The Default Scene Explained

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Revision as of 22:52, 25 September 2018 by JavaJones (talk | contribs) (The Terrain)
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When you open Terragen, you will immediately see a terrain with a simple mountain in front of you and a flat area closer to the camera. This is the Default Scene. It is intended to give you a starting point for working in Terragen and to show you a basic example of what a Terragen scene looks like. Although it is a simple scene, there are some techniques used in its construction that may not be immediately intuitive. Below we'll explain in brief how this scene is setup.

The Camera[edit]

The camera in the Default Scene is positioned in a flattened area of the terrain (which we'll look at in the next section) and is 10 meters off the ground. It is facing a mountain and is -30 meters from the coordinate origin along the Z axis. If you switch to a Top View camera, it will appear that nothing is visible as everything is gray, but this is simply because the terrain around the camera is flattened. If you move the camera upward or zoom out from the Top View starting point, you will see the rest of the terrain come into view (see the Navigation Panel and Terragen Input Settings Reference for details on camera movement).

The Terrain[edit]

The terrain setup is the most complex part of the Default Scene. It is best to look at this in the node network window to clearly understand it, but the node list can also be used.

The Planet[edit]

The Atmosphere[edit]

The Light Sources[edit]

The Node Network Window is a part of the Terragen interface that shows the connections between nodes and their visual layout in the shading network. The Node Network Window is usually on the bottom-right of the Terragen interface, although when you switch to the Node Network Layout it occupies the entire right side.

The Node List is a part of the Terragen interface that shows a list of nodes along the left side of the application window. The Node List generally shows only those nodes that are relevant to the current Layout (e.g. Terrain, Atmosphere). It sometimes includes buttons or other controls that are specific to a particular Layout as well. The Node List is hierarchical and each level is collapsible.