COMPANY: Planetside Software | URL: www.planetside.co.uk | TYPE: Standalone | PLATFORM: Mac, Windows | PRICE: Free/varies
Now available: Terragen 2 Atmosphere and Sunset packs from New World Digital Art.
Planetside Terragen™ 2 is a powerful solution for rendering and animating realistic natural environments. Create entire worlds from your imagination, or import real world terrain datasets and use Terragen 2 to create the most realistic visualisations possible. You control the weather, landscape, rivers, lakes and oceans, suns, moons and stars.

With Terragen 2 you have complete control over the shader networks used for terrains, textures, micropolyon displacements, clouds and object distributions. You can reorganise the planetary shading pipeline to suit your goals. Place grass and trees wherever you want, as well as other objects in OBJ format that you can model in third party software. It's easy to find great plants and objects modelled by other Terragen users or elsewhere on the web.

Terragen is not a game engine; it has a sophisticated film- and broadcast-quality renderer and procedural modelling tools designed so that you can create the most realistic images possible without taking a photograph. Nor is it a general-purpose 3D program designed to render everything. Planetside has dedicated more than a decade to specialising in algorithms that simulate skies, outdoor lighting, terrain textures, and to render extremely large and detailed terrains. Terragen 2 puts those algorithms in your control. When you need CG environments that don't look CG, Terragen 2 will help you get there. If you want to go beyond reality, Terragen 2 is a toolbox with infinite possibilities.

Features and benefits:

•Hybrid micropolygon renderer optimised for large displacements and very large landscapes
•Render entire planets, sweeping vistas, tiny rock gardens, or anything in between
•Export high resolution objects from displaced surfaces
•Import 3D objects for rendering
•Render millions of plants and other objects using instancing. Billions of virtual polygons are handled with ease
•Add multiple heightfields, textures and displacement maps to your scene
•Georeferencing options; automatic georeferencing for properly formatted GeoTIFF files
•Procedural terrains that can span an entire planet
•Apply almost "infinite" fractal detail to terrain and other objects
•Overhanging terrain using procedural displacements, image-based displacements, or imported geometry
•3D painting of colors and masks that can control almost anything in the scene
•Photorealistic atmosphere and sunlight
•Volumetric clouds or fast "2.5D" clouds
•Global illumination, multiple scattering in volumetrics, full light interaction between volumetrics and surfaces
•Production quality anti-aliasing and motion blur that renders quickly and efficiently
•High dynamic range output; generate photorealistic environment maps and IBL sources
•Node graph editor for ultimate control over shaders and textures
•Flexible planetary shading pipeline
•Animation of almost any parameter with the optional Animation module

Atmospherics

Terragen was the first application to give artists a photorealistic Earth-like sky and sunlight simulation that was easy to use. Terragen 2 takes this much further with a spherical planet model, more accurate lighting, volumetric cloud and fog layers which can be controlled by custom shader networks, all rendered with multiple scattering and global illumination.

Using TG2's flexible node system you can create virtually any type of cloud, from wispy stratus and cirrus, to billowing cumulus and towering thunderheads, or even fog and mist. Use unlimited cloud layers in your scenes for absolute realism. Choose between true 3D volumetric clouds, or hybrid "2.5D" clouds for faster rendering with less demanding cloud forms. Enjoy full control over the look of your clouds and atmosphere, including strength and color, red shift, haze density, and more, allowing you to create everything from the sublimely beautiful, to the out-of-this-world. Easily add stars, backgrounds, or even whole planets to your skies.

Achieve beautifully realistic sunsets in seconds by simply adjusting the sun angle, with a real-world atmosphere model taking care of the rest. When you're working with a fully simulated global environment, objects and effects interact like you'd expect them to, so sophisticated effects like "god-rays" or even solar eclipses are remarkably easy to achieve.

Whether you need beautiful results quickly, or absolute control of every detail, Terragen 2 gives you the tools you need for unparalleled skies.

Lighting

Terragen 2 features realistic sunlight(s), local light sources that can illuminate anything, ray-traced soft shadows, global illumination that enables full lighting interaction between surfaces, atmospheres and clouds, and ambient occlusion options. The quality of global illumination or ambient occlusion can be adjusted to find the right trade-off between render times and lighting quality. Our goal is to give you the right balance of lighting as quickly as possible, and then give you controls to tweak individual lighting contributions to perfect your art.

HDR environments rendered by Terragen 2 can be used as image-based light sources and reflection environments in other renderers. Terragen 2's HDR sun and skylight system is both inspired by nature and sensitive to the needs of visual effects in practice. The sun is as bright as the sun - much better than in HDR photography - and you can control its size without affecting its total contribution to the scene in order to get the best quality results in the destination renderer.

Terrain

Terragen 2 allows you to create and manipulate highly realistic terrains, both heightfield and procedural. You can load existing heightfields to replicate real-world terrains and gain additional control by using a 3rd party terrain editor, or leverage the powerful built-in procedural functions to achieve global-scale terrains of nearly infinite detail, from the smallest pebble, to the largest mountains. You can combine the benefits of both terrain types in one scene, seamlessly. Even your heightfield terrains can be enhanced with the power and flexibility of procedurals.

Using 3D procedural functions, go beyond the limits of heightfields to create truly realistic terrains, including sheer cliffs and even overhangs. Let your imagination run wild and create out-of-this-world terrains.

Georeferencing of digital elevation data is a snap. This works automatically with certain GeoTIFFs, including those downloaded from the National Map Seamless Server, an excellent resource from the USGS. Lat-long values can be entered manually if automatic georeferencing is unavailable or needs to be adjusted. Fractal details can be added automatically to imported elevation data.

