Planetside’s Terragen

Terragen is a software for Windows and Mac that renders photorealistic landscapes based purely on the user’s imagination. I find it very easy to use, so don’t worry (: Here’s a quick guide to shoot through. I’m still a relatively new user, so there’s much to explore so this guide is made by someone who doesn’t know how to use it to its limits yet.

Run Terragen first, then choose the colour for your landscape. I’ll take grey as my base colour here.

Before you start sculpting the landscape, choose your camera angle. A focal length-like function can be tweaked later.

Okay, start sculpting the landscape now. Just brush over with your own imagination. THe more strokes you make over the same area, the higher it will be. Right-click and it works opposite.

Add water if you want to. Just increase the water level to a positive numeral.

Choose the colour of the water. More effects like foam and reflection can also be customized to your taste.

Now there’s water.

Okay, the atmosphere. Choose the hue for your atmosphere, or rather the shade of blue. Light decay and Simple Haze you see here is good for creating moods.

Now, clouds. Just click on Generate Clouds and play with the sliders.

Nicer now.

Lighting… It’s all up to you. What mood do you want to create, what do you want to express here, what time of a day, it’s all simulated here. Remember you can also create morning fogs and other effects here.

Finally, touch ups, especially at the camera settings. Remember to choose the correct altitude and pitch angle for an optimum view of your landscape. Also, choose the highest quality settings, also under render settings, for your final image.

And there it is! Done in under 15 minutes. Notice how nicely it’s rendered the reflections and shore foam. I kinda messily cloned out the black parts of the horizon that was in the original rendering. This was enhanced in Photoshop CS3, just like the following two other renderings.

Mountain range, a river at sunrise, some fresh morning fog was inspiration.

Winter at a frozen lake with mountains.

There you go! If you’re going “Oh crap, now I have to shell out more on software”, don’t. Terragen is free for personal home use. Give it a try, it’s really simple to use, I mean it. To download directly from Planetside, click here and select your Operating System to download the file.