My First Terrain Images

[Franky]

I just discovered Terragen yesterday and have had some fun playing with it. Although I'm not new to 3D art, this program is great for making quick and realistic renders.

Anyway, here are the first images I was able to produce with Terragen 0.9

Altan Mountains


Misty Passage


Deep Bay


Qyzym Desert


Former Lakebed

[Franky]

Here are a couple more terrain scenes. I've been experimenting with desertic landscapes and came up with these.

Muck Lake


Desert Night


Desolation


More Dunes

[Will]

not bad for a start, keep up the good work and feel free to ask if you have any questions.

[rcallicotte]

Pretty good to start.  Keep learning and having fun.

[old_blaggard]

Not bad, especially for first renders .  Make sure that boat doesn't crash into anything in the misty passage .

[dhavalmistry]

I like the former lakebed one....really cool....

[green_meklar]

Your terrain is quite nice, but personally I don't like it when people copy+paste stuff into Terragen 0.9 images. It not only doesn't look realistic, it doesn't even look as good as the terrain would by itself. The level of realism just clashes way too much, it's like pasting images of Dumbo into Return of the King instead of the oliphaunts. If you want objects in your scene, please, use Terragen 2 so that you can get them with accurate orientation and lighting. The results will look much better.

EDIT: Actually, this makes me something of a hypocrite, because I myself have copied stuff into a Terragen image in the past. And worse yet, I plan to do it again. Do you think there's anything I can do to absolve myself of these sins? The time I did it, I was careful to match up the lighting as precisely as I could, and added shadows and everything to make the transition as smooth as possible. Is this good enough, or do you think I still need to wash myself in a holy water shader or something?

[rcallicotte]

green_meklar - Once we have the final version, objects will be a lot more accessible within TG2.

[Franky]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm still having fun and learning. I'll have to give TG2 another chance. I didn't really like the interface but I have both TG0.9 and TG2 so I'll try it out again.

Green Meklar, if pasting clip outs onto images is so bad, then why do you plan on doing it again?   

[overlordchuck]

These look a lot better than my first ones...

[Franky]

I have given Terragen 2 another chance and failed miserably so tried importing two of my terrains into 3ds Max and after some tweaking, I've gotten these two results. They still don't look super real but it's what I could do for now.

Elysium Bays


Lower Altan Mountains (Summer version)

[green_meklar]

green_meklar - Once we have the final version, objects will be a lot more accessible within TG2.

Yes...but that's not entirely the issue.

I didn't really like the interface

The node system in itself isn't SO bad, but what I really miss about the Terragen 0.9 interface is how you could hover your mouse over just about everything and it will tell you what it means. In Terragen 2 it throws all these terms like 'voronoi noise' and 'unclamped multifractal' at you without the slightest bit of explanation.

if pasting clip outs onto images is so bad, then why do you plan on doing it again?

Because I'm a twisted, evil person.

No, it's because when I make things in Art of Illusion, the only formats it saves in are AOI (its native format) and OBJ, and the OBJ files only save the basics of what would be rendered in Art of Illusion. For example, in Art of Illusion I might use procedural color and bump mapping to give some detail to an otherwise flat and boring texture, but all that gets saved in the MTL file is the basic color and a few other things like transparency and specularity, so if I were to import it into Terragen 2 it would look a lot crappier. And I have good reasons for wanting it to be consistent with what Art of Illusion produces in certain cases (consistent implying not crappier). Also, I don't have the deep version of Terragen 2, so if I want more than three types of objects in a scene at once, there aren't really any easy ways to do it.

They still don't look super real but it's what I could do for now.

The objects certainly come out better than in your other images. Like the shadow of the sailboat...in my experience, one of the most important things to make an object sitting on a surface look realistic is its shadow. And with stuff like all those trees, you can download the free Xfrog sample and use those trees in Terragen 2 to achieve more detailed results. People have already proved that Terragen 2 can achieve photorealism, it's just a question of how to go about it and whether your computer is up to the task (mine usually isn't).

[Franky]

Also, I don't have the deep version of Terragen 2, so if I want more than three types of objects in a scene at once, there aren't really any easy ways to do it.

I think you might be able to add more objects if you render with POV Ray. At least it's free and has great rendering capabilities. This way you can get around the TG2 object limitations. You can check out POV Ray here: http://www.povray.org. 

[rcallicotte]

Franky, I like that image from way up high.  Good job.

[Franky]

Thanks Calico 

I decided to give TG2 another chance and came up with this. These are XFrog's sweet birch trees, if you didn't already recognize them. However, it took like 45 minutes to render on medium settings so I'll probably just stick to 3ds max for my renders in the future.