Help building situational-awareness and placing objects in Terragen

Started by daudvyd, September 25, 2018, 09:45:07 AM

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daudvyd

Hi everyone. I'm familiar with modeling programs like Blender that permit multiple simultaneous views of the same scene. Looking at a scene from the front, side, and top (for example) builds awareness of the whole scene and makes it easy to place objects "on the ground" or "next to the tower". For me, getting this same situational-awareness in Terragen is very difficult. In the default scene, there is a "Simple shade shader 01" set to a circle, which acts as a mask for "Fractal terrain 01". I'm guessing this is an "on/off" or "slow decay" for the hill I see before me in the perspective view. I'd expect to be able to see this shape when looking at the scene from above. I'd expect to either see the circle as a dotted line that I could move and adjust directly with the mouse (ideally) or just see the mountain range taper off within a circular area and adjust sliders to see the result (good enough). However, when I switch to Terragen's top view camera, I see undifferentiated gray--even after zooming in and out. I can't see the mountain: where it starts or where it ends. The left, right, and front camera's are positioned right up against the hills and I can't seem to move them back in order to get a better vantage point.

When adding an object like the built-in grass clumps or lake, I have a lot of trouble figuring out--is this on the ground? How big will it be? Is there a little nook or cranny in the terrain that would be an ideal location?

Any advice would be appreciated.

-da'ud

Oshyan

Hi da'ud,

I wrote up a quick explanation of the Default Scene which should help:
https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=The_Default_Scene_Explained

Most Objects when first created start out at the 0,0,0 coordinate origin, though there are some exceptions. If you want to drop an object to the ground, select it and press D in the 3D preview. Note however that this will set the object's "anchor point" to sit in the surface of the terrain directly below it, in many cases this "anchor" is not actually at the bottom of the object though and so your object may be partially submerged in the terrain.

Each object may come in at a different size, which is defined and editable in the settings of the object node itself. 1 meter is a common base size though, at least for applicable objects such as the sphere, rock, etc. The Lake is a special object (which is why it is in the Water layout and not Objects) and has its own size, again this is visible and editable in its settings. The default for the Lake object is 100,000 meters (most measures of size and distance are in meters in Terragen).

Objects behave a bit differently in Populations. Working with populations (e.g. grass clump) is covered in the docs here:
https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Working_with_Populations

Look for info for "sit on terrain", for example, to understand how populated objects are positioned by default and how they follow the terrain.

- Oshyan

bobbystahr

Also re: adding objects or populations. If you Right Click at the location in the 3D preview that you want the object or the center of your pop and select Copy Coordinates and Paste that into the object or population's Translate field, that's where your object or pop will move to no matter how far your scene is from 0,0,0 it will move to that spot.
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N-drju

The thing is you just might be used too much to other programs and not the TG workflow.

SSS that you see in the default scene is not a mask for the terrain but a reverse-mask - note that the area it covers does not have terrain shape.

Operating the "Top view" in TG may be tricky indeed. Note that the camera is always fixed at a certain altitude in this view, and you cannot just glide down like you would with other cameras. You need to zoom in and out to modify your viewpoint.

If you can't see terrain shapes in this view, lower the sun altitude to, say, 15 degree. Shadows will appear then, and you will be better able to make out terrain shapes.

SSS does have a dotted line, showing the immediate area affected by that shader. Keep in mind however that should you warp an SSS, this dotted line will remain at its original location.

Frankly, I also consider "right", "left" (and even more so "bottom") views useless. Especially that they don't seem to be moveable... Anyway, why should I look at things from underground? ;)

Objects will always be placed on the ground, unless you "tell" them not to, or mess with "compute terrain" too much. Situational awareness may also be improved by applying "show as smooth shaded" option to the already placed objects which basically renders them as full shapes rather than objects.

Furthermore, you can add additional cameras to some key points of your scene, to get information on what's going on in these areas. I usually have three cameras at all times when working on my projects. You may also apply various focus and lens settings to these cameras should a need arise.
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