Right, i've got the gear, now what?

[Tangled-Universe]

I think there is just a clash of personalities happening here. I don't believe that PabloMack has deliberately tried to bellittle you, Martin. The way I see it, he's just had a *!BINGO!* moment, a sudden clarity on possibly quite a confusing issue on the basic coordinate system of TG.

I rarely ever read/perform the tutorials from other users, not because I think they are uninformative/unhelpful, more that I'd rather get stuck in and do something myself. Once you have the basic workflow/layout/etc. aligned in your own mind, Terragen becomes the most logical piece of software(for me at least) I'm likely to come across.

Take a deep breath, everyone, count to 10 and then begin again!

Perhaps you're right. If so, my apologies. The context could easily have been either sarcastic or sincere. For both there's something.
I go to bed now and go over it again, fresh in the morning!

Cheers,
Martin

[Seth]

Listen.
What Martin tries to explain to you is that instead of asking for TG2 to change for this or this, to add this feature and change that one into this, blablabla, you should really try to achieve some scene, to do any kind of render and then post it and ask for further help from more advanced users.
You know, people in here are very very helpful and might give you a lot of their time to help. I personnally understand T-U (I'll call him Martin ^^) because i read the previous thread he wrote for you, giving you technical tips and informations. and as far as i know, he doesn't even know if the informations were useful or if you even read and understood them.
You are , like everybody, welcome in here of course. but you must understand that asking and criticize without bringing anything positive can be misjudge.
Maybe this is like dandelO said just personnality clash (it happens, believe me) but i am not sure about that and i truely don't want to speak for Martin.
I, myself didn't like the overall attitude you had but i kept my mouth shut because i can be a pain in the ass because of my lack of patience. I did one or two "do as i do" tutorials by myself, it took me a lot of time considering i am french and that i don't speak a very good english. so when i read your comment, believe me, i shout outloud behind my screen ^^
anyway, don't write stuff like "hurray for Martin" right after some argument in this thread or another because it could be misanderstood like it could be taken ironically, you know what i mean ?

So of course you should try to understand TG2, but that doesn't mean you should ask for it to be different just because you don't understand it after just some hours spent on it
of course you should post in the forums, but if i can give you an advice (again) try to do some renders, post them, make some iteration, that is the only way to learn : practice practice practice...


hope i didn't sound too harsh and all...

I am not used to be the "calm down guys" man so i hope you'll understand my points...

[PabloMack]

Yes, you did, and you know very well where and how.

Martin, I think we must have some kind of cultural clash going on here (I don't think it is a personality conflict) because I have read my previous words and I really don't know what it was that offended you.  You could have said all those words to me and the "hurray" would have made me feel good.  (The "see I told you so" might have "stuck in my craw" as Americans say but it would have put the point across without being offensive.) I think you are construing something that I was not implying.  I see you are from the Netherlands.  I think there is some idomatic meaning in something I said that wouldn't have come across if an American was talking to an American.  Will you accept my apologies?  

I have Dutch on my mother's side of the family and I have great admiration for your national heritage.  I am not too distantly related to George S. Patton (which might actually anger some people since his foul language turned many against him even though he was a WWII hero).  I also have great admiration for the South African Voortrekker/Afrikaaners and I love their accent.  My wife and I visited South Africa one and a half years ago and we stayed with someone who runs a bee farm there.  Their's was a small community of ethnic Scotish people surrounded by a much larger community of ethnic Dutch.  They confided in me that they could not relate very well to the Afrikaaners and that Dutch humor (or the lack thereof in their words) was something they could not bridge.  They said they really enjoyed our company if for only the fact that our form of humor was something they could appreciate.  Well if 100-year neighbors cannot relate, then it is no surprize to me that you and I can say certains English things and there is a failure to communicate our ideas as you are sitting there (most likely) in the Netherlands while I am sitting here in Texas.  Those South Africans lived side by side but they couldn't relate to eachother.  The Scotish family we stayed with were fluent in Afrikaans and the Voortrekkers were fluent in English.  The differences went beyond language.  By the way, most of my family (both sides) are ethnic Scotish.  My wife is ethnically German and English.  

Sometimes we Texans have the same problem with "Northerners" up in New York and Boston.  The English call us "Yankees" which is what we Southerners call those up in the North-east.  It takes time to get to know what someone is really trying to say.  Words can easily be mis-contrued when you are from different cultures.  That's why my business partner doesn't like to write emails to people and he prefers to talk with them on the phone.  You can say a lot to someone in the tone of your voice that is not in the words you write and vice versa.  I think what we are experiencing is summed up in an expression you may have heard before (talking about the Americans vs. British).  "We are divided by a common language".  

[PabloMack]

but you must understand that asking and criticize without bringing anything positive can be misjudge.

