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Review: Terragen |
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 I have been quite idle lately and decided to write a little article about a program I've grown very fond of: Terragen. Since many Mac users are designers, layouters and the like I think this can be helpful.
I don't know how many of you have even heard the name of this small but powerful 3d program, but I'll just describe everything in detail.
It was two years ago, while i was looking for a tool to create realistic height maps to add some realism for my pictures when I stumbled upon a small and somehow ugly page that claimed to have a program in it's file vault that was _free_ and able to create photorealistic landscapes.
"Yeah, right", I said, and decided to check out the screenshots first. What I saw shocked me a little to say the least. Pictures like this. And when they said that it would be as easy as drag and drop to create them, again I was sceptic. I downloaded the software (which was availible only for PC back then) and tried it out myself. And after maybe one hour of work in getting to know what every button does and so on, I produced this and that doesn't look too bad, does it ?
To say the truth, it wasn't all drag and drop, but some numbers and a lot of playing around, too. But nonetheless it's far easier to use than, for example, Photoshop or Cinema 4d. It would lead too far to describe to you every program function now, but I guess if you look at the pictures in the gallery on their site and with what I said, the capabilities of the program should become clear to you all. Oh yeah, you can also make animations with it and so let the camera fly over the land you created.
The free version of Terragen features all functions of the registered version but one: The Super-High quality rendering and Anti-Aliasing. However, the registration fee is only 99$ for _full_ commercial usage and full support. I think that it is well worth it if you want to make some stunning designs for one of your customers.
Terragen is still in a test phase and the program itself, as well as the newest beta for the Mac, proved instable when I tested it, but not to the point that it really annoyed me. Besides, I'm allowed to use the program for my personal projects for free - I wish Maxon was like that.
I'll give this Software 4 out of 5 pants for now and full score whenever it is finished. A must have for every designer.
The Mac version of Terragen can be found here: http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/mac/
And here is a little preview of what will come with the next version of Terragen: http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tgd/tgd.html
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August 24 2004, 7:22 AM EDT, by |
Comments:
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| cAtraXx |
8/24/04, 7:52 AM EDT |
I'd like to add that although i'd like Maxon's products to be free, they're still a decent company and their products are worth the money.
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| nhmacusr |
8/24/04, 9:14 AM EDT |
Nice article. It looks to be definately worth the $99. Thanks for the review.
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| Jooblie |
8/24/04, 11:57 AM EDT |
I just looked at that sample pic again and can't believe the detail. If it can render craters that well I wonder what it can do for certain parts of women's anatomy?
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| cAtraXx |
8/25/04, 4:53 AM EDT |
Jooblie: If you take a look at the preview page (the last link i included) you'll notice that a task like that could surely be done much more accurately with Terragen 2.0. As for now, it would be quite a task to create a height map that resembles a womans body ...
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| Bluesman |
9/17/04, 2:23 PM EDT |
Hmmn - been there, done that.
I'm using Eric Wenger's ArtMatic Voyager. Much easier to use. Fast Rendering. And very impressive! $ 129. Demo available.
Take a look here: http://www.uisoftware.com/PAGES/index.html (click on "Software" and "Artmatic Voyager"
Don't miss the gallery.
Enjoy...
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I think a good scene in a movie would be where one scientist tells another scientist, "You know what will save the world? You're holding it in your hand." And the other scientist looks, and in his hand are peanuts. Then when he looks up, the first scientist is being taken away to the insane asylum.
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