StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Been playing around again with Terragen which is a program for rendering landscape scenes. You can even take USGS topo maps and convert them into nice pictures.


Random water scene





Mt. McKinley in Alaska





NE shore of Kuai

Are you using the registered version?

Nope, just the standard freeware version. I'll probably upgrade to the registered version once I get my new computer.

I'm assuming the Mckinley pic is done by terragen?

Water and clouds on Mars, because I can.

They all look generated. Something just doesn't sit right in my head when it's terragen.

AnimeJet wrote:They all look generated. Something just doesn't sit right in my head when it's terragen.

The problem I'm having is terrain textures, I'm just using the defaults and haven't got them figured out yet. Given more practice you can get more realistic scenes like this one

They all look computer generated, but to be fair, I've been playing around with Terragen for a while so I have a good idea what they should look like. (I don't really aim for perfect realism as much as cool looking, possibly SF-ish scenes.)

Still look nice, though.

aerius wrote:

AnimeJet wrote:They all look generated. Something just doesn't sit right in my head when it's terragen.

The problem I'm having is terrain textures, I'm just using the defaults and haven't got them figured out yet. Given more practice you can get more realistic scenes like this one

TBH, even that looks generated to me. Something about the way the grass sits on the side of the cliffs. -shrugs-

It's still damn good, though, aerius. Keep it up!

[EDIT] "It's" being your pics as a whole.

A good give away is the water and grainy look on the terrain, can almost tell its just a bump map and not true geometry the way it has the plastic feel to it from the light. Has that cyran wrap type lighting.

Any practical applications?

HemlockGrey wrote:Any practical applications?

Fake vacation pictures. Make a custom scene of say Hawaii and then Photoshop yourself into the picture.

But seriously, a more advanced version of the technology is used to generate the terrain in some sci-fi shows & movies, as well as to do fly-by animations and those cool martian rover scenes.

verilon wrote:

aerius wrote:

AnimeJet wrote:They all look generated. Something just doesn't sit right in my head when it's terragen.

The problem I'm having is terrain textures, I'm just using the defaults and haven't got them figured out yet. Given more practice you can get more realistic scenes like this one

TBH, even that looks generated to me. Something about the way the grass sits on the side of the cliffs. -shrugs-

It's the lighting that gives it away. Everything just looks kinda plasticy to me. The Kuai pic looks almost real, mostly because of the fog that covers most of the lighting effects. But then the sky doesn't mesh and it just looks awkward.

AnimeJet wrote:It's the lighting that gives it away. Everything just looks kinda plasticy to me. The Kuai pic looks almost real, mostly because of the fog that covers most of the lighting effects. But then the sky doesn't mesh and it just looks awkward.

Yeah. On the ones with water, Terragen almost always seems to give it a cellophane look. On rocky stuff, it's either too smooth or too flat. But that's just my perception.

Honestly.. Terragen isn't that great. It all looks clearly fake.

What *does* work pretty well sometimes is Bryce. But that thing is EVIL to try and use.