Terragen and (Maya Max) workflow question .

[MentalRayUser]

I don't know much about Terragen, trying to understand how it works in terms of overall workflow .
what I mean is , I can't understand how jobs are separated between 3d packages and Terragen

It has camera motion import ability , thats just a piece of a whole work to have final image
AFAIK Terragen is not only OS background Image creator )

I think good example will contribute better thank 1000 words:



Lets say we need to create animation of a small town (tell a story like rango shrak or whatever...)
lets split final image into 2 pieces:
1) model of a town (ready for rendering, with trees, grass, animated characters, simply saying: everything.)
2) and Environment (ground terrain outside town + trees + grass + clouds , symply saying: all Terragen Image
In that case terragen (Terra mesh) connects that town (ground mesh) where red boxes is on the image . Right ?
in case if there is gaps like in my example , if there is no gaps and all are surrounded with houses its easy because you will never see the place of connection

(lets take Maya as an application)  there is how I see that process:



you're creating whole town (green color) in maya completely (trees in maya grass in maya all in maya)
IBL light+sunlight are also created in maya , in other words as I said you just need to render the image or animation
NOW , you 'are exporting degraded (lowpoly combined) mesh into Terragen, in order to have reference mesh that helps you to see the boundaries of the town )
now you need to create the environment in terragen , and if you have sunlight in maya , you need to make same sunlight in TG to correspond the overall light direction
when environment is ready you need to render all cameras with imported maya cameras  so to make it same movement as original town animation , to postprocess them in post
of course with disabled all imported objects .

Are described workflow correct  ?

Best Regards ! 






 

[Oshyan]

Your overall workflow is fairly valid, but there are some tools that can help make it easier, I think.

First, you can use FBX to import and export camera and light information and animation, to make syncing easier. Just make sure you get the units matched up.

Second, Terragen can load very high poly models, so as long as you can get your town into OBJ format you can probably just load the whole thing; no need to reduce to low poly (unless you want to for other reasons).

Finally, note that Terragen can export the terrain into OBJ or FBX object formats, so this can be used to, in a way, have a workflow that is opposite yours. You create your terrain and overall environment in Terragen, including the ground in the town and foreground, if desired. Then export the terrain to Maya, build your houses on top, and use the exported terrain for matching of shadows, occlusion, etc. Render the buildings in Maya and composite against the Terragen base.

I should also note that Terragen can import and render well-formatted OBJ objects, including trees, etc. and can also handle large-scale instancing. So you could theoretically import your building models and render everything in Terragen, if desired.

I hope that helps.

- Oshyan

[MentalRayUser]

Your overall workflow is fairly valid, but there are some tools that can help make it easier, I think.

First, you can use FBX to import and export camera and light information and animation, to make syncing easier. Just make sure you get the units matched up.

Second, Terragen can load very high poly models, so as long as you can get your town into OBJ format you can probably just load the whole thing; no need to reduce to low poly (unless you want to for other reasons).

Finally, note that Terragen can export the terrain into OBJ or FBX object formats, so this can be used to, in a way, have a workflow that is opposite yours. You create your terrain and overall environment in Terragen, including the ground in the town and foreground, if desired. Then export the terrain to Maya, build your houses on top, and use the exported terrain for matching of shadows, occlusion, etc. Render the buildings in Maya and composite against the Terragen base.

I should also note that Terragen can import and render well-formatted OBJ objects, including trees, etc. and can also handle large-scale instancing. So you could theoretically import your building models and render everything in Terragen, if desired.

I hope that helps.

- Oshyan

Well , you right , on the modeling level you better export environment into host App to set light directions and some required stuff
so it means you better work simultaneously on both maya and terragen , to see how they are fit each other all the time.
the reason I was asking that because there might have been absolutely different workflow . but if you say mine is fairly right it means I was right in my conclusions about terragen
you also said , render everything in terragen .. I would gladly do that  , when you will be even close as fast as other renderers
especially with GPU acceleration .
Thank you for assistance !

[digitalguru]

I'd also agree with MentaRayUser, for a model as complex as the town in the example render in Maya and comp with the Terragen landscape is the way to go, you would be much more in control of the shading (displacements especially) than you could be with Terragen. But also exporting proxy geometry into Terragen would be useful to cast shadows onto the landscape geometry.

One suggestion though, you could set up your main lighting in Terragen and render a spherical map (360 degree) to use as a HDR in Maya. The you should have a lighting scheme that should match (or very close with a few tweaks) in both programs.