Your Top 5 Most Wanted Features

[PG]

New one. animation of colours. You can kinda change the colour of the atmosphere in an animation by putting animation keys on the bluesky and redsky additive but not things like cloud colour, scattering colour, etc.

[3dworks]

my top feature request is for new camera types, for easy HDR image output which can be used as backdrop in other apps. suggested types: spherical (the most urgently needed), cylindrical, cubical mappings and HDR lightprobe format.

cheers

markus

[goldfarb]

I've only been using terragen for a few weeks so forgive me if some of these things are possible and I've simply not found them, and some of these things have been mentioned already but I'll just add my +1...
and to give you an idea of where I'm coming from, I'm a character TD for a studio in Toronto using Houdini, so I'd love to be able to integrate Terragen into some of our VFX projects -

1 - real cameras (focal, aperture etc etc)
2 - AOVs (rendering elements in separate passes), or even just a phantom shader...
3 - animated geometry (read file sequence 001.obj, 002.obj etc, you can hack this now with multiple terragen files but...  )
4 - export of terrain using a bounding box - create a BBOX, set scale, move to position, export as obj etc, this would allow for exporting of overhangs etc)
5 - import point cloud as population source, and possibly as seed points for clouds (this would add the awesomeness of importing animated points = particle system!)
***@Mr_Lamppost***

An array population:  i.e. I would like 20 rows separated by this distance each containing 100 instances of the object separated by that distance. It would still need to be possible to apply random scaling and rotation to the individual instances as with normal populations, local random position variation would also be useful as would stepped rotation.

Get Instance Variable: I'm not sure what to call this one but here's how it would work:  Each instance within a population would have a random number between zero and one assigned to it which could be accessed via a Get Instance Variable node, this could then be passed to a conditional or blend shader.  This would allow per instance colour variation and a whole host or related effects.  This would also have the potential to control the object loaded at each instance which may be a more flexible way of implementing Unique Variations.

what you're describing are some of the features of Houdini's Copy SOP ( http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini10.0/nodes/sop/copy ), even just a few of these features would be amazing to have in Terragen.


6 - bounding box view for clouds - based on density(?), so you'd have a rough idea of where your clouds are in 3D space
7 - optional lock camera to view


thanks

[George]

Agree with goldfarb...
Bounding box for clouds would be nice too...

[dandelO]

Bounding box for clouds

You could already have this if you were to use my TG2 Metaclouds, or a system like it... http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=3691.msg50573#msg50573

Each single cloud has its own bounding box, just like Vue, only better because it's called Terragen.
Still waiting on a 'group objects' function, mind, that would take this to the next level, to group a clump of clouds and move them as one object...

[rcallicotte]

I was thinking about that, dandelO.  dandelO made some very cool clouds that are extremely useful and, as far as I can see, these have been under exploited.  We could do a lot more with his great ideas.

[goldfarb]

@dandelO
thanks...very interesting

[pbelchamber]

A couple of things:

1. Mixed populations (variations would be a bonus)
2. Drawing out population areas - DigiElement World Builder used to have this. You would draw the area you wanted to populate as a closed polygonal shape on the ground. It remained editable - ie each vertex was a moveable node. Much better than the current "box only", and far easier than image masks. (Unless I am missing something!).
3. Real Camera Lenses

I will reserve 4. & 5. in case I think of something else later!

[Oshyan]

pbelchamber: for population masking, create your population, on the Distribution tab click Use Density Shader then click the green + button to the right and select Create New Shader -> Colour Shader -> Painted Shader. Now go to the 3D Preview, click the Paint button and select Star Painting Shader -> Painted Shader 01. Now you can easily paint the area for your population. You can also use this in Blend Shader inputs to control the distribution of almost any node.

- Oshyan

[Mohawk20]

Just wondering...
Will the Planetside staff do anything with the suggestions in this thread?

It would be nice to see some kind of reply in which some requested features are listed in order of priority or something. Not with a time estimate or anything, but just an indication of stuff that will be added, and what will be added sooner than other stuff.

[Oshyan]

Quite honestly there is such an overwhelming array of desired features in this thread, it would be hard to craft a fair response that would address even part of it. We've made our plans for the next development priorities fairly clear - animation, 64bit support, and import/export. Those are the broad areas. Details beyond that will have to wait until we have something to release and, as recent convention has established, we will not be publishing release dates prior to finishing the actual development.

- Oshyan

[kevnar]

Not sure if this has been suggested yet, but for planetary renders, could we have a filter for surface layers based on latitude of the globe? In other words, set it up so that you could also constrain a "Snow & Ice" layer to have a minimum latitude of 60 degrees on the globe, or a "desert" layer with a maximum latitude of 30 degrees.

[Tangled-Universe]

Not sure if this has been suggested yet, but for planetary renders, could we have a filter for surface layers based on latitude of the globe? In other words, set it up so that you could also constrain a "Snow & Ice" layer to have a minimum latitude of 60 degrees on the globe, or a "desert" layer with a maximum latitude of 30 degrees.

That would be fairly easy to do at the moment.
Just position a camera at the pole and connect it to a distance shader (spherical). Then use that combination as a blendshader for your snowcap.

You could do something similar with a desert layer around the equator.
Then use the same technique but create 2 cameras and distanceshaders set to Z-depth and let the camera look/point toward each pole.

[dandelO]

Using 'Y for slope/altitude' would achieve this aswell for snowcaps on the poles of an entire planet. I've done this before.

[Jack]

i got another one x and z axis translation control for the crater shader through the render preview like you get when you import models im sick of trying to move crater shaders via the centre.
also a second option not only to move an object via the xy and z but also to rotate and scale through the render preview.