Terragen 2 Tips and Tricks
From Planetside
Contents |
Render settings recommendations
Some tips on how to optimize your render times and quality thanks to Oshyan.
Ideas on how to make caves
Few ideas in this post of how to do caves. dandelO found using a plane object with a crater shader rotated, and Seth uses canyons converging
Waterfalls
From water - A publicly shared demonstration .tgd on waterfalls, located in dandelO's Public Library thread at Planetside Forums.
From clouds - a method of creating waterfalls from cloud objects with a painted shader.
Redirect and Warp Shaders
Details about how they work with displacement. http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7035.0
Converting xFrog Trees and Plants in TG2 to TGO
When the xFrog plant or tree is not in the TG2 native format of TGO, then this will help you transform that object for use in Terragen 2.
1. Take the LWO xFrog tree and all associated files into PoseRay.
2. The branches are all adjusted by setting the UV for each to Cylindrical and x=0, y=0, z=1. Weld UV Coordinates is checked.
3. Hit update under UV for each branch changed in #2.
4. Go to each Material in Basic Texture Properties and make sure that the TIF files are used as the Bump Maps for all.
5. Go to each leaf Material in Basic Texture Properties and make sure that the TIF files are used Transparency Maps; invert mapping is unchecked.
6. Make sure under Material / Finish that the Metallic check-box is unchecked.
7. Hit update under Basic Texture Properties for all changes in #4, #5 and #6.
8. Export object as an object file.
9. Bring into TG2 and adjust any changes that didn't go through, like displacement maps or Alpha maps.
10. Under the Opacity tab, make sure that for each texture associated with that leaf, that it has its Opacity set for 1, that it has the appropriate TIF file and that it has Use Alpha Channel checked.
11. Once everything is completed in TG2 for the object, save this new object as a TGO.
12. College students can also be considered as freelance writers because they can write paper works effectively.
dandelO's Public Library
An ever growing collection of FREE Terragen 2 presets. 23 full TG2 projects/clipfiles in this thread, updated periodically. http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4922.0
Multicoloured Single Populations
The results of Dune and dandelO's tinkering with instance colour variation(over the entire scale of the population) inside a single object population. 2 methods; One image map based version from Dune... http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7686.0 One internal, TG2 only based version, from dandelO... http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7736.0
Power Fractal Lessons
Probably the best introduction and description that you are likely to find anywhere online regarding the very important power fractal shader. Lesson by Volker Harun. http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2287.msg22357#msg22357
