Hi gang!
So... I'm a 3D hobbyist who sometimes takes his hobby 'a little bit' too far. Like so many others I started with Daz Studio (which is still my main modeller), but because I knew I wanted more I also grabbed Hexagon so I could make edits, and Bryce 7 for landscaping also seemed like a good idea.
Now, I've had a lot of fun with this and it was very well worth the purchase (yes, I'm talking about a time where Hexagon wasn't free). But at the same time ... at some point I knew I wanted a more advanced "3D editor" and I ended up with ZBrush (fortunately for me back in the Pixologic days). That sure was a (major) gamechanger! And so, over the years, I learned and discovered more and more. This also led up to me discovering & nabbing Substance Painter & Designer on Steam, which also changed some things quite dramatically for me. I'm still not an expert, but I no longer bother myself with texture sets anymore; and I even got my hands behind MDL development (= making your own Iray material presets), courtesy of Designer.
Well... after I had to reinstall my graphics setup because of a b0rk PC (PSU blew up on me) I also started re-evaluating some things and began to realize that Bryce 7 had become a bit of an issue. Don't get me wrong: it's (still) very nice software, but also severely dated. "Bridges" no longer worked, I discovered that I had to reimplement all my customizations to counter for the scale differences, and well... the controls also began to annoy me little.
I wanted something different, yet here was the issue: I'm pretty much a n00bie when it comes to terrain & sky generation.
TerraGen blew me away!
I'm not 100% sure how I discovered you guys; but my browser history tells me that I have done quite a few searches for "terrain generator" and "world generation" and "3D landscaping". Eventually I landed on the main page (https://planetside.co.uk/) (shared for any random readers out there) and that sure set some things in motion. Didn't took me long before I discovered the awesome TerraTuts channel (https://www.youtube.com/@TerraTuts) and well... that made up my mind! 8)
So, the reason for my little outburst is simple.. at the time of writing I'm budgeting and the idea was simple: calculate TerraGen into this and nab my (perpetual!) license next month, or the next after at most. This is still the plan by the way.
The thing is... I discovered the free edition in the mean time and after making 100% sure that this is ok to use for a hobbyist I did just that. Sure, there are quite a few limitations (obviously!) but the cool part of all this is that these do not hinder you in any way (that I can tell!) with following the amazing TerraTuts tutorials.
Meaning? By the time I'll get my license (this is gonna happen, that's a given...), but by that time I'll have gained plenty of experience that will help me to immediately get fully started.
The main idea is to use TerraGen as 'backup' to help me create and/or enhance sceneries for my Daz Studio renders. Fun fact: even the free edition already managed to get me some very promising results. Very newbie'ish stuff, sure, but still promising!
Anyway... only picked up on this yesterday, but couldn't help to share my admiration for all this. So here ya go! :)
Thanks for reading!