Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: Davion on July 24, 2008, 03:38:39 am
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(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/Winds.jpg)
Terragen (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/download.shtml) is a scenery generator for Windows and the Mac OS. Terragen is free for personal non-commercial use.
A general guide with tutorials (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/guide/) (older version)
List of other resources where you can find other tutorials (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/resources.shtml)
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If you're using the free version you're limited to a maximum of 513x513 height maps, if you're on a slower computer you may want to try a 129x129 or 257x257 height map. You can still make some nice stuff with it, there's not much that's disabled between the free and registered versions from what I can see. Anyway, here's how to get a DF world map into Terragen if you've never used it before:
Step 1: Enter Legends mode and choose the option to export a detailed map, you'll be confronted with this screen:
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/ExportStuff.jpg)
Navigate down to 'Elevations respecting lake and ocean floors' and hit Enter to export to your Dwarf Fortress folder.
Step 2: Terragen likes 24-bit uncompressed .TGA, or 8/16-bit .SGI images. Open up your newly exported image in your editor of choice and change the image size to 513x513 (more on this later).
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step1.jpg)
Save as an uncompressed 24-bit .TGA file, name it whatever you want.
Step 3: Open up Terragen and take a deep breath.
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step2.jpg)
Don't panic, we're only going to be dealing with this little area in the Landscape window:
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step3.jpg)
Step 4: Click "Size..." from the Landscape window and you'll be confronted with this:
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step4.jpg)
Click the 513 button at the top, this is going to set Terragen up for our 513x513 height map, click Yes to all of the questions that it asks before hitting Ok.
Step 5: Now click "Import..." in the Landscape window and you'll be confronted with this:
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step5.jpg)
Click "Select File and Import" and select your 513x513 24-bit uncompressed .TGA
Step 6: If nothing exploded, the Landscape and Render windows will look something like this:
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step6.jpg)
The blue is water, so we're going to have to edit that.
Step 7: Open up the Water options window (third icon from the top on the side bar):
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step7.jpg)
We're only concerned with the Water Level value at the top, so play with the numbers hitting "Update Maps" each time to see the changes in your Render/Landscape window. Mine looked about right at -870.m
Step 8: Once you have your water looking nice, it's time to check it out:
(http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/DavionShores/TerragenTutorial/Step8.jpg)
Make sure to ramp the Detail slider up all the way to the right if you're going to "Render Image". You can reposition the camera in the little mini-map by using your left and right mouse buttons. Sometimes you might have to fiddle with the Camera Position Z (alt) value because the camera can get a little weird as you move it around the landscape.
If you're going to Render Preview you might want to keep the Detail down.
You can "walk" around your map by hitting the 3D icon on the side bar, this is used as another way to set up the camera if that's more comfortable for you.
You can color your terrain through the Landscape window in the Surface area by adding children ("Add Child") or directly editing the default Surface Map, you can change bumpiness, limit colors based on elevation, etc. I am still trying to figure it all out.
If you want to scale down the elevations a bit you can click "Modify..." in the Landscape window after you've imported your height map and mess with the Height Range and Scale Vertical.
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So... are you saying that you've built a plugin for Terragen that takes DF map data, or just commenting on the world-making similarities, or...?
EDIT: Yes, I know the first post has now updated.
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I'm saying that with the new Legends export options you can import height maps into Terragen or any other terrain generating/displacement software very easily.
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Ha. I just posted some nice instructions for a simple height map viewer. I have no idea what software you've got running there or how to import maps into it, but it looks 10 times better.
(The one I found was intended for more of a viewing purpose at seeing the stratification of height, as one of the options is a grid--but it makes a nice topo map!)
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I'll get some kind of tutorial up and post it here. I still don't really know how to use it, I just fiddle with a lot of sliders lol But I can at least get something up that shows you how to import the height map and get the water level to where it should be
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Terragen is a neat application. I
torrented hypothetically acquired it, and just love screwing around with it, I've made a canyon with a river running through it with a nice sunset on the northeastern part, making a reflection/shadow meld that I like.
It's like a desktop background generator. With options.
