Hey Guys,
I modeled the eye of the cell storm vortex then converted as vdb into Houdini and rendering in Clarisse. I am not entirely happy with the render so I was wondering if it is possible to import a VDB in Terragen and render it there.
Cheers
This isn't possible at the moment, but it probably will be in a future version.
Matt
ok thanks, that would be great because your renderer is awesome.
Thanks!
Please Terragen devs, Importing VDB should be a priority for you guys now.
Vue has it and pretty much most of the standard major 3D packages.
Personally I only have a license of Lightwave, but uses Blender more and more right now.
Ivé been on and off wrestling with the Disney free WDA cloud asset trying to emulate the look you get from Disneys hyperion render.
Lightwave isn´t there with it´s GI volume bounces, and blender does a decent job at getting the VDB to look nice, but it still can not match the wonderful scattering that takes place in hyperion with the powder effect.
Now since Terragen supposedly should have a better scattering function to emulate similar to that of hyperion, it would have been great to try it out.
what I would prefer than the other way around, so pity the import function wasn´t there before the export, I will have more use of
importing a vdb designed, fluid or modeled volume in to Terragen than exporting cloud volumes from Terragen, so I kind of think vue did the right thing with implementing VDB import.
Personally I can both sculpt or model clouds, or use gas solver for cloud fluid sims in lightwave, or use blender for cloud modeling with fluid sims, to create the "hero" clouds, or use houdini´s cloud fx to paint, or model or fluid sim the cloud volumes, all these final created cloud volumes can be shared acroos all these platforms, going from houdini to lightwave, houdini to blender, lightwave to houdini, lightwave to blender, from blender to lightwave, from blender to houdini..
So a simple vdb import would enhance the way you can design your cloudscapes in Terragen enourmously..and it will help designers, artists, visual effects artist to complete what is needed, and not just relying on.."that is not how nature does it"
The limitations of not being able to design the cloudscapes as you want ..that is a limitation, not an option.
here´s a link to blenderartist.org, where I have started a thread around shading the asset..
https://blenderartists.org/t/vdb-wda-disney-cloud-scattering-tests/1227871
My profile over there is MI65
And my profile at newtek is prometheus.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PrometheusPhamarus/videos
I rather look in to getting a terragen license than vue someday(but vue has som major features Terragen hasnt, including VDB import), but that day isn´t still after many years here, there are too many features missing or UI workflows that are missing that I think is necessary for me before a purchase, I will rack these issues up and link with descriptions on where I think terragen could simply rise to another level, and ergo will probably get a lot more attention and licenses sold, in the end it will probably be a matter of intention, and having enough coding guys to work it out, which by no means tells anything about it being easy to do. :)
(https://forums.newtek.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=148706&d=1600305387)
(https://forums.newtek.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=148693&d=1600202354)
Hi Prometheus, thanks for showing these tests.
VDB Import is high priority on the roadmap. I share your belief that this is going to be an important tool and will open up tons of new possibilities. We will be working on it.
Quote from: Matt on September 18, 2020, 09:21:17 PMHi Prometheus, thanks for showing these tests.
VDB Import is high priority on the roadmap. I share your belief that this is going to be an important tool and will open up tons of new possibilities. We will be working on it.
Awesome, will be checking in, if possibly try and implement sequenced VDB as well, that would allow for build up of clouds, or clouds swirling around mountain areas, provided it is simulated around the same mountain type or dummy mountains that are in Terragen finally, loads of ways to adress that by either exporting out a low res mountain and simulate around. If possible, try and see if you can get full data in from temp, heat etc, that could render nicely as well..it would open up a lot for rendering out not just clouds directly in Terragen, but also vulcano smoke, forrest fires etc.
My current focus will be on trying out embergen a lot though, both for fire and smoke, but also for clouds, I saw someone made very nice cloud movements with it, and that was what I expected it should be able to do as well, great mostly realtime inside of Embergen (depending on resolution) then saving out to vdb.
Thanks for answering that it at least is thought of as being implemented in some priority list anyway.
And a little scattering guide for those who may need it :)
(https://forums.newtek.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=142204&d=1531343972)
Quote from: Prometheus on September 18, 2020, 10:43:24 PMmostly realtime inside of Embergen
It's funny that you've been posting about this today. I've been thinking of this since I first saw Embergen and had just done a search to see if TG imported VDBs yet (I visit these forums everyday and hadn't yet seen anything I could recall).
So Matt ... just another voice in support for importing VDBs.
