Terragen

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Hey all, I decided to mess around with Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/) again and suddenly realised i could do some fun stuff with the QCD logo. So Rex Mundi presents "the QCD island" :)

Mapview1: QCDisland1 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/quinnware/qcdisland.jpg)

Mapview2: QCDisland2 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/quinnware/qcdisland3.jpg)

Perspective view: QCDisland3 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/quinnware/qcdisland2.jpg)

For the map view renders i had to increase the contrast significantly which did make them look much better, but also enhanced some bits that perhaps should have remained inobstrusive. Also the colour of the water sort of turned blackish. But...enough of this ramble...enjoy the wallpapers! :cool:

I dare anyone to do better :P

[Heigar]

I dare anyone to do better :P

Ooh, a dare,I just might have to see what I can do about that!:grin:

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Here is another terragen render done by me, quick and dirty: Twilight Zone (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/twilightzone.jpg) Good for wallpaper. :apple:

[Young Twig]

I've made a few back in the day. :)

1 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v176/youngtwig/Crap/Terragen/1.jpg) / 2 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v176/youngtwig/Crap/Terragen/2.jpg) / 3 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v176/youngtwig/Crap/Terragen/3.jpg)

[Willow of Oz]

anyone ever use a cool little prog called Vistapro? This was some time ago, but this Terragon is bringing back memories.

[Roj]

anyone ever use a cool little prog called Vistapro? This was some time ago, but this Terragon is bringing back memories.

I remember that software. i downloaded a bunch of images done with it - I'm a collector of raytraced images.

[rorythedog]

anyone ever use a cool little prog called Vistapro? This was some time ago, but this Terragon is bringing back memories.

I used Vistapro on my Amiga. Years ago. Excellent program.

[Willow of Oz]

Ah, an art connoisseur, Roj?

I dabbled in Vistapro *quite* some time ago, moved onto Povray, then pretty much stopped for no reason at all.

Here's a small pic of a clock I did so many years ago, and several generations of PC ago, that I can't believe it's on my harddrive.
The original was rendered in povray with AA and, I believe, experimental radiosity on an old 486sx-25 for 6 days (but paused half the time, so prob 3 days of cpu). Maybe that's why I stopped? :-) Though I did start povving a lego vehicle I had made (but only got halfway).

[eccod]

Terragen is fun!
I like the QCD island.

I've made a couple for my website, you can see them here (http://www.t0xicwaste.com/html/terragen.html). :silly:

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Here are two more:

Mountain peaks of doom (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/mountain2doom.jpg)

Snowy mountain (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/mountain2.jpg)

[moose]

can someone give me a decent quick tutorial on how to use terragen?

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Well it's really easy. You start Terragen and you are presented with a window for building the ground. You can generate a ground with mountains. You can edit this and lower or elevate the ground. Default the water level is at -300m. So you need to dig 300m below 'sea level' to get some water in your world. You can add a 'child' (is what a terrain layer is called) and make some grass by choosing the green colour in the properties of the child. There are other settings as well, which are fairly straight forward. Just mess around with it. The other window is where all the action takes place. You can position the camera anywhere in your rendered world and preview what it would look like. Everytime you change something, like add more layers of 'grass' and 'rock', you want to preview the outcome before doing the actual render at a desired resolution (which takes time!) I can render a world at 1152*864 in about 10 mins unless the world doesnt have much textures, water or clouds. This brings me to the other windows. You can edit the atmosphere, water, and sunlight. Just mess around with them and see what setting generates what effect in your rendered world. You will realise that even changing some basic elements already allows you to create a beautiful world.

There are additional plugins for example 'waterworks' that allows you to change even more settings and to make things even more real.

In short, just mess around with the programme a bit and you'll see its not at all difficult to understand how it works. Im sure there ways to create neat effects using a combination of settings. I know little about this because i always just click stuff, do a preview render and then think 'hey, this looks nice!'. Maybe someone else has any tips concerning this.

Good luck!

[moose]

i made one, tell me what ya think, oh and how did you do the awesome qcd logo?
http://images.opticalgaming.com/userfiles/moose/wow1.jpg

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

It's good for a start. The water comes out real nice doesnt it :P.

The way i imported the qcd logo is first to cut it in paint shop pro 9 from a wallpaper. Then I only selected the logo itself and not what's inside it. Cut it again and paste it in a new image with dark gray background. Grayscale the whole thing. Invert image. Save as a raw file in 265*265 or later 512*512 when i realised terragen will allow to import that resolution as well. The import button is in the same window where you can generate landscapes. What is white is raised, what is black is lowered. Tada! 3D model of qcd which is converted to a landscape. :cool:

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

Okay, forget what i rendered before. These next three landscape renders with the qcd logo (!) will amaze you and whats more they are very nice desktop wallpapers too :P

QCD Sunset (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/quinnware/qcdsunset.jpg)

QCD Lake (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/quinnware/qcdlake.jpg)

QCD Ice (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v405/RMI/quinnware/qcdice.jpg)

ENJOY!! :cool: :grimreape

[madjo]

I like 'the lake' the most of those three :)

[moose]

It's good for a start. The water comes out real nice doesnt it :P.

The way i imported the qcd logo is first to cut it in paint shop pro 9 from a wallpaper. Then I only selected the logo itself and not what's inside it. Cut it again and paste it in a new image with dark gray background. Grayscale the whole thing. Invert image. Save as a raw file in 265*265 or later 512*512 when i realised terragen will allow to import that resolution as well. The import button is in the same window where you can generate landscapes. What is white is raised, what is black is lowered. Tada! 3D model of qcd which is converted to a landscape. :cool:
that didnt work, just tried it with my avatar

[moose]

my second landscape:
http://images.opticalgaming.com/userfiles/moose/wow_snow_mountains1024.jpg

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

that didnt work, just tried it with my avatar

My bad. I said 512*512 and you should resize your avatar to 513*513. Also make sure this the map size you specified in Terragen. Save your avatar as a *.raw file, grayscale. In terragen click on 'import' and select your raw file. If the size is correct, then it will work. But yours has a very high contrast, you might consider adding shades of gray or a gray texture in the background that sorta looks like hills or mountains. Remember black = low, white = high terrain.

[moose]

oh ok, i will try that soon, but i cant right now, maybe friday, btw both of those that i posted are 1600x1200, i just re-sized them for the forum

[gsb521]

oh ok, i will try that soon, but i cant right now, maybe friday, btw both of those that i posted are 1600x1200, i just re-sized them for the forum

Still rather large on my computer. http://quinnware.com/forum/images/emots/grin.gif