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I torrented hypothetically acquired it
Sounds like how I end up with most of my nice things...
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Alright, tutorial is up.
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I torrented hypothetically acquired it
Sounds like how I end up with most of my nice things...
Hypothetically speaking of course ;)
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*bookmarked*
Going to try this once I have time, it has been a long time for me, playing with Terragen, maybe I could do something similar with the vue I have installed.
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I torrented hypothetically acquired it
Sounds like how I end up with most of my nice things...
Hypothetically speaking of course ;)
Hypothetically, of course.
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OFFTOPIC:
Kind Sir, I would ask a few question because I wanted to torrent hypothetically acquire some things.
1) Does the torrent hypothetical dl has hypothetical virus (euh) in them?
2)How you hypothetically acquired them?
3) Is it safe to hypothetically use them? (My country has now law currently about internet torrent hypothetical download)
Sorry for the off topic
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Why all the torrents? I got it by going to the company web site and clicking "download". The free version is plenty good for this application.
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Nay, I'm just asking about the
Torrent hypothetical of acquiring things, because everyone said it would be bad for mah system. It would be bad!!!
I want to know the truth...
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It's not polite to discuss such things here =).
Just take a quick talk in PM/icq and it's ok I hypotetically guess.
P.S. Everything is safe if you're doing it a safe way ;).
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It's not polite to discuss such things here =).
I don't see why piracy is such a taboo thing to speak about in public, unless the person(s) you are talking to happen to own a multi-million dollar company which loses business because of it. Hell, I could say that I own (counting ones long-deleted) over 100 pirated games (which I do), and the companies couldn't do anything to me because I'm anonymous. And I'm not stupid enough to give out my address in public.
Also, I'm pretty sure I sent a PM to IWM, I think. It's not showing up on the 'sent messages' part of 'my messages'.
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Nay, I'm just asking about the Torrent hypothetical of acquiring things, because everyone said it would be bad for mah system. It would be bad!!!
Hypothetically I would use a torrent tracker website that has user ratings of the downloads, such as www.isohunt.com. If you want to be super careful, check the rating and the comments on the torrent download link to see if anyone encountered a virus. I recently had a nasty run in while trying to avoid a torrent hypothetical download. FireFox is dead in the water for some reason. I've been having other minor issues with Windows recently and the machine is over 3.5 years old, so if reinstalling !!Fox!! doesn't work I'll be reinstalling Windows.
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Hypothetically I would use a torrent tracker website that has user ratings of the downloads, such as www.isohunt.com. If you want to be super careful, check the rating and the comments on the torrent download link to see if anyone encountered a virus. I recently had a nasty run in while trying to avoid a torrent hypothetical download. FireFox is dead in the water for some reason. I've been having other minor issues with Windows recently and the machine is over 3.5 years old, so if reinstalling !!Fox!! doesn't work I'll be reinstalling Windows.
www.demonoid.com Is the best tracker, because they actually moderate their torrents instead of it being a cesspool of viruses. Just the other day a torrent that ended up being a huge system fryer was deleted about 3 minutes after it was submitted. Great moderation.
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I'm not sure why this "hypothetical" discussion has arisen here.
When I clicked on the Terragen link in the first post, and went to the "download for Windows" section, I saw this:
Terragen is free for personal non-commercial use. In this case registration is optional, but it entitles you to additional benefits and removes the restriction on image size.
(http://pickupsticks.co.uk/stasis/smilies/yes.gif)
PS: shhh! You never know who will be listening...
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(http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9968/mountainviewwq9.th.jpg) (http://img402.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mountainviewwq9.jpg)
Here's a render I did looking west from my current fort. The largest human civ with about 35 cities to the right of the ocean, straight ahead, on top of the closest mountain is a goblin nation, to the left in the bumpy parts live the elves that didn't get killed by the humans.
Cool program btw, free alternative to maya and you can set your boundaries and skybox effortlessly, compared to most height-map editors. I used to use old 0.1 terragen for GTK radiant, glad to see they got a little less constricted.
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Cool image, Dasqoot.
