Hello!
I'm a new Terragen Pro user and my first "test project" was to render a georeferenced DEM patch with a projected NON-georeferenced satellite image.
After placing the planet origin on the DEM patch (as it's centered in European area and i had navigation issues before that) i still have serious difficulties in projecting the satellite image over the DEM patch. I extrapolated satellite image coordinates by hand and they are expressed in degrees using WGS84 coordinate system.
Terragen understands well the georeferenced patch and it's placed accordingly on the planet, but for the satellite image it's another story. I don't have a clue on how to convert WGS84 degrees coordinates into XYZ "flat planet" Terragen coordinate system, and i cannot use the DEM boundary as guide because the satellite image is a sub-area of the DEM patch. So a long trial and error work is needed to match the two elements and i'm still struggling understanding if i'm wrong with the picture projection size and/or coordinates. Moreover, trying to move the picture my trial and error is made really difficult by the need to wait for the viewport refresh after each slight modification.
As the Pro version states it handles geo referred data (and it does indeed) i expected a better support for manual inputting of the coordinates.
Hence my proposal: Terragen works with its internal XYZ coordinate system, and that's right because it sure will speed up its internal calculations.
But... what if the position input fields could be modified to accept also other coordinate systems? After all, Terragen already "understands" other coordinate systems because it can import georeferenced data, the only issue with that is that the data must be embedded into the input file and cannot be inputted manually.
I mean... Terragen should already have all the conversion functions inside.
The input boxes could work as an intermediate layer, that allow the user choose the reference system for inputting the positional coordinates and under the hood those coordinates are on the fly converted into Terragen XYZ coordinates, while mantaining the original coordinate system values on the user side.
Maybe by adding a new drop down listbox where appropriate that defaults to Terragen internal coordinate system but allows the user to change how the inputted numbers will be interpreted by the application. Being able to choose the coordinate system in nodes where external data is specified, such as "Geog image map" would be really useful for my workflow!
I mean... i could input my hand extrapolated coordinates in a "one shot one kill" fashion, save a lot of time and be sure it's everything correctly aligned without doubts. On the other side, Terragen could be more easy to grasp when facing those situations by more users so i think this can be a nice addition.
I don't know if this idea could be extended to each node, maybe this could be useful and sure it would add uniformity to the whole user experience. Say, for example, that one needs to place a building on a specific location obtained by cartographic extrapolation, such as UTM charts ans so on. This would make the whole process a breeze.
What do you think?
Thanks! Umberto