I have always constructed my images as well as my content products using more than one tool and many more times than not, Terragen figures prominently in my Vue work.  Nothing will change for me with T2 and Vue 6...... in fact, I'm quite anxious to grab both!!

I scarcely ever make a Terragen picture though (beautiful but barren), and I so prefer the staging environment of Vue. I bought Carrara 5 when the first Vue/C5 comparisons and debates came about and it's done nothing but sit out in the cyber rain and get rusty. I just felt so crowded and cramped in that scene builder compared to Vue's wide open spaces. I am sure that T2 will certainly address Terragen's vast emptiness but  I am looking forward to it's remarkable texture making capabilities. Terragen is my Vue texture generator.

Nothing beats that fractal distribution of color in Terragen's surface editor for realism.  Just a 3 or 4 level variation of grays in Terragen makes a most convincing rock material in Vue.  And it's so easy.  I use it to harvest the base textures of all my Vue mats. It's also a great source for distribution maps and alphas. I couldn't be without it and T2 is going to be a mat maker's dream.

I've been knocked out of commission by summer's real life so it's great to get excited by our craft again if even for a short break.....

HOW TO HARVEST TEXTURES IN TERRAGEN    Try it..you'll like it!

.open up Terragen and don't make a terrain. Leave it black.

.move the altitude of the camera up to 100m or beyond to your pleasure

. make the pitch angle minus -90 degrees

.eliminate fog, atmospheric haze and blue

.raise the sun's pitch to almost perpendicular or to taste

. make or load your surface file and take a nice render and save. Move the camera about and go texture shopping lol!

DISTRIBUTION MAPS

You can even take that same Terragen render and make natural looking distribution maps from it.

Take the render into PSP or Photoshop or other paint tool of choice and...

.make black and white by adjusting the threshold

.blur with a gaussian blur

OR...

.gaussian blur first to a degree of 3 or so and then adjust threshold. Makes for bigger more generalized distributions...

 

M