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#11

Terragen Discussion / Re: additional render and cons...

Last post by gao_jian11 - April 20, 2025, 09:05:07 PM

Additionally, I remember that the maximum number of cores supported by TG is 32 and the maximum number of threads is 64. Beyond these limits, it won't work. I wonder if this is still the case now.

#12

Terragen Discussion / Re: additional render and cons...

Last post by gao_jian11 - April 20, 2025, 09:03:06 PM

Dune，Updating the equipment is always exciting. I use threadrippers2990, which renders very fast, but the main frequency is a bit low. TG has very high requirements for the main frequency when creating scenes. The graphics card is changing too frequently. I don't recommend buying the latest one as it is expensive and will soon be replaced by a newer model. The GPU rendering by TG has to wait for a few years until better GPUs are available. At that time, there will be better GPUs on the market.

#13

Terragen Discussion / additional render and construc...

Last post by Dune - April 18, 2025, 08:37:38 AM

I'm considering a new machine that will be used to build 3D stuff, compile landscapes in Terragen, and render. No gaming. 
I now have a Ryzen 9 5900X, but there are better ones today. My GPU (GTX 1080 Ti) also needs to be a better one, as working in a pretty loaded TG preview screen is sometimes sluggish, and I get occasional complete computer crashes when doing something too fast. 
So I can choose between Threadrippers and Ryzen 9 CPU's, and different NVidia RTX GPU's, of course with plenty DDR4 (or 5?) RAM, a good MB, etc. Some things may be overkill (also moneywise), so I wonder what you guys would recommend, taking into account future GPU rendering as well.

#14

Terragen Discussion / Re: Terragen RPC

Last post by digitalguru - April 17, 2025, 01:33:20 PM

Do you do a mix with rendering some things in each program and combine them later? Terragen excels at what it is meant for (outdoor landscape type renders with clouds and such) and other renderers excel at what they were meant for (typically not realistic outdoor landscape type renders with clouds)

That's what I'm working on a.t.m. Check out: https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?msg=300437
Terrain is rendered in TG, everything else in Maya (car and foliage) and comped together in Nuke. This will be an animation, so I need to motion blur the car (no motion blur for objects as yet in TG).
I did try setting up all the foliage in TG, but it's better to have it Maya for this project, for shadowing, gi etc.
Once I've got a terrain, I setup a tiling camera in Maya and export that to TG, then use it to write out tiled terrain so I get managable (and higher rez) objs. For detail where the car is driving over the terrain, I'll replace those tiles with vector displacement tiles for the best detail.
I'm not rendering the imported terrain in Maya directly, but using it to generate shadow passes which is then comped over the terrain in Nuke (shadows from the car and plants)
The imported terrain matches the TG render pretty well and I can also use it to generated deep .exrs, so everything slots together in Nuke nicely.
p.s. all the terrain geometry and plants are converted to Arnold archives (.ass) - it's the only way to render efficiently in Maya. One of the things TG does really well is render huge plant populations, and of course, rendering complex terrains as micropoly displacements without breaking a sweat

#15

Terragen Discussion / Re: Terragen RPC

Last post by Belmont224 - April 17, 2025, 12:53:46 PM

How do you use your DCC of choice with Terragen? In other words, do you pull everything into Maya/Blender and render everything there? Do you pull everything into Terragen? Do you do a mix with rendering some things in each program and combine them later? Terragen excels at what it is meant for (outdoor landscape type renders with clouds and such) and other renderers excel at what they were meant for (typically not realistic outdoor landscape type renders with clouds), so I'm curious on how others use the two programs in conjunction with each other. 

#16

Terragen Discussion / Re: Terragen RPC

Last post by digitalguru - April 17, 2025, 11:55:52 AM

Now I need a good way to pulling terrains into blender.

I use a few ways to get terrain into my DCC - though it's Maya not Blender.

Since you've got way to get cameras into TG from Blender, you could try writing a tiling camera to split an area over a number of tiles and use that to write out multiple sections of terrain (as obj) for maximum detail. I see Blender also does vector displacments so you could setup TG to render vector displacment maps(also tiled).

#17

Terragen Discussion / Re: Terragen RPC

Last post by Kevin Kipper - April 17, 2025, 11:43:49 AM

Your script sounds really cool and it's good to hear that the parameter values are matching in Terragen.

Currently, I'm saving OBJ files from Terragen's microexporter, or exporting a heighfield map and importing those into Blender.  I've not found a satisfactory method of populating items, like trees, on the OBJ terrain.  I'm not totally familiar with Blender's instancing, but it seems to bog down my computer when there's lots of instanced objects, even if part of a collection.

#18

Terragen Discussion / Re: Terragen RPC

Last post by Belmont224 - April 17, 2025, 11:27:54 AM

I don't have a workflow, just playing around at this point. I'm not really competent in either program. I have completed the first part of my script though. I'm not sure if it's useful but it's been a good learning experience. 

So far it transfers the following back and forth:

• Camera position
• Camera rotation
• Camera focal length
• Camera focus distance
• Camera aperture diameter
• Sun position
• Sun direction
• Sun color
• Image size

The scripts are run manually, so not really an add-on yet, and there definitely some bad code that needs to be cleaned up. With all this though, the scene in blender perfectly matches the scene in terragen, even down to the depth of field. The render in blender will be a little different because, unless you import the sky map from Terragen, the blender scene is only being lit by the sun, but it is a start.

Now I need a good way to pulling terrains into blender.

#19

Terragen Discussion / Re: Feature request: camera dr...

Last post by Dune - April 17, 2025, 10:23:47 AM

  You know that exactly your 'flaw' passed my mind but didn't quite settle. Not enough coffee too, perhaps.

If you make the internal grass smaller (XZ of the object to 50%), the 10m diameter is reduced to 5m. Then it will most likely be quite reasonable on steeper/bumpier terrain too, if you set rotate with terrain and anchor them on the appropriate (last) node. For closer areas and really bumpy terrain, I sometimes reduce even more, to a diameter of 1m or so, with less and longer blades, and sink it a bit. So even on steeper areas the 'feet' will 'root'.

#20

Terragen Discussion / Re: Feature request: camera dr...

Last post by sboerner - April 17, 2025, 09:40:18 AM

Yes, it's a bird's-eye view, so lots of grass! I usually use lower camera angles so the populations are much smaller.

Thanks for the suggestions for using different grass objects depending on the distance. Sort of like a manual LOD, but not too hard to set up.

After my last post I realized there is an obvious flaw in my suggestion to add a camera selection list to the population panel: If you switch cameras you would have to manually update the selection for each population. This might be done fairly quickly in the node window by dragging out new connection lines, but still. It's probably best to leave it as-is, using the current camera.

This is what happens when I post suggestions before my second cup of coffee.