Terragen 2 Exporting Wishlist

[tolas]

Hey guys. I'm browsing through the T2 gallery from time to time and I get constantly amazed by quality of procedural terrains and materials this app is able to create.

I work with 3d apps on daily basis doing mainly archviz. I was looking for a quick and nice solution  to create 3d landscapes, so I started to think about ways to connect a power of T2 procedurals and flexibility of archviz oriented software.

I did a little research on your forums about an ability to move data from T2 to apps like 3dsmax, LW etc and I found that currently Terragen is able to export LW file with a portion of landscape (height map information only, or micropoly data with limitations like back face culling, am I right?).

I also found that in most of similar threads devs were asking for a little feedback about what export abilities are needed for people like me.

Let me write down a short wishlist for you than These features would make me buy and explore T2 for sure:

1.Collada support (exact camera position and rotation, geometry, uv)

2.Terrain: I imagine setting up camera, geometry complexity (fine detail near camera, simple proxy geometry further away and outside of camera frame  guess its all possible with a power of procedurals). This could be controlled with two sliders: one for controlling verticies density lets say per screen pixel size for a given render resolution, and one for a maximum triangle amount just to make sure we are not pushing too much data.

3.UV: some smart idea how to optimize UV space so the closer geometry gets more detail on textures.

4.Water (and any other objects supported by t2 that I'm not aware of) should be exported as a separate object or file. With a separate UV and a set of textures.

5.Baking displacement maps or/and vector displacement maps. This should work like baking in Zbrush or Mudbox. Basically pushing as much data through actual geometry and adding as much (depends on texture resolution, 8k by 8k would be perfect) through micro displacement in Vray, Mental or any similar.

6.Baking normal maps. Basically would work same as displacement export.

7.Baking diffuse, specular, roughness (glossiness) maps suited for the terrain UV map

OK, this should be enough, at least for me

I'm aware that converting such a heavy data and using it in rendering process in such a "baked" form would require lots of RAM and patience on my side but I'm very keen to hear what are your thoughts about future of T2 export capabilities anyway.

Cheers

[Oshyan]

We definitely have plans for improved import/export support. At the moment we're looking at FBX, so I'd be curious to know how you feel about that compared to Collada.

As far as the rest of your specific suggestions, they're all good ideas, but I'm not sure exactly how much we'll be able to export, at least at first. Terrain is an obvious one, texturing seems likely, not sure about displacement maps, etc. but again they're all good ideas.

The big question for me is always what the intended use is for the data. TG2's biggest strength is in rendering of complex displacement, so doing primary rendering in another application and only using TG2 as a generator for procedural geometry doesn't really seem to be taking best advantage of the software. If the intention is to match TG2 output to objects, shadow casting, reflections, etc. in another app, that makes more sense. But if you never hit the "render" button in TG2, I'm honestly not sure it's the right tool for the job. Just my 2 cents though.

The bottom line is that import/export improvements are coming. This is clearly one of the biggest areas that needs work in TG2, and we're committed to addressing it.

- Oshyan

[jo]

Hi Oshyan,

FBX gets us Collada as well, so that's not an issue.

Regards,

Jo

[Oshyan]

Ohhh right.

- Oshyan

[tolas]

FBX/Collada:

I've been using both in various applications. As you know FBX is developed by Autodesk, Collada is opensource.

What I was able to observe is FBX works good as far as Autodesk packages are concerned. I moved data from Maya to Max and viceversa without bigger issues. Unfortunately I had less luck with third party implementations. For modeling and scene management I mainly use Luxology Modo. Their FBX importer isn't working good at all. Modo devs say it's because of a very closed nature of FBX SDK, and as far as I know it's not only luxology problem. Other 3d packages are investing in Collada too as it seems more open platform.

Generally speaking I have rather negative thoughts about FBX, and I had similar thoughts when I started to use Collada. I couldn't move data from modo to max, but it quickly turned out that it was max importer causing these issues. Downloading openCollada for max solved all problems... Seems like Autodesk isn't interested in adding proper collada support to their flag products...

