Sculpting

[EdBardet]

There is a rather long thread (Waiting....) discussing the TG2 mods, dates, etc. I posted a comment concerning the sculpting tools that received no further comments

Are there other users out there that considered sculpting one of the stronger features of the previous release? Or are people using other tools for 'playing God' ( making terrains from scratch)?

Knotian

[Cyber-Angel]

To be honest what sculpting tools that did exist in Terragen 0.9.43 had the classical problem that exists with tools of there type (See Bryce and Vista Pro [Amiga 500 version]), that the sculpting tools did not respect the original fractal of the underlying terrain resulting in a smooth terrain where the sculpting tool/s where applied some times resulting in unrealistic spikes.

The sculpting tools in such software has traditionally been in a 2d view (In the case of Vista [Now Vista Pro] and  Terragen 0.9.43 which has a similar interface) in a separate interface window allowing for top down editing of the heightfeild and not in the main 3d space which made localised editing of a land form difficult at best.

Ideally to my way of thinking if such tools are to be added to TG2 then the must allow on the fly sculpting in the 3d preview both on the local and global levels or any intermediary level in between.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel 

[EdBardet]

Cyber-angel

"tools did not respect the original fractal of the underlying terrain"

I don't claim that as a weakness - I have been starting with a flat surface.

I had not considered looking for a dem or other starting point (underlying terrain) and modifying it. If I were to start with something like my end goal of an island, consisting of a steep sided collapsed crater (caldera), and just smooth out the areas I need for buildings, and roads, it might work.

Knotian

[Oshyan]

We do certainly intend to provide more advanced terrain editing tools for creation of explicit terrain features. But you should keep in mind that Terragen is fundamentally a renderer first and modeler 2nd. There are many other excellent tools already available for very high quality and high precision terrain editing. Most of these tools are interoperable with Terragen through the .ter or other supported formats. Examples include:

$ Leveller - http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller/
$ Geocontrol - http://www.cajomi.de/GeoControl/geocontrol.htm
$ World Machine - http://www.world-machine.com/
Wilbur - http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~jslayton/software.html
$ L3DT - http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/

Ultimately given the focused development of these tools particularly on the creation and editing of terrain and the many other features TG2 includes and which must be developed, we can't hope to match the real scope, depth and power that some of these applications offer. So although we will be expanding the terrain sculpting tools within TG2, your particular needs may be better served by a dedicated terrain editor. This would mean an additional cost in some cases (although there are free alternatives), but most of these tools are quite affordable. Hopefully one of these alternatives will be appealing to you.

- Oshyan

[EdBardet]

Oshyan---

Whoa - No gripe

What we had before was good enough for me - just want those features and screen sizes to be continued.

Knotian

[Oshyan]

OK, then it seems your needs are fairly basic and should be met by the final TG2 product. However I can tell you that improved sculpting tools are not likely to implemented in preference to many other features at present, so it may be a while before you see updates there. In the meantime you may want to try out some of the free alternative tools such as Wilbur or the free version of World Machine.

- Oshyan

[BPauba]

 I personally thought that sculpting was going to be a main feature in tg2, something like a zbrush for landscapes! Boy was I wrong .

[Oshyan]

We will be providing tools that are better than TG 0.9, that's for sure. Due to the procedural nature of TG2 and being able to work directly in this domain the results may be better than working in an external heightfield modeler. But I don't think it is realistic to expect that we will be able to improve on other tools in all areas when they are dedicated to this purpose. Future updates and versions of Terragen should include continued improvements in this area, of course. For the commercial release of TG2 our focus is on key features and a baseline of important functionality.

- Oshyan

[The Geostation]

Sculpting... Ooooh.... I must admit that I'm a bit of a purist at heart and would rather tweak the fractal algorithms, and don't like the idea of taking out my hammer-and-chisel to knock a few chunks out of a mountain.   But that's just me, and the tool would be most welcome for others.

Wierdly, I'm not adverse to "spray painting" foliage (with mixes of foliage types) onto the terrain itself.   That would be most fun     Particularly if I can also use the distribution shader to further modify it.

Andrew

[JemDaddyO]

I use the free tool TerraMaker with some success.  But the coolest feature I have yet come across for sculpting was in Bryce.  It had the ability to apply a global effect, say Spikes or something, then back that out and re-apply as a brush on feature just where you wanted.  So you could make almost anything a paintable effect, Erosion, Lowering, Posterizing, Noise, you name it. 

That would be way cool and someone please tell me if this is available in other tools.  The tools I've tried have a subset of these effects available for 'brushing on' but it's limited. 

[DeathTwister]

Hve you tried L3DT at: http://www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/ Aaron has a free version and WOW OMG can you sculpt, and do many other things and it is growing daily as a huge powerful tool.  Check it out, and see you there.  That is what I do almost all my terrains in.

DT   aka Maylock