Hi Terrageneers!
I hope 2018 is being good to you all so far. I've been semi off-grid for a few weeks (concluding with a brief but wonderful trip to wintry Iceland!) but there is a lot going on at Planetside behind the scenes. So let's talk about what we have planned for 2018!
First off, Planetside is growing. This year we are adding new programmers to the team. Terragen 4 sales have been good so far and I'm reinvesting as much as I can into accelerating development. I'll have more to say about this soon.
Subscription plans will be available as an option, beginning some time in the first half of 2018. Anyone who prefers to buy perpetual licenses (like before) will be able to - we are not taking that option away from anybody. Adding subscriptions is a way to give people a choice. We want our users to have more options to license Terragen in whichever way works best for them. We think that will attract additional customers who might otherwise walk away from the price of a perpetual license, so we predict this will increase the size of our user community and that is going to be better for everybody.
What features and enhancements to Terragen do we have planned for release this year?
* Faster rendering (expected in 4.2)
* Post effect adjustments in Render View without requiring re-render
* LUTs and other post effects
* Various improvements to the 3D Preview, especially the RTP
* Grouping/hierarchy for objects, lights and cameras
* Rotation and scale modulator inputs for populations
* VDB import/export for clouds
* Brute force GI / path tracing
Finally, in the second half of 2018 I want to show you a prototype of a new tool for creating landscapes. I can't say any more yet; you will just have to wait and see!
Matt