I thought my "hurray" was positive (it would have been among Texans) but it was mis-judged so
even positive things can be taken as negative.  I can see how even we might say it to mean
"Thanks for stating the obvious buster" but I never saw it coming.  I think that expression must be
used much more often with bitter sarcasm on the eastern side of the Atlantic.  We don't take offense
for something like that even if it was meant how I translated it above.  I truely was trying to thank
Martin for the information that finally made me understand what was going on.  His reaction was like
a slap in the face.  I have to admit that I was offended for having my "thank you" thrown back at
me like that.  But the first thing I did was to go into his profile and see where he was from.  Then I
realized it was a culture clash.  We were both saying one thing but hearing another. 

One thing is for certain.  Martin learned English from the British and not from Americans.  The British
(especially the English) use sarcasm far more than we do.  Last year my wife and I went on a field trip to
Germany and the field trip leader was a German who learned English in Texas.  That was a real treat! 
His name is Martin Sander and he is a very famous paleontologist from the University of Bonn.  I
absolutely didn't have to put my guard up with him because he learned all of the Texas lingo and
expressions at the University of Texas. 

Maybe this is like dandelO said just personnality clash

No.  It's a "culture clash".  It's like an American touching a
middle-easterner with the left hand.  The Arab doesn't realize that we
use toilet paper so we are just as likely to use either hand to wipe our
behinds and we wash both hands after going to the bathroom so, to us,
both hands are the same.  Americans don't realize that Arabs have no
toilet paper (its harder to get rid of it in the desert) so they use the
left hand for cleaning their behinds and reserve their right hands for
things like dealing with people.  They have limited water in the desert
to wash their hands anyhow. 

So of course you should try to understand TG2...

I have and will continue to do so.  But maybe I need to thank people more. 
I'll just have to be more careful how I go about it.  Personally, I don't feel
comfortable filling the forum up with my pictures.  Besides avoiding taking up
more disk space, I would much rather get straight to the point in text.  I am
much more engineer/programmer than artist. 

I am not used to be the "calm down guys" man so i hope you'll understand my points...

You did a great job.  Thanks.

[kevnar]

A great place to start learning is the tutorial section. My first tutorial was the Wilderness tutorial. http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Terragen_2_Tutorials

[Oshyan]

Pablo, I certainly understand your frustrations and the importance of "Eureka" moments like you had earlier in this thread. As we've said, we're working on more extensive documentation, but it's not something that's in a time frame that will probably help you a lot in your early learning experience here unfortunately.

That being said, I do see Martin and Seth's point, and while I completely understand the methodical approach you are trying to take to TG2, I wonder even if detailed documentation were available if it would actually accelerate the process of *creating a good scene* very much. I think that's the point Martin and Seth are trying to make, that at least for many people, the creation of a nice scene (whether with a specific design in mind or otherwise) is the goal. It's a bit unclear what your goals may be, whether you are aiming for professional or personal use, but I think the common assumption is that the eventual goal is to make landscape scenes. Many people seem to learn a lot, and quite quickly, by just starting to do things, and they start posting their scenes and we see their progress, we give them feedback to improve, and watch as they do so, often remarkably quickly. You haven't been here long, so perhaps you just haven't had a chance to make anything worth posting or perhaps, like me, you have high standards (it took me a year or two to post my first image with TG Classic when I first started using that years ago).

In any case I don't mean to post an irrelevant ramble here, just trying to provide some perspective. What I'd really like to say that may be of some value specifically to you is that in actually just diving in and trying to create whatever scene you have in mind, you'll probably learn a lot while doing it (e.g. the coordinate origin thing should certainly be better documented, but seems fairly obvious given what *is* documented). Perhaps more importantly you'll run across a lot of these questions and issues in practical situations and be able to ask here, with more specific rather than theoretical scenarios, making the answers easier to come by. The coordinate origin issue is interesting actually, because it sounds like you've been really wondering about that, but it's fairly well known and is the kind of thing that seems like it would quickly come up and either be answered in a forum discussion, or become obvious from use of the software. Hopefully it goes without saying that we realize that's far from a substitute for documentation and is a very non-ideal situation, and as you know that's something we're working to rectify.

So while it may be counterintuitive to you just start creating before you know the foundation, given the lack of a complete documentation set that gives you the info you need, I think it's the most sensible way forward. I understand that it's not the way you're used to working and you may not be comfortable with it, but I daresay given the present reality it might accelerate your learning curve and reduce your frustration... maybe (I hope).

- Oshyan

[Rhalph]

ôO

I have to say I don't understand what happened (but maybe it's because I'm french and I mostly learned english on the Internet).

There's just one thing that caught my attention: the "'do as I do' tutorials".
I have to agree with PabloMack here: I don't really like these tutorials (before anyone feels offended, let me explain).
I need (and it's only a matter of taste) to understand what I'm doing in order to understand the software itself. When I see a tutorial that tells me to "change this value to 0.6125 and place the camera to 198.36 altitude and ...", the only thing I want to do is saying "ok, but WHY? What is this setting for? What difference between this value and the previous one? Why do you want me to change its value for this value? How did you decide to use this value?"