Anyway, I use Collada every time I have to move data from 3d app to 3d app and it simply works.

Intend of TG2 export:

Obviously we're talking here about "rendering out" as much of TG2 procedural information as it's possible into readable "raw" data that might be used for 3d visualization purpose. Such data could be modified for example by adding trees with a native Modo replicators (sort of lightweight instancing/ participles system), or retopo a part of terrain to add roads, buildings etc. This would enable people like me to use this data with a wide variety of different renders. This could be firstly suited for still image (camera dependent terrain/uv optimization) and animation later on.

I absolutely understand the limitation of baking procedurals. I know I wouldn't be able to get such a rich detail as with TG2 renderer, but work flexibility is what I'm looking here really.

I think Terragen has the potential to suit this workflow well. It can produce amazing terrains already. Other render systems can use high density meshes and high rez displacement maps stacked together so I think it should be possible to get very nice terrains with this workflow and gain extra flexibility of manipulating raw data.

[Oshyan]

Fair enough. The info about FBX vs. Collada and Autodesk's implementation is definitely interesting, and we'll have to look into that further. As far as your use of TG2, I only suggest that you test TG2 to find out its strengths and then make best use of them. Populations are a powerful built-in instancing system for example, and so far I've found them to be at least as robust for large-scale object replication as compared to other systems. I've successfully rendered over 16 million instances in a single scene (from a high enough altitude to see nearly all of them simultaneously). So that's just an example of what you might be used to having to do in another app that TG2 may be able to handle as well, or better. Import/export improvements are obviously import regardless, but it makes sense to use every app for its best capabilities, and for TG2 that is in the rendering of highly detailed procedurals.

- Oshyan

[MasonMartinFilms]

is there any way to export terragen 2 with animation in just a .mov, .avi, or mpeg-4?

[Kadri]

I don't have the animation module but even if there is a way to export you will be better to use something especially made for this , MasonMartinFilms .
Use a free and basic software like virtualdub ( It is basic in mb size not in quality  ) or big video editors like Premiere or better ones .
Then you have room for all important video preferences.

Cheers.

Kadri.

[Oshyan]

is there any way to export terragen 2 with animation in just a .mov, .avi, or mpeg-4?

Terragen 2 outputs standard bitmap image file sequences in multiple formats (TIFF, BMP, EXR). You would then need to use a 3rd party application like VirtualDub or a more full video editing suite to assemble the frames into a movie and compress to the format of your choice.

- Oshyan

[Henry Blewer]

Blender has a very good compositing suit and animation building capabilities. There are also very many tutorials on how to use it for animation sequencing.

[Njen]

I'll second about using Blender. I recently used it to edit together an entire 13 minute short animation. The Sequencer can import many different types of image sequences, and output many different types of movie files.

[Henry Blewer]

I think it is the best part of Blender. 2.5 will have 5.1 surround sound support!

[Njen]

Oh snap! That's completely awesome news, I had no idea...!

[3KyNoX]

In my case, I really need export features to use Terragen 2 Full environments inside 3D Game Engines like Unity3D.

I'm not sure about fbx file format details and what it is able to package inside, but ability to work in my Unity with :

- terrains
- shaders
- meshes
- water
- atmospheres
- objects
- lightning
- camera
- and renderers

... elements from Terragen 2 is *THE* feature !

I am not sure if all of that is possible, if it is not exactly possible, any informations about this process interesting me.

I am staying around to see any changes regarding that

[Cyber-Angel]

If its displacement that is holding things for terrain export to third party applications why not have terragen at render time render out displacement maps that can be transferred to the target application along with the terrain, of course you'd require other kinds of maps as well. Instead of messing around with UV's could we please have .Ptex support as I think that is the way the industry is heading, yes there is limited industry implementation now but only due to .Ptex been a new format.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel