Check out our dedicated Video Tutorials page.

Additional text tutorials can be found in our documentation wiki.

Tutorial 1: Creating Your First Scene
A step-by-step tutorial on how to create a basic Terragen 4 scene.

Tutorial 2: Adding a Lake
A guide to adding a lake to a Terragen scene.

The following vendors provide products that are compatible with Terragen, including object files in supported formats, Terragen clip and scene files, textures, terrain files, and more.

Xfrog
Developers of Xfrog organic modeling software and high quality plant models. Available in native TGO format. Many free models are available.

Silva3D
High-quality plant models and more. Includes many free downloads.

Virtual landscapes
Presets and complete scenes from expert Terragen artist Luc Bianco.

These render farm services can help you render high resolution images and lengthy animations quickly and affordably.

PixelPlow

PixelPlow is the official Planetside Software render farm. They offer the lowest prices in the industry and advanced features like dynamic priority adjustment, automatic frame download, sophisticated frame render lists (e.g. render frames 1, 5, and 10-20), and budget limiting, as well as Terragen-specific features such as automatic GI cache handling which are unmatched by any other render farm. PixelPlow provides affordable Terragen rendering services and excellent support. Read more about PixelPlow’s support of Terragen on our partnership page.

Garage Farm

An affordable render farm with broad application support and special pricing for charities and educational projects.

Tools for managing the distribution of renders on multiple render nodes. Terragen has command line rendering functionality which can be used with many 3rd party render managers.

Virtual Vertex Muster
Muster 9+ supports distributing “sliced” high resolution images across multiple render nodes, with automatic stitching into a single finished image.

DrQueue

Thinkbox Software Deadline

HTCondor

Backburner (click here for Terragen Backburner Instructions)

SquidNet

Applications that are dedicated to terrain modeling and conversion. All of these applications output data in Terragen compatible formats.

WorldCreator ( Win / Mac )
World Creator is the successor to Geocontrol (which is no longer officially available). It is a powerful GPU-driven terrain generation program with a wide range of options for manipulating your terrain in both procedural and explicit ways. It is highly responsive and interactive, making terrain development very fast, and encouraging experimentation. World Creator imports and exports many formats, including Terragen terrain files.

Gaea ( Win )
A powerful and modern terrain generator and editor created by Quadspinner, makers of the popular Geoglyph World Machine plugin. Node network and layer-based workflow, rapid development pace, high quality features, modern UI.

World Machine ( Win )
World Machine is a terrain generator with a Terragen-like node-based interface. It has some excellent erosion filters which make for realistic terrains. It can save to several formats, including Terragen terrain files.

Leveller ( Win )
Heightfield editor/modeller/converter by Daylon Graphics. It can import and export Terragen terrain files, as well as many other formats.

Wilbur ( Win )
Program for manipulating and converting heighfield data in a variety of formats including Terragen terrain. Free download.

TerraPainter ( Win )
TerraPainter is a terrain editor which lets you create Terragen terrains by painting with a variety of brushes.

TerraMaker ( Win )
TerraMaker is an older terrain editor for Terragen terrains with a wide range of capabilities and interesting tools.

Utilities

Terrify & Terrain Browser ( Win )
Two terrain-related applications from the same author. Terrify can be used to convert Terragen terrain files to RAW or Windows BMP formats. Terrain Browser displays a thumbnail view of Terragen terrain files. Visit the “Delphi Programs” page to download.

TerraConv ( Win )
TerraConv is a freeware program for converting Terragen terrains into image file formats readable by image editing programs and image files back into Terragen terrains. TerraConv supports 16 bit color depth so you do not lose any altitude resolution in the process.

GIS Applications

The following software works with GIS data and can export to formats compatible with Terragen. Terragen has good support for a variety of GIS formats and georeferencing, beginning with version 3, however vector data is not currently supported, and more advanced operations such as blending and merging, manual projection transforms, etc. should be performed with dedicated tools before exporting to Terragen for visualization.

Global Mapper ( Win )
Global Mapper from is a 3D GIS (Geographical Information System) mapping application with GPS tracking that can read many common GIS file types (including DEMs). It can export Terragen terrains.

LandSerf ( Win / Mac )
LandSerf is a freely available Java based GIS (Geographical Information System) application. It can import many common GIS file types ( including DEMs of various sorts ) and perform many GIS operations. Amongst other things, it can export Terragen terrain files.

Terragen has a strong user community, which we encourage you to participate in.

Discussion Groups

Planetside Software’s Official Terragen Forums

Our official Terragen forum community, full of active, helpful users, shared files and learning resources, and much more. You can also get support from the Planetside Staff and veteran Terragen users. This is the main area of discussion for Terragen.

Terragen Galleries Facebook Group
Less active than the main user forums, but a good amount of image posts and discussion.

Planetside Terragen Facebook Group (unofficial)
Another Facebook group for Terragen discussion.

3D Digital Landscapers Facebook Group
A group for posting and discussion of 3D digital landscape art from any application. A good amount of Terragen users also participate here.

TerraDreams
The largest German language Terragen community.