I know most people like these tutorials, so I really think it's only a matter of taste (and that's why you shouldn't be offended by my post )

(I've written several tutorials for Terragen and WM before, so I know how time-consuming it is ^^')

[Seth]

I understand Rhalph but some people, like me for example, find it easier to understand by doing things and by doing variation on a theme. so when you "follow" steps during a tutorial, you can vary values and watch the difference between what the author did and your version of it.
understanding very technical matters usually just bring messy renders without any organisation and "soul" to them. I mean what's the point in understanding what "1/4 first samples" (stupid example, but i try to speak about something nobody talk about not to be rude) does when you obviously don't even know how you can change fake stones look

anyway, Oshyan, as usual, explained far better than I'll ever be able to how I felt about this ^^
hope i've not been too rude too

[PabloMack]

Apologies to Dr. Death.  This was your thread, not mine.  I wish you well with your learning experiences.  

[Oshyan]

Last word: I agree a tutorial that just tells you a number with no additional information is not as useful as it could/should be. So I think it's best to strike a balance, giving a suggested value with pleasing results, while explaining the general idea of a setting and what effects it could have.

- Oshyan

[Dr Death]

Well huge thanks to all those who replied- this seems quite a small forum but it's fantastic to see how quickly people respond. To the guy who sent me the link to the youtube tutorials- thanks especially, those were very helpful, and no hard feelings to the two of you who hijacked this for a bit of a bitchy argument- sometimes people have to vent.

Right- a specific question now. If i want to have a bar of mountains (using a heightfield) which girdles the whole planet along one of the lines of latitude, how would i achieve that. Rather worryingly, considering this system is supposed to be based on a globe, when i increase the size of my heightfield, it appears as just a bar perched on the apex of the planet rather than following it's curvature. Any solutions?

Dr Death

[cyphyr]

Hi Dr Death
You could use a height field, quite a lot of them to create a "bar" of mountains girdling your planet but may I ask first why you need this. A lot of people, my self included, often fall into the trap of trying to build an entire planet or scene and then look for the right place to place the camera. It gets worse! In your example you "could" create 50 or so height fields at very high resolution that do indeed encircle the planet. But what are you trying to achieve? For a start you cant see the height fields on the far side of the planet so they serve no purpose, dump them. Secondly, take a look at the satellite images taken of the Earth. At a height where you can see individual mountains, you can barely see the curvature of the earth. Even ten mile high mountains, higher than anything on this planet, would only just show up on a planetary scale.

So to a solution to your question. I would firstly think about the entirety of your scene, is it going to be animated, is it going to have populations, how close/far will the camera be from the point of interest in your scene. Get a specific idea in your mind about what you would like to achieve. If your going to have any populations these work best at the north pole (0,0,0). Therefore if your populations were to be on the girdling mountains I would recommend that the mountain chain runs from the north pole to the south pole and you place a "snow/ice cap" shader on opposite sides of the equator. This way you can control the populations, you mountain range encircles the planet, everything "looks" just right and only you know that you have "cheated" to create your desired result.

So back to your question again!! I would not use a heightfield. I would use a procedural mountain terrain (try three PF terrains stacked on top of each other with their scales a factor of 10 apart) and two distance shaders defining the maximum and minimum distances from the north pole.

Hope this helps

Richard

[Oshyan]

Heightfields wouldn't really be appropriate for encircling the entire planet since, as you've noticed, they still have some limitations when used far from the coordinate origin (on the other side of the planet in other words). You could however use a high resolution image map with displacement. You could either paint your terrain directly in a 3rd party application, creating a spherically projected texture for application in TG2, or you could simply create a mask to use for controlling placement of procedural terrain in TG2. Actually, if you use a Surface Layer and use Y as altitude, you could create settings that would limit something *procedurally* to a thin band anywhere along the planet, so you could use this to control procedural terrain if that will meet your needs. If you need explicit feature placement heightfields and/or a global image map are the way to go.

- Oshyan

[PabloMack]

Actually, if you use a Surface Layer and use Y as altitude...

Certainly you don't really mean "Y" do you?  Don't you mean altitude relative to the "normal" of the planet's surface?  On the equator of the default planet, the Y axis becomes tangent to the planet's surface (and horizontal relative to anyone standing on that surface).  

[jaf]

I suspect a lot of the opinions presented in this thread deal with the "artistic" or not concept.  I mean how does a true artist explain how he or she paints a masterpiece?  Or a musician, or any other artistic endeavor?  Some of us (me) fall into the "that is a computer generated image" sector and others are true artists.

[edit] That last sentence is confusing.  I should have written "Some of us (me) create TG images that look computer generated, while the artists can get that natural look."

I think that's the beauty of TG2 -- that simply plugging in (great) numbers doesn't result in a masterpiece image -- that it's the true artist that can combine those numbers with camera angles, lighting, and everything else.

So, my point is that the artists among us should recognize there are many (like me) who work to the "I need to know why this works that way" to accomplish their TG2 endeavors and other who can put together a great image without having to have to know the exact effects of every input.  

And doesn't mean they don't know a lot about TG2 -- just they've learned through hard work, study, and practice how to mix the various inputs to make that great scene (yes, I'm fumbling here getting the correct words down.)  

I guess it's the artist/non-artist thing.