Terragen Classic to v3 noob questions

[leaston]

Hi,

I used to use Terragen Classic a lot back in the good old days and have just grabbed a copy of Terragen 3 with a view to buying a license.

Aside from some basics, there is very little I can relate to in the new version after becoming reasonably experienced with Classic. I guess this is mostly about the gui and change to workflow than the underlying concepts.

I have a few questions about the new version...

I still have many files from Classic (worlds, terrains etc.) and wondered if these could be used in the new version? Is it backwards compatible in this respect?

If I bought Creative to begin with, is there an upgrade path if I wanted to add animation later? How about documentation and tutorials for the new version? Are these available as it seems like I have a steep learning curve ahead of me?

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Leaston

[Dune]

You've done a good thing getting TG3. It's much, much more versatile. But files aren't compatible. Terrains (.ter) can be imported in TG3, worlds cannot.
I can't imagine upgrade being a problem, but I can't speak for the staff.
You'll have a steep learning curve to begin with, but help is here and there are lots of .tgd files and tutorials to be found and studied on this forum. Best way is to start learning to work in the node network, by the way. You'll end up there anyway.
Any questions; just post.

[leaston]

Thanks for the reply.

Even being able to reuse old terrains will help, so thanks for that.

I'm just reading around the documents and looking at how everything is laid out. It's all very different and far more complex than Classic, but the gallery images for the newer versions of TG speak volumes about the capabilities of it.

[Oshyan]

As you may have found, documentation is here: http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/
Some parts are still a work in progress but we have a lot of great content there, and we're improving it all the time.

In addition, if you buy any version of Terragen 3, you get a full set of introductory video tutorials created by Geekatplay Studios. You can see the first few videos in the set here: http://www.geekatplay.com/dt3.php

Upgrade pricing for all versions of Terragen can be found here: http://planetside.co.uk/buy/tg3-price-list
As you can see, if you owned a license of Terragen Classic (0.9x), you can even get a discount on Terragen 3, and there is also an upgrade path to all higher versions.

Regarding the changes in user interface and workflow, it is certainly very different, but if you focus on the node list on the left side, you should find it fairly familiar from your Terragen Classic days, it works similarly. Think of the "Layout" buttons on the top (Objects, Terrain, Shaders, etc.) as corresponding to the left-side buttons in Classic, except instead of opening new windows, they take you to views of the node list and node network that focus on that particular aspect of the scene. But just like in TG Classic, if you go to Terrain, you'll see the things that affect your terrain (in the case of Terragen 3 you can have an unlimited number of terrains, instead of just 1, so it's more complicated, but can be used in just as simple a manner as Classic if you prefer). The main difference is that "Shaders" (like Surface Maps in Classic) are managed separately, in another Layout. Objects are of course a new addition. The other layouts follow similar approaches, with greater flexibility in the system meaning greater complexity (multiple lakes under Water for example), but ultimately a similar underlying concept. The new Node Network and its functions can be important with time, but you really can just focus on the node lists on the left and get quite a lot done.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

- Oshyan