New to Terragen, Any links to threads for skies for beginners?

[eapilot]

Hello Planetside community,
I come from a Vue background and I want to test the Terragen 4 beta to test it out for production.  I would be using it for 360 degree skies, and planets.  Any suggestions for tutorials or threads to get started?  I am interested in composing skies with clumps of clouds.

Thanks!

[Dune]

Welcome to this forum. I'm sure you'll find Terragen an extremely well-suited app for your needs. The new clouds are magnificent. My suggestion would be to 1. just start Terragen and try out the easy cloud, try some different seeds and work a bit on the settings, 2. use the search function on the forum to look for specific threads. There's plenty of information and discussion available.
There is also a very easy way to make spherical renders; check out the camera tab.
Have fun. 

[bobbystahr]

What Dune said...and enjoy!

[Oshyan]

Indeed, the new "easy cloud" presets in the Add cloud Layer button on the Atmosphere tab really make it fast and easy to get a good start. Let us know if you have any specific questions.

- Oshyan

[eapilot]

Indeed, the new "easy cloud" presets in the Add cloud Layer button on the Atmosphere tab really make it fast and easy to get a good start. Let us know if you have any specific questions.

- Oshyan

I have lots of questions!
Since the new easy clouds are built differently than past cloud layers, what are the parameters that adjust the fractals the most?  I don't see much difference when adjusting Quality/smallest scale, at least for preview renders.

Is there a way to localize clouds with easy clouds?

It would be great to figure out how to create localized clouds like this video that was posted a while ago for Terragen 4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TkK1_avO0

[yossam]

The easy clouds are already localized.................if you mean move it to another area you will have to put the coordinates in the transform boxes. 

[Oshyan]

Smallest scale is going to have one of the smallest effects because it's smallest scale.

As far as shape is concerned, Variation and Growth both have noticeable but not extreme effects. Coverage has the largest effect, of course.

For shading and, to a lesser degree, shape, the Edge Sharpness and Cloud Density settings have notable effects. Everything on the Lighting tab also has effects on this stuff.

- Oshyan

[eapilot]

First test with Terragen 4.  I rendered it out as a 32 bit exr.  This jpg has the exposure turned down.

Any tips or links on how to make planets in the sky or in space?

[Oshyan]

Nice first test!

You can easily add new planets from the Objects layout, or in the node network by right-clicking and adding a Planet in the Objects submenu. Once in the scene you can move it around like any other object. It comes in with a default Atmosphere and Power Fractal for surface shading. These are in the *internal* network however, so you have to go in there to edit and add to them. Note that adding cloud layers and other such functions from the various layouts at the top of the interface only works on the first Planet. To modify additional planets you have to work in the node network manually.

- Oshyan

[eapilot]

Are there any links or threads on how to do this?  No terrain is showing up below the atmosphere.  Hard finding tutorials on planets.  There are some great examples in the forum though that I would like to emulate!

[Dune]

Like Oshyan said; you have to go inside the new planet node (rightclick+edit internal). There you can add colors and displacements through the default shader or replace the default shader by a whole network, like in the normal planet (also with clouds etc). On the planet node, you can turn on or off atmosphere to see what's going on. Have you used the search function on the forum to find threads about planets?

[eapilot]

I was searching through the forum for tutorials but most were pretty old, and their end results weren't very realistic so I was hesitant to read through them.  Also youtube tutorials weren't very good. There are more recent posts of planets that look great.  I should compare with Vue since it is a lot easier to setup.  Dune, do you recommend any specific forum threads to read through?

The first image was from a scene where I created a second planet and deleted the first planet.  the second planet seemed to have no cloud layer options.  This second image is another scene where I kept the first planet and just moved the camera into space.  then I could have more control over the cloud layers but at this point I still have no idea what I am doing.

[Dune]

I don't know all the threads by heart, so I can't recommend anything. But the basics are very simple. I've made a little series (on my online machine, so old version of TG) to explain a little. Hope it helps. If you first move away from the main planet and then after adding another planet click on it in the preview you can drag it where you want it. After they're in location. Get inside the node, and add a cloud layer. You'd have to raise values in the PF considerably for visible cloud masses, or try adding the global clouds from TG4.
In older versions, there was a problem when you had a cloud layer added and then moved the planet, the cloud layer 'stayed behind', but with the TG4 setup that's probably no issue (don't know for sure, never do multiplanet things). In the older version you then had to un-attach the cloud layer and re-attach.

Btw, same with continents and such, use huge numbers in PF's for colors and displacements.