Quote from: Prometheus on September 18, 2020, 02:25:09 PM...and blender does a decent job at getting the VDB to look nice, but it still can not match the wonderful scattering that takes place in hyperion with the powder effect.
Maybe you missed this, you need to use forward scattering for clouds. Some renderers allow to change the directionality of scattering within volumes - negative for backwards, positive for forward scattering, mostly the parameter is in the -1...1 range, where a value of zero produces isotropic scattering. I tested this against Hyperion's look and I believe I got similar results in the 0.8-0.9 range.
I could not get the exact result however, Hyperion does some magic to simulate high numbers of bounces within the volume, most renderers aren't optimized for this and will take ages to deliver similar result or just fail entirely to clean up the noise.
Hi Matt, please make this importing VDB feature, we need to render the specific volume shape in Terragen.
Guys did this ever happen?
It's only been 8 years, so not yet. You can now have multiple suns in TG Sky, and, honestly, that's quite a lot of features for my yearly sub. /s
Hi everyone,
@pokoy I noticed the sarcasm, and I understand the frustration. Our delivery pace for big new features is slow at the moment for a couple of reasons. It's mainly because we've made it our priority to work on a GPU/XPU volumetric render (VOLR) that goes beyond the current capabilities of Terragen, and that's a big project. I think most users have wanted GPU rendering in Terragen for a long time but there was never an ideal time to put other development on hold to make it happen. So we're just doing it. As you probably know, we're expecting to deliver VOLR as an alpha or beta early next year (probably Q1 for integration into Terragen Sky and later in 2026 for Terragen 4).
We're also building Terragen 5 with a new UI on top of our new codebase, TGV, which Terragen Sky is an example of. Step by step we're bringing TG4's features into TGV so that when Terragen 5 is released it's a full replacement of and a real improvement upon Terragen 4. All of this future-proofing development is making it harder to release exciting new features right now, but there are some R&D projects currently on the back-burner that we want to bring into Terragen 5.
VDB import is going to happen, but we'll start on that after VOLR is working well and we'll implement VDB rendering in VOLR. I think this will avoid some duplication of work that might occur if we were to support both the existing CPU renderer and the new one.
Here's a mini roadmap in visual form:
TG5_roadmap_2025-10_dark.png
The above doesn't mark out VDB import, but maybe we might be able to include it somewhere like indicated below. To be decided...
TG5_roadmap_2025-10_dark_with-vdb-import-maybe.png
Matt - please take my note with humor if possible, sorry if it sounded offensive. However, please note the underlying critique is targeted towards the fact that TG has seen only minor improvements, with requests for substantial features reaching far into the past, some being close to 10-15 years.
I guess everyone's priorities will vary, but to me TG Sky is just not something I'll ever find useful, especially since it doesn't offer anything over TG except for a different UI.
As for the UI, I don't see how TG Sky's UI will be suitable for all the functionality that TG provides (and needs to provide). While TG Sky is built around a render preview with only a few parameters exposed to the main UI, TG's main UI element is and will probably always need to be the node editor with lots of UI elements that would not fit visually into TG Sky right now - these two are entirely different paradigms and I personally struggle to see how TG in its full extents will translate to TG Sky.
That said, I trust in your vision, still, for those waiting to see substantial updates to TG the wait has been very long, while the switch to a subscription based model turned out to be costly without much return (again, everyone's priorities will vary). There were features brought to TG that I personally value very much, it's just that a new TG based on its UI is close to unimaginable to me. Maybe you have something to show so users can discuss and give you early feedback.
Please don't take this personally as it's my personal opinion only. Especially since I know a single developer can't move everything forward at once, it all takes its time.
Sorry for bringing this up and hijacking the thread.
No offense taken, so don't worry about that. Thanks for the considerate reply.
I think we will be able to show a lot of these things coming together next year, and I hope that will allay some of your concerns. Terragen 5 will have all the power of the TG4 node-based interface (we are conscious of that being a familiar mode to many of you) as well as new modes of interaction.
As a matter of fact I have been reluctant about the change of UI, Pokoy, as the current UI has everything I need. But that's personal indeed (there are 'bigger powers'). And I'm also in line with your trust, especially after Matt's continued assurances.
Quote from: Matt on October 24, 2025, 07:44:21 PMNo offense taken, so don't worry about that. Thanks for the considerate reply.
I think we will be able to show a lot of these things coming together next year, and I hope that will allay some of your concerns. Terragen 5 will have all the power of the TG4 node-based interface (we are conscious of that being a familiar mode to many of you) as well as new modes of interaction.
Thanks Matt, looking forward to it.