We have a new Terragen 4 Frontier Build, kicking off the Terragen 4.8 release cycle!
If you have an active license of Terragen 4 Professional or Creative, use the Check for Updates feature in the application to get links to the latest 4.8 builds.Here's the change log:
Build 4.8.12 (Frontier Build)GeneralWe've fixed some issues related to the Progress dialog and application stability with threaded operations.
Windows only: Some compilation settings have been changed which improve the speed of some shaders and heightfield operators.
CloudsWe've improved the speed of interacting with scenes with cloud layers, especially when there are many layers. There was a bug that would unnecessarily invalidate some caches and cause voxel buffers to be recalculated when another cloud layer or atmosphere was changed.
HeightfieldsHeightfields can be exported to 16-bit TIFF and 16-bit "RAW" files that are compatible with Unity and Unreal Engine. The Free Non-Commercial edition can export resolutions up to 1025 x 1025 vertices (pixels). The Creative and Professional editions can export up to 32768 x 32768.
In total, Terragen 4.8 can export heightfields to:
- TER (preserving all scaling information)
- EXR (32-bit float preserving absolute height in metres)
- TIFF (16-bit unsigned short)
- RAW (16-bit unsigned short)
Note that Terragen can also export meshes via the Micro Exporter and there are workflows for exporting vector displacement maps.
Heighfield Erode V3 is improved:
- Multi-threading option. This calculates erosion much faster, but may give slightly different results each time it is run. We recommend saving erosion results to TER files and loading those for consistent renders. The single-threaded option is still available for backward compatibility.
- Option to fix a bug: "Fix gradient bug". This is optional to allow backward compatibility.
- Border flow setting with the options "Stop", "Continue off map" and "Go around to opposite side". The latter option is fully backward compatible.
- The parameter GUI has been updated to separate the parameters into "Weight" and "Character" groups.
We've fixed a bug that showed up in the rare situation where a Heightfield Shader's interpolation mode was set to "Linear" and the heightfield operator was delegating the interpolation to its input node. (This delegation happens when a heightfield node has no data, e.g. when an erosion node hasn't done any calculations yet.) The bug was using smooth interpolation instead of the expected linear interpolation.
The way that some heightfield node settings affect previews has changed. Let us know if you find any issues.
Objects, Shaders and Texture SpacesObjects regenerate on every frame if they have a mesh displacer connected to them so animated deformations are easier to use.
Transform Input Shader and Transform Merge Shader have a new option "Use sticky world space". This allows shaders to work in world space on objects that have MDDs or mesh displacers, without the textures sliding when the objects are deformed.
Distance Shader has "Coord space" options which include "World space", "Sticky world space", "Undisplaced space" and "Terrain or Texture space (warpable and transformable)".
Rendering-renderlayer command line option. See command line docs for details.
Pixel dithering is applied when saving 16-bit TIFFs just like it is for 8 bit formats, but with an appropriately smaller amount of dither. This applies to saving renders and exporting heightfields.
RTP shadows respect the shadow-cast settings of light sources and render nodes.
The colour of the rectangle and handles drawn in the 3D Preview to represent the crop region (ROI) can be changed in Preferences.
The renderer has some minor speed optimisations.
If you have an active license of Terragen 4 Professional or Creative, use the Check for Updates feature in the application to get links to the latest 4.8 builds.
