Planetside Software Forums

News => Announcements => Topic started by: Matt on June 17, 2024, 01:26:48 PM

Title: Terragen 4.8.12.frontier
Post by: Matt on June 17, 2024, 01:26:48 PM
We have a new Terragen 4 Frontier Build, kicking off the Terragen 4.8 release cycle!

If you have an active license of Terragen 4 Professional or Creative, use the Check for Updates feature in the application to get links to the latest 4.8 builds.

Here's the change log:

Build 4.8.12 (Frontier Build)

General

We've fixed some issues related to the Progress dialog and application stability with threaded operations.

Windows only: Some compilation settings have been changed which improve the speed of some shaders and heightfield operators.

Clouds

We've improved the speed of interacting with scenes with cloud layers, especially when there are many layers. There was a bug that would unnecessarily invalidate some caches and cause voxel buffers to be recalculated when another cloud layer or atmosphere was changed.

Heightfields

Heightfields can be exported to 16-bit TIFF and 16-bit "RAW" files that are compatible with Unity and Unreal Engine. The Free Non-Commercial edition can export resolutions up to 1025 x 1025 vertices (pixels). The Creative and Professional editions can export up to 32768 x 32768.

In total, Terragen 4.8 can export heightfields to:
Note that Terragen can also export meshes via the Micro Exporter and there are workflows for exporting vector displacement maps.

Heighfield Erode V3 is improved:

We've fixed a bug that showed up in the rare situation where a Heightfield Shader's interpolation mode was set to "Linear" and the heightfield operator was delegating the interpolation to its input node. (This delegation happens when a heightfield node has no data, e.g. when an erosion node hasn't done any calculations yet.) The bug was using smooth interpolation instead of the expected linear interpolation.

The way that some heightfield node settings affect previews has changed. Let us know if you find any issues.

Objects, Shaders and Texture Spaces

Objects regenerate on every frame if they have a mesh displacer connected to them so animated deformations are easier to use.

Transform Input Shader and Transform Merge Shader have a new option "Use sticky world space". This allows shaders to work in world space on objects that have MDDs or mesh displacers, without the textures sliding when the objects are deformed.

Distance Shader has "Coord space" options which include "World space", "Sticky world space", "Undisplaced space" and "Terrain or Texture space (warpable and transformable)".

Rendering

-renderlayer command line option. See command line docs for details.

Pixel dithering is applied when saving 16-bit TIFFs just like it is for 8 bit formats, but with an appropriately smaller amount of dither. This applies to saving renders and exporting heightfields.

RTP shadows respect the shadow-cast settings of light sources and render nodes.

The colour of the rectangle and handles drawn in the 3D Preview to represent the crop region (ROI) can be changed in Preferences.

The renderer has some minor speed optimisations.

If you have an active license of Terragen 4 Professional or Creative, use the Check for Updates feature in the application to get links to the latest 4.8 builds.
Title: Re: Terragen 4.8.12.frontier
Post by: Dune on June 18, 2024, 01:01:30 AM
Yes! Thanks very much, Matt. Many improvements I don't use, but a few make my day. :)

Just installed, with two shocks: new Visual C++ needed, so unexpected restart of the machine, then an error showing. So I restarted installing, and that went fine. I'm happy.

Now I hope it installs fine on my air-gapped machine....

EDIT: it does, great.
Title: Re: Terragen 4.8.12.frontier
Post by: jhmart1 on June 22, 2024, 08:40:54 AM
Hmm... When I click on Help>Check for Updates, it takes me to the following page:  https://planetside.co.uk/downloads/permanent/update-from/tg/40000/48-landing-release.php?query=platform%3Dmac%26fromVersion%3D4071900
The only updates listed are for Terragen 4.7.19, released on February 10, 2024. This is the version I am currently using.

😎
Title: Re: Terragen 4.8.12.frontier
Post by: mcferrin on June 23, 2024, 09:52:02 PM
Ditto here.  Either the link is broken, or it would be nice to just find the release on the website after login.
Title: Re: Terragen 4.8.12.frontier
Post by: Matt on June 24, 2024, 12:58:42 PM
The Mac update checker has been fixed now. Sorry about that! Please give it another try using the update checker, because the URL above is incorrect.