Realistic Renders

[Tangled-Universe]

The TG2 Gurus have a combination of know-how and probably more advanced computers. There's a lot of crazy functions and techniques that will take me years to figure out on my slow-ass computer. It's mostly trial and error, and when every trial takes at least 20 mins, the learning curve goes at a snail's pace.

Just keep trying new things. Don't be afraid to break it. Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions. Terragen is 10% inspiration and 90% patience.

It certainly helps to have a faster machine, especially when testing complicated stuff which tends to be rendered slowly.
I started with an Athlon 1.4 GHz and switched to a Q6600 and it makes a real difference.

For anyone interested: to make nice and realistic pictures you don't really need (crazy) functions.
Crazy techniques is a different story but it is certainly possible nice images can be made without those nasty tricky blue nodes
Like kev says don't be afraid to ask dumb questions and certainly don't give up easily. TG is about 100% inspiration/dedication and 100% patience

Martin

[nvseal]

Agree with TU, most pictures don't need functions unless you want a very specific result you can't get any other way. If you want to make realistic pictures, a good way to learn is to get real pictures and start trying to replicate similar results in your renders. It will help you to understand the nodes and help you better notice differences between CG and real world images, thus allowing you tweak your images for the most realistic results. Just start small like trying to copy the look of some dirt, rocks, or clouds to start getting a feel for things.

[arisdemos]

The way to get the realism of the more experienced tg2 artists is to carefully collect and study as many tgd's and clip files of these people as you can gather from this throughout forum and other sites, and then after studying them carefully begin to mix and match the shaders,clips and node structures during experimental projects to achieve better rocks, soil, water and over all landscape features.  When you have gotten the hang of handeling DEMs and generated lanscape structures with realism then begin to make objects and populations with texture maps that are closer to reality, and this will take a great deal of searching this site for just how to handle the object surfaces, but the small tips and tutorials are here because I have  collected them myself into my own personal library. Gaaining/organizing this randomly placed learning information is very difficult but you must build a data base of this forums/programs user input that you can use to move foreward toward more realistic terragen graphics, and it will take a great deal of time and sweat. Terragen realism in rendered form is (I would guess)10 percent artistic inspiration and 90 percent cerebral perspiration.

[Tangled-Universe]

The way I learned TG2 was mostly by studying things separately.
For example, I once made an image foccused to the foreground and then only focussed on making realistic base soil with many variations in (density of) stones and its colors etc.
Or just start TG2 and set the camera to only view the atmosphere and then only try to make one specific type of clouds.

I did all these things for many many hours and together with the resources of this forums things slowly started to fall in the right place.
At that moment I really tried to make serious scene where I tried to combine all those previously learned things into.
An often made mistake is that people at first try to create a scene and really fill it with lots and lots of elements which makes it very complex. Probably too complex for themselves as a beginner. At least, I made that mistake too sometimes.