My sadness :(

[cyphyr]

I love using Terragen, I have made and many others have made some extremely beautiful images that would have simply not been possible in any other software. But I have not used Terragen now for nearly four months simply because I can not complete any of my projects. Three projects in a row can not be finished.

I tried to reproduce Constables Hay Wain but the polygon count just got too high, too many different populations (only 8 or 10) and rendering GI made cropped area rendering (deleting populations and objects not visible in the scene) produced mismatched results that could not be tiled together. Waiting for better memory management and I'll try again.

I tried to produce a city scene but there is no way to regularly order the populations so objects within each population uncontrollable overlap each other or were too widely spaced. As far as I know this is not considered an issue so I don't expect any change here

I tried to produce a car in a desert landscape, something of an "advertising shot", lots of polished chrome and gloss car paint. Impossible! TG just crashes as soon as its faced with complex  reflections. There was an excellent image produced recently of a mars rover. The environment was beautifully rendered in Terragen and the model was built and rendered in Maya (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong). A skybox was rendered out from terragen and used to light the scene which worked very well. Ok I'm all for integrated work flow between apps and in that case it worked very well but there were no (or only blurred) reflections on the Mars rover (Martian dust maybe?). To make a skybox of a high enough resolution to be accurately reflected on chrome pipes etc the sky box would have to be of very (I mean massive!!) high dimensions. In order to accurately reflect the contents of a scene the object has to actually be in the scene. I believe reflections are being worked on but I don't believe it is a priority.

I'm not sad about shelling out cash for software that is unfinished, that was the deal after all but rather I'm sad that I cant realize the ideas in my mind. Terragen comes closer than any other package, I just wish there was some light at the end of the tunnel. Oh and the macro concept has been abandoned.

Happy TG'ing everyone

Richard

ps apologies for my self indulgence

[jo]

Hi Richard,

Reflections are actually a priority in the work which is being currently done and which has been taking longer than expected. How practical ultra-chrome will be I don't know. Also, I don't believe macros have been abandoned, but there won't be a chance to implement them prior to the final release, I wouldn't think.

Regards,

Jo

[Oshyan]

I understand your frustrations. Some of these things are being worked on now, others will be added or improved after the upcoming release.

I hope you will check out the beta when it is available and see if it improves your experience working with TG2.

- Oshyan

[otakar]

I think you've experienced the limits. If it bugs you that you can't finish your projects I'd take a different approach. Try using the features that already work in Terragen. If you can only squeeze in 4 populations before the #$)% thing crashes then pick the four that matter the most in the scene. If a scene entails complex reflections then think of ways to reduce them. I know it's hard to cut down on elements, compromise on object placement (in populations) and change camera settings, lighting, etc., but if you want a (somewhat) frustration-free experience that's the best way to go IMHO. I've abandoned quite a few ideas after a few brief (and sometimes not so brief) tests. As long as it's all a hobby, it's ok, but if you are trying to do paid work at the limits you'll have to look for other tools to go along with TG...