Terragen Cloud VDB export to Blender 3.3.1

[Ralf Maeder]

I recently upgraded my Terragen Creative on Windows 10 in order to be able to generate VDB clouds for Blender. 

I did a few tests with the setup and export of EasyClouds in Terragen Creative 4.6.19 Frontier. Importing any of the VDB files into Blender (3.3.1) as OPENVDB at first did not result in anything useful, the imported objects were apparently empty of any voxel information. Also each Terragen generated VDB is rotated, standing on a side instead of being oriented like in Terragen.

When I realized that the voxel information was not correctly included or interpreted by Blender, I opted to adjust the "Cloud base altitude" to zero, essentially laying the cloud on the ground in Terragen. And to my surprise, this enabled Blender to show the voxel information, though the VDB is still rotated. 

Here the render I made with Blender 3.3.1 of my first successful Terragen VDB export. Do you guys have some tips and tricks about the Terragen VDB export that you would be willing to share?

With regards, Ralf Maeder.

[pokoy]

Yeah, some export options for VDBs would be good to have, first to be able to switch axis order based on target app (that's probably why your imported file is rotated) and second to have meaningful coordinates on the exported file. I hope this is possible to add in the near future.

[Kevin Kipper]

Hi Ralf,

Thanks for posting your discoveries using the VDB exporter with Terragen 4.6.19 Frontier.

The frontier builds of Terragen are a "pre-release" to an upcoming official release build, and are meant to provide an opportunity for users with a current maintenance subscription to get acquainted with new features; even test them and provide feedback to us.  We also use this time period to prepare documentation and tutorials on the new features.  To coincide with the official release of Terragen 4 which includes the VDB feature we've created a video covering the very topics you've brought up, including the workflow from Terragen to Blender, and look forward to releasing the video and build as soon as possible.