Importing .ter files

[ASH33M]

Hi,

I have a question if I may, I have used Terragen v0.9.43 a few years now, I render tiles for a particular flight simulator, for which I'm part of a development team, other tools have been developed so that Terragen will render tiles non-stop 24/7 at 4096 x 4096 and 8192 x 8192, which takes many hours.

Can you still render .ter files with Terragen 2, or is there now a different type of format, if able to import .ter files are there more options where when rendering tiles more colors can be added so that when rendering it looks almost like photo relastic.

Any comments will be welcome.

Thank you

[domdib]

Yes, you can render .ter - you need a "Heightfield Load" operator, and that accepts .ter.

Not sure what you're asking about the tiles - any heightfield can have multiple colours and/or displacements applied.

[ASH33M]

Where can you find the "Heightfield Load" operator that accepts .ter files, then what is the next stage of the process.

Will it be possable to give some simple instructions here on how to simply open a .ter file, have many tgw settings from v0.9.43 is it also possable to open these settings as well.

[Henry Blewer]

Height Field Load is an operator. You select the height field, then just below is the operator selector. Once the height field load operator is in the height filed tree, select it. The window below will allow you to load in the height field.

The ter file is a type of raw data. You can add more terrain features in the Terrain tab, power fractals are a favorite. The shaders tab is for color and small scale displacements. Surface Layers behave very much like the surface shader of Terragen 0.9x. They are much more powerful.

Try downloading a couple tgo (landscape) files from the file sharing area. Take a look at what other people have done. I have a few there which are quite simple; I have an older computer which is a little slow these days.

[ASH33M]

The tool that I use as part of scenery development, will automatically create a ter file from a particular part of the design process.

[jo]

Hi,

The easiest way to add a ter file to TG2 is:

- Click on the Terrain button at the top of the main window.
- Click the "Add Terrain" button in the top right and choose "Heightfield (load file)" from the menu which pops up.
- A file chooser dialog will open. Choose the ter file you would like to open.

That's it. A new heightfield shader will appear in the terrain project view list. You can change some of the heightfield settings by clicking on the

• box (arrow on the Mac) next to the new heightfield shader name in the list, which will reveal the Heightfield Load node. The Heightfield Load node is where the basic heightfield settings are.
  
  Regarding TG v0.9 world files (.tgw), you can't import those into TG2. TG2 is just too different from TG v0.9 for the imported settings to make much sense.
  
  Regards,
  
  Jo

[ASH33M]

Hi Jo,

Thank you for your post, I will try these methods and post my results, when using v0.9.043 and setting up different layers, by adding different childs and saving all your work as a tgw file, did take a while to get use to, in TG2 are you able to the same or have the methods changed slightly.

Are there any video tutorials available online that will help.

[Henry Blewer]

Neuspadrin made some and posted them on YouTube. This is the link to his channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/neuspadrin88

[ASH33M]

I have been looking at the great tutorial by Ben McDuff, to start with looks complicated, but making slow progress, I have many questions but for now will complete this tutorial first, but one question that I would like to ask is the colours used here look great, would it be possible to let me know what the colour parameters that are shown in the tutorial itself, even though in the tutorial it said pick a colour of your choice.

[ASH33M]

Another question I would like to ask if I may, using the tutorial by Ben McDuff, would it be possible to open a .ter file from the scenecy testing that I'm currently using and still use all the setting and parameters from the tutorial itself.

[bobbystahr]

I would think that if you unclicked the the Enable button on that radio button in the Heightfield Shader it will go away but your Surface shaders will still be there, so just Add Terrain>Heightfield Load and select the .ter file and when rendered should have all the colours from the tute....s'what I'd do in any case.. ...

[ASH33M]

I can open a .ter file no problem using the following from the menu Add Terrain > Heightfield Load then select .ter file.

Then I can view the terrain in the top right view window, what I do notice is when I do open a .ter file that the terrain is square block with sloaping sides on all 4 sides is this normal, these sloaping sides are these included in the render or is this just for general view, when opening a .ter file using v0.9.043 the view that you look at is from the top, is this possibe in tg2 if so will you still see these sloaping sides or will you see it just like in v0.9.043

[ASH33M]

Once I have opened a .ter file and start to use the tutorial by Ben the terrain soon starts to dissapear maybe because of the parameters, is it something that maybe I'm doing wrong, or should I start at a different point in the tutorial once I have opened up a .ter file, not sure what I'm doing wrong.

[bobbystahr]

I have no idea why it disappears...a mystery here but to get rid of that edge go to the Border blending sloder on the Add Terrains Tab and slowly slide it to the right till the edge disappears.. ...

[ASH33M]

How easy is it to post screenshots on the forum, and can these be uploaded from your desktop?