06/May/2004, Matt Fairclough Primary development of Terragen will now be based on Planetside Software's TGD technology. TGD is so named because it is the fourth incarnation of Terragen, and is a significant advance beyond Terragen v0.9. TGD is a complete rewrite of Terragen from scratch, and enables us to further develop the software much more quickly. Cutting-edge adaptive subdivision renderer. Modular, plugin-based architecture. Render entire planets, sweeping vistas, tiny rock gardens, or anything in between. Import 3D objects for rendering. Export high resolution objects. Render millions of boulders or trees using "instancing"; even billions of virtual objects (in development) Add multiple heightfields to your scene. Use 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. Volumetric clouds or fast "2.5D" clouds. Production quality anti-aliasing and motion blur. The core technology in TGD was used to render planets for Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002 (article in Cinefex 93) and is now being relied upon for hundreds of CG terrain shots in a big budget film for 2005.