Potential new user questions re Terragen...

[SteveR]

Hi all, my first post here, and I am not even a Terragen user yet! But it's my birthday soon and as I've been thinking about buying Terragen for a while my lovely wife has said go for it as a birthday pressie. But before I do, I wonder if I could ask the community a few questions to help me ascertain Terragen is right for me. I have downloaded the v2.5 trial but have not had a chance yet to do many tutorials so I do need to get on with that ASAP!

Basically, I am a 3d hobbyist, I use Modo and Zbrush and I generally do stills with a sci-fi theme. Well, when I say tend to I think I mean always do!! I am looking for Terragen to help me create some alien landscapes, nebulea (I did see that anim on the Youtube channel by Hannes Janetzko - awesome - I wanna do that! ) and some planetary shots so I can do the spaceships in orbit kind of thing. I strongly suspect that Terragen will do all these things, but is it a good tool tool for these types of things? I am also keen to support smaller / more personal software houses and the impression I have over the years is that Planetside look after their users quite well and this matters to me a hobbyist (as daft as that sounds maybe!).

Also, I'd be grateful for any experiences using Terragen with other apps like Modo. Can you export landscapes with texture maps and that sort of thing.

Sorry this is a little vague, but would appreciate users thoughts.

Many thanks
Steve

[Dune]

Welcome to the forum, Steve. I hope you'll stay. And I think you will, after you've bought your birthday present. I can wholeheartedly recommend TG. It has one of the best communities, and will do exactly as you want. Any questions asked will be answered, that's the power of the forum. And planetside is very dedicated to its product.

I think after you've experimented a little with the free edition, and try loading some tgd's available here to see what they're about, you'll get hooked.

[SteveR]

Thanks for the warm welcome Dune. It all sounds great, I will certainly get to some tutorials over the next couple of days and see what can be done. TG certainly seems an incredible piece of kit. I suspect I will be asking a few pretty dumb questions over the next week or so!!

Thanks again
Steve

[Dune]

There are no dumb questions....  but do use the search button, as a lot has been asked before.

[SteveR]

of course, I'll do a good hunt around the forum and google before hand

[Hannes]

Hi Steve, welcome to the forum. I'm sure you won't regret purchasing a TG license. I made several Sci-Fi images with Terragen and I assure you it's working great.
You were talking about my Nebulae animation. You can download the scene file here:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,14348.msg140559.html#msg140559
You can explore it even with the free edition. As far as I remember the limited features of the free version should be no problem.

[SteveR]

Hi Hannes, many thanks for this, that animation looked fabulous!

It's rendering now in the free edition - giving my overclocked i7 a work out!! It will be very helpful for me to get a feel for how this was done, assuming I don't get too confused!

Thanks again
Steve