Objects

Terragen 2 includes support for rendering of complex, fully textured objects. Add life to your scenes with models of houses, trees, custom-designed rocks, or any other object. Objects can have an unlimited number of polygons and textures, constrained only by available memory. With your objects loaded into your scene, you can then apply any of Terragen 2's surfacing effects and procedural shaders to enhance the look of your texturing.

With a fully realized and powerful instancing system you can take your use of objects to a whole new level, and achieve highly realistic results. With Terragen 2's "Populators", you can add thousands or even millions of trees, rocks, birds, blades of grass, or any other object to your scene. You can instance any object that you can load. Terragen 2's population system makes it possible to render literally billions, even trillions of polygons in a single scene!

Animation

With the optional Animation module, Terragen 2 becomes a virtual movie camera. Almost every parameter in a Terragen 2 project can be animated over time, not just the camera. This can be used to render dramatic fly-throughs, time-lapse effects and more.

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The Animation module is still being developed, so Planetside is offering it as a pre-purchase option, but many animation features are already available now if you pre-purchase the Animation module. You can key-frame parameters, import key frame values from text files and render image sequences from the user interface or frame by frame from a command line. Camera paths are plotted. You can preview fly-throughs in real time in the 3D Preview.

In 2009 Planetside will add a graphical curve/key-frame editor, more interpolation options and powerful import/export functions. These will be released in free updates for anyone who pre-purchases the Animation module.

Import/Export

Many applications now support Terragen's native heightfield format, .TER, so transferring terrains between Terragen 2 and your other applications is never a problem. Terragen 2 can also export heightfield data to .EXR and import it from a wide range of image formats.

Procedural terrains can be exported in two ways: as a view-dependent triangle mesh in LWO format or by converting to a raster heightfield which is easily saved as .TER or .EXR. View-dependent triangle meshes allow you to choose exactly where you want to transfer geometry to your other applications and how much detail you want.

Camera motion can be imported from Nuke .chan files and Maya .mov files. Third party tools are available that allow you to transfer camera motion to Terragen 2 from Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema 4D, Blender and others.

Soon Planetside will add support for FBX files to provide an extremely smooth import/export experience with many other applications. FBX capabilities will be available in free updates of Terragen 2 Deep Edition.

Renderer

At the heart of Terragen 2 is an advanced hybrid micropolygon renderer. It is capable of rendering surfaces with extreme procedural displacement and produces images and animations with production quality anti-aliasing and motion blur*. Procedural or image-based shaders can build complex surfaces from simple objects, relying on the renderer's adaptive subdivision algorithms to dynamically adjust to extreme stretching and creasing.

Terragen 2 blurs the distinction between geometry and displacement that is common in most high end production renderers, making it an ideal solution for highly complex natural objects such as terrain. While the emphasis is on rendering procedural surfaces with extremely high detail, image-based textures and imported geometry are also supported, and the resulting surfaces can be exported at various resolutions in popular 3D object formats. Billions of polygons can be rendered through the use of instancing. Import objects and certain types of built-in objects can be instanced using the population tools.

The renderer is multi-threaded to take advantage of multi-core and multi-processor computers. Terragen 2 Deep Edition can be executed from a command line and is designed to render in network rendering environments using third party network render managers.

High dynamic range color space is used throughout the renderer - Terragen 2 is not afraid of very bright pixels! Output image formats include EXR, BMP, TIF, SGI RGB.

*Motion blur requires the Animation Module or a pre-purchased license for the Animation Module

Shaders

Terragen 2 uses a sophisticated shader system to enable complex texturing and surface manipulation. A multitude of built-in shaders are available to build compelling, realistic surfaces, or you can go to town with custom function networks that can control color textures, displacement shaders, masking functions, object distributions and more. The pre-defined shaders cover a wide variety of effects, including specular, reflectivity, and transparency, enabling highly realistic water effects. Shaders can also affect the displacement of surfaces, adding detail and realism to the terrain.

Shaders can be used to mask other shaders, and multiple shaders can be blended together in an infinite variety of ways to recreate the diviserity of the natural world. While Terragen 2's strength is in procedural functions, you can also load external image maps to apply to any part of your scene, mixing them seamlessly with your procedural textures. Shaders can also be applied to objects, so you can leverage the power of Terragen 2's procedural functions to add realism and detail to your imported objects.

Basic shader control can be handled with ease through a streamlined heirarchical node list, but the true power of the system lies in the node network, where you can create completely unique effects through free-form shader network construction. The basic shaders provide familiar and easy to use texturing controls, tailored to the needs of terrain. When you need more control to create a complex effect, a full set of mathematical building block nodes is provided to construct your own shaders.

Of course Terragen 2 is not limited to pure realism. You can create unique and bizarre effects with creative use of the normal shaders, and go well beyond the boundaries of our normal reality with use of the function nodes. Terragen 2 provides truly endless possibilities in scene creation.

Scale

Terragen 2 is built around a full planet model, allowing you to build whole worlds of realistic, detailed terrain. We haven't neglected the other end of the spectrum though; Terragen 2 is equally adept at depicting small-scale details, with displacement down to the centimeter level, and a detailed lighting model allowing realistic rendering of close-in scenes.

With both large and small-scale detail possible in the same scene, you can go from orbit to ground level seamlessly and easily. Forget clumsy or obvious cuts and other cheats, Terragen 2 gives you all the freedom you need to realize your vision.