of the scenes I need to create soon.

If you use a pc there's a free plugin that does some pretty spectacular erosion stuff. I think it's pinned on the File Sharing section. No mac version at this time.

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20752.0.html
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Dune

Welcome Gabriel. You'll find most answers in this forum. The search function is your best friend. If you look for tutorials there, you'll be able to discover quite a bit.
Like this: http://www.cgscenery.com/basic/
Or this (older): http://planetside.co.uk/docs/tg2/first-scene.pdf
Here: http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
This: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,7733.msg82586.html#msg82586
Or this for a tower: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,12630.msg125740.html#msg125740
Any questions will undoubtedly be tackled on this forum.

cyphyr

Hi Gabriel

Hi and welcome to the forum. You're in the right place. Most questions about Terragen and resources can be answered here, it's a great friendly and helpful community. There are tutorials (search function and google) and they are always being added to.

I can certainly recommend Xfrog (more for back-ground and mid-ground vegetation) and Speedtree (more for hero foreground veg) There are plenty of other options. Terragen imports obj, lwo and it's own tgo formats.

Terragen is widely used in TV, Video and film and many artists on this forum work in these industries. One issue is that a lot of our work is heavily covered by NDA's (Non Disclosure Agreements) so we are not allowed to talk about it (in some cases not even that it exists!!!).

Oh and Terragen "can" create erosion and terracing like WM although it can also import directly from WM so if you already have that you may get easier better results using WM.

Good luck and do ask any questions.
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
/|\

Ryzen 9 5950X OC@4Ghz, 64Gb (TG4 benchmark 4:13)

Artofgp

#8
Quote from: Kadri on July 03, 2017, 09:04:49 PM

Welcome to the forum.

About question number 2:
There are some users who work for movies who don't post all the time.


Oh sweet, that is good to know. I'm always excited to see professional's work :)

Quote from: masonspappy on July 03, 2017, 10:54:36 PM
Hmmm..., Kadri's response  made me realize that my answer to #2 was quite correct.  I'm sure there are other folks around here who use Terragen for Matte paintings and concept art. I'm just not one of there.
Apologies for being somewhat misleading

It's no problem, Masonspappy! No sweat at all.

Quote from: bobbystahr on July 03, 2017, 10:57:59 PM
Quote from: Artofgp on July 03, 2017, 08:50:43 PM
Quote from: masonspappy on July 03, 2017, 08:05:03 PM

BTW, can Terragen create sophisticated erosions and terraces like World Machine? I haven't really spent a lot of time to experiment further but that would be ideal for some of the scenes I need to create soon.


If you use a pc there's a free plugin that does some pretty spectacular erosion stuff. I think it's pinned on the File Sharing section. No mac version at this time.

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20752.0.html

Awesome, thanks for this! I will have to try it out.

Quote from: Dune on July 04, 2017, 01:58:28 AM
Welcome Gabriel. You'll find most answers in this forum. The search function is your best friend. If you look for tutorials there, you'll be able to discover quite a bit.
Like this: http://www.cgscenery.com/basic/
Or this (older): http://planetside.co.uk/docs/tg2/first-scene.pdf
Here: http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
This: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,7733.msg82586.html#msg82586
Or this for a tower: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,12630.msg125740.html#msg125740
Any questions will undoubtedly be tackled on this forum.

This is awesome of you, Dune! I appreciate the links! I will definitely look into those.

Quote from: cyphyr on July 04, 2017, 03:26:23 AM
Hi Gabriel

Hi and welcome to the forum. You're in the right place. Most questions about Terragen and resources can be answered here, it's a great friendly and helpful community. There are tutorials (search function and google) and they are always being added to.

I can certainly recommend Xfrog (more for back-ground and mid-ground vegetation) and Speedtree (more for hero foreground veg) There are plenty of other options. Terragen imports obj, lwo and it's own tgo formats.

Terragen is widely used in TV, Video and film and many artists on this forum work in these industries. One issue is that a lot of our work is heavily covered by NDA's (Non Disclosure Agreements) so we are not allowed to talk about it (in some cases not even that it exists!!!).

Oh and Terragen "can" create erosion and terracing like WM although it can also import directly from WM so if you already have that you may get easier better results using WM.

Good luck and do ask any questions.


Very helpful information Cyphyr! I just noticed that Xfrog has a spring sale going on WITH lots of free plants to download... sweet deal I would say!

I do have world machine so if I have to, I'll mock up something there and export it to Terragen.


Thanks everyone! I feel very welcomed and that is important for my decision as well. I am sure I will have more questions soon.

Oshyan

Welcome! We always love to see more pro users. There are actually quite a few matte painters and other VFX industry folks around here.

There are also the GeekAtPlay tutorials. The Terragen 3 ones still largely apply to Terragen 4, and there are some updated new ones specific to TG4 features as well:
http://geekatplay.com/terragen-tutorials.php

- Oshyan

Artofgp

Quote from: Oshyan on July 04, 2017, 05:01:27 PM
Welcome! We always love to see more pro users. There are actually quite a few matte painters and other VFX industry folks around here.

There are also the GeekAtPlay tutorials. The Terragen 3 ones still largely apply to Terragen 4, and there are some updated new ones specific to TG4 features as well:
http://geekatplay.com/terragen-tutorials.php

- Oshyan

Thanks, Oshyan! Yeah, I am pumped :)

I went through Geekatplay's tutorials yesterday and also some of the ones Dune linked. Quite a lot to learn still and well informative.

Is there a way to carve out or shape a certain area? (ex:create canyons and rivers, or shape mountains in a certain formation)


bobbystahr

Quote from: Artofgp on July 05, 2017, 06:38:10 PM

Is there a way to carve out or shape a certain area? (ex:create canyons and rivers, or shape mountains in a certain formation)



Search create canyon
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Dune

There are several ways to do that; either make your own (Photoshop) 16-bit greyscale heightmaps, imported as image map shader, and used for displacement or mapping. Or kneed a mountain in another software and make a vector displacement map, import and vector displace it. Or use the painted shader (or warped simple shapes) to shape certain parts in TG itself (warped simple shapes are good for rivers, e.g.). And after adding a compute terrain, you can laterally displace the terrain by internal power fractal masks, or painted masks, or imported greyscale maps.
But TG doesn't work like ZBrush.
Or have a little patience (can't say more).

bobbystahr

Quote from: Dune on July 06, 2017, 02:13:04 AM
There are several ways to do that; either make your own (Photoshop) 16-bit greyscale heightmaps, imported as image map shader, and used for displacement or mapping. Or kneed a mountain in another software and make a vector displacement map, import and vector displace it. Or use the painted shader (or warped simple shapes) to shape certain parts in TG itself (warped simple shapes are good for rivers, e.g.). And after adding a compute terrain, you can laterally displace the terrain by internal power fractal masks, or painted masks, or imported greyscale maps.
But TG doesn't work like ZBrush.
Or have a little patience (can't say more).


That 'bout sums it up in a nutshell, heh heh
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

otakar

For vegetation, the most accessible is the file sharing section here. My longstanding gripe is that the forum is not really suitable to present this very well, it's not easy to search and sometimes you can't tell the quality of the models until you've played with them, but there is a lot of stuff there now, the bulk of it for free for personal use. Oh and don't forget NWDA (www.nwdastore.com), some well priced models and entire project files and there are even free assets on offer.

And welcome, this is a friendly place you'll find... ;)