I'm a terragen bandwagoner + tag

[Shiny]

Finally made something I feel was decent. May render on a higher quality. Render settings were; 1280x960, detail - 0.7, a/a - 3. Adjusted samples in the atmosphere and the sunlight detail. Took 9 minutes, on a Phenom II 3.2ghz, quad core. So not too shabby :wink:.

 

Anyway:

Downsized.

 

Tag, text in your style, Nadril <3:. I feel like a cheat.

 

Used similar post processing techniques in Photoshop. And on another note, anyone want to constructively critique this tag?

 

[Nadril]

You need a texture map (surface map) on it shiny :P.

[Shiny]

I fully put one! The snow...?

[Nadril]

It looks like the blank default texture lol.

[Shiny]

I customized it a bit, the altitude, fuzzyness and coverage... Haha.

 

Any tips of explaining all the slope constraints and stuff?

[Nadril]

Slope/Altitude constraints are pretty easy.

 

I'll start with slope. Now lets take a random texture, grass. Grass in general will not grow on anything with more than a 70-75 degree or so slope (or rarely it will). Obviously this is due to not having any solid soil thus not having any support for the grass to grow. In Terragen the way you would do this is set up the maximum slope allowance for your "grass" texture to 70 degrees. (check the box too). This means that that texture will not show anywhere above a 70 degree slope. The value under it is essentially just the "leeway" the texture has. For example it would be unrealistic for grass to directly stop at 70 degrees so instead you make it so it sort of tappers out to like 80 or so.

 

The minimum slope is also the same idea, that texture won't show on anything higher than that slope.

 

 

Altitude is very much the same thing. I'll use two examples.

 

Lets take snow. Now in a mountain scene often times you may want it so that there is just snow capped peaks on the mountain, right? Well the idea would be to use the minimum alitutde and set it to around the area where you want the snow to start at. An easy way to do this is in your 3D preview right click on the mountain where you want it and "copy altitude". Then paste that altitude in the correct box. The other value is very much the same thing as slope.

 

The other example would be a beach. Obviously you don't want sand showing everywhere so you could set up a maximum altitude and set it to maybe a few hundred or so above sea level. That way you could also make a smooth transition between grass and sand.

 

 

Oh and on your textures the fractal shading is really solid in Terragen 2.