Terragen Creative vs Prifessional

Started by pixelpusher636, January 17, 2022, 09:29:47 PM

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pixelpusher636

For all you Pros Using Terragen professional on a regular basis. I wanted to get your opinion and thoughts. What feature(s) does professional have that you cannot do without. A feature that creative or free version excludes.

I'm asking as during the first lockdown I decided to buy creative to finally learn this amazing app. At the Time, I really didn't see anything I couldn't live without for the additional $ with my limited knowledge. Fast forward nine months and I have indeed discovered some features I would love to have.

So I'm curious to know from you seasoned folks what I'll likely be missing as my learning continues in TG. I know the answers you give will  bring me to regret asking and end up eventually having to buy the Professional version.  😩 just trying to prepare.
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.

Dune

I can't really help you, as it's a long time ago I used a creative version, but isn't it on the Planetside site?

Stormlord

#2
I used a few times the Rendered Layers and also the Spherical Camera is pretty nice to have.
Rendered Layers are usefull to get all you need for your post production. I sometimes rendered pictures bigger than 5000x5000 also.
For spherical HDRI I used mostly 10800 x 5400 and 8192 x 4096.

Therefore, I personally would prefer the Pro Version, but it doubles the price for a license.
You must decide if it is worth?

Here is a comparison chart side by side
https://planetside.co.uk/terragen-product-comparison/

STORMLORD
Link to my Artwork

KlausK

My 2 cents:

Render Layers are worth the price alone if you use TG as part of a pipeline and want to combine all sorts of assets in a compositing app later in the process.

Import - Export capabilities:
  • FBX import (even though it is limited quite a bit)
  • Terrain Export (even though it needs a lot of cleanup after export) Working in a 3D application viewport is a lot faster than trying to do Non-Terrain Work in TG. Placing objects, for example.
  • EXR output for heightfields - take the EXR into a painting app and paint on it more precisely and faster than you can in TG. Import back into TG and you have a a fast turnaround without masking everything TG
  • Camera data import-export can be useful

If you do almost everything inside of TG then it might not be worth to pay double the money (no idea how much the update costs).
If you do use some sort of pipeline jumping around between different software for different tasks then it is worth the money, I think.
Personally I find it easier to use different apps for different tasks.

A rather important factor for me to buy the Pro-Version back then was the slow development cycle TG has.
1 year maintanance gives you 1-2 updates. Major version changes take much longer. I only paid for an update once or twice, I think.
So, buying Pro you can be sure to not miss out on a lot of new features in the next 2-3 years without updating.

Right now I would advise against paying for an update to Pro - Just wait till Terragen-5 arrives. Might take some time, still, but there will be discounts on updates or full the version for sure.
Or wait until the first 5.point update arrives, chances are, that your 1 year maintenance gets you 1 or 2 major updates after that.

At the moment it looks like you do not really need the Pro-version to produce better pictures. Your learning curve is quite impressive :)

CHeers, Klaus
/ ASUS WS Mainboard / Dual XEON E5-2640v3 / 64GB RAM / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 TI / Win7 Ultimate . . . still (||-:-||)

pixelpusher636

Quote from: KlausK on January 18, 2022, 09:29:29 AMAt the moment it looks like you do not really need the Pro-version to produce better pictures. Your learning curve is quite impressive :)

CHeers, Klaus
KlausK I'm not sure my learning curve is so great so much as the insane amount of time I spend fiddling and learning watching tutorials and dissecting experienced users files.  😀

And thank you for your feedback. These were the answers I needed. I couldn't rely on the comparison chart to predict the future on what I might need going forward nor could it provide the very insightful info regarding updates. I think I will wait for Terragen 5 to upgrade. Thanks again for taking the time to answer!
The more I use Terragen, the more I realize the world is not so small.