Quote from: zionner on August 03, 2008, 02:09:41 PM
As much as I respect planetside's decisions with what they do with Terragen 2, and that they had always made it clear that this node was very likely to be cut..
I feel that the removal of this node and the announcement of no further development is disappointing, as I felt the node was very useful, and would have been even more so, if it had been fixed.
Zionner
Consider that Terragen 2, while an impressive scenery generator, has also been touted as a planetary system visualizer, The removal of the planet surface shader and discontinued development of such a shader clearly says Planetside no longer intends Terragen 2 to be used for planetary visualization. Making the creation of convincing planetary bodies more difficult to accomplish, if not impossible, means that designers will not use Terragen 2 for this purpose. If Planetside wants this tool to be used for planetary and solar system visualization, then they need to make it easier in this process, not harder. The removal of this shader is, thus, more than disappointing... this move has now taken Terragen 2 a step backwards from one of its original design goals.
BTW, I am fine with removal of buggy or unstable components when they are replaced with alternatives. When such features are removed without a suitable replacement, that's when it becomes an issue.
Quote from: cyphyr
Its not too hard to set up planetary scale Power Fractals, its a matter of setting the scales to something suitably huge.
Right, but getting planetary sized Power Fractals is only halfway there. If you're trying to visualize a planet similar to Earth (water and landmasses), you need to be able to create convincing landmass and water together. I'm still at a loss on how to do this in an easy fashion. Granted, I'm not a TG2 guru, so there may be a way. If anyone has any suggestions of how to do this without the planet shader, I'm open.
In the meantime, I may try to suck in a project created in TG2 Free with that shader. Of course, that will only work until Planetside removes the functionality altogether.
Thanks.
--
Brian