Yeah, I can use Maya to look at the height map, but if you want to render it out it takes a lot of tweaking to get it looking realistic, plus you usually need a plane with thousands of subdivisions to get it looking anywhere as detailed as a program like Terragen.
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Hey Davion, do you know how to import something like the vegetation map from DF into Terragen? I read the guide, and downloaded a separate addon that was supposed to let me use textures in the freeware version, it was the right version of both, but I got a message on startup that "Terragen will not be using xxxxx-program".
I basically want to export all the options from DF and use them as alpha layers to control the look of vegetation and clouds.
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Does anyone know of a program I can use to turn it into a 24-Bit Uncompressed TGA? Gimp can't seem to do it, I can turn it into a TGA but Terragen won't take it.
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Hey Davion, do you know how to import something like the vegetation map from DF into Terragen? I read the guide, and downloaded a separate addon that was supposed to let me use textures in the freeware version, it was the right version of both, but I got a message on startup that "Terragen will not be using xxxxx-program".
I basically want to export all the options from DF and use them as alpha layers to control the look of vegetation and clouds.
I am not really sure, I was trying to play with vegetation awhile back, but I couldn't find any way to import a fractal to generate where vegetation was. It will let you import textures but that doesn't really manage where stuff should be growing.
I've just sort of been eyeballing it.
Does anyone know of a program I can use to turn it into a 24-Bit Uncompressed TGA? Gimp can't seem to do it, I can turn it into a TGA but Terragen won't take it.
Maybe this (http://www.reasoft.com/rea-bmp-change.shtml)
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Epic Engrish in there. I'm not going to get viruses from it am I?
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I have no idea I was too scared to download it
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Virus or not, don't use it. It places a huge rectangle on like a quarter of the image, that says it was made in the trial version. You render the terrain and there's a mile-high wall in the middle of the map.
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I figured it was a trial version, seems like you can't get file converters without paying out the ass first.
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I'm not sure why this "hypothetical" discussion has arisen here.
When I clicked on the Terragen link in the first post, and went to the "download for Windows" section, I saw this:
Terragen is free for personal non-commercial use. In this case registration is optional, but it entitles you to additional benefits and removes the restriction on image size.
(http://pickupsticks.co.uk/stasis/smilies/yes.gif)
PS: shhh! You never know who will be listening...
what he said.
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Does anyone know of a program I can use to turn it into a 24-Bit Uncompressed TGA? Gimp can't seem to do it, I can turn it into a TGA but Terragen won't take it.
Gimp can't do the 24-bit uncompressed tga, but it can do the 8-bit sgi that Terragen also accepts.
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Paint.net does TGAs.
-Angry Lawyer
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Any tips on making the mountains less spikey and jagged? They seem really exaggerated compared to the rest of the terrain. I've been playing with height range and scale but I'm really not happy with the results.
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Any tips on making the mountains less spikey and jagged? They seem really exaggerated compared to the rest of the terrain. I've been playing with height range and scale but I'm really not happy with the results.
In whatever image editor you use you could play with the levels or the brightness/contrast and make the height map a little less extreme, then import it. Using the height range/scale in Terragen is the only way I know how to mess with the elevations and keep it from getting too jagged.
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That's a good idea. Also, height scale % on the import window can be turned down. 50% or so looks decent to me..
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Yeah, I usually go about 50% or a little more.
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Can I do the same shizzle in vue 6?
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Can I do the same shizzle in vue 6?
If it supports greyscale height maps, then yes.
I've used it in Maya and Max and Terragen.
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Can I do the same shizzle in vue 6?
If it supports greyscale height maps, then yes.
I've used it in Maya and Max and Terragen.
going to try that out soon then :) thanks for resp.
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Woah, somehow I missed these new export options. I finally have an excuse to install Bryce 4 again, yay! Now I just gotta find the CD...
Yeah, I actually paid like $300 or something for it, oh so many years ago, and basically the only thing I did with it and kept was this:
(http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/1273/xmasip8.th.png) (http://img387.imageshack.us/my.php?image=xmasip8.png)
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Hmm this looks very promising.
DUnno if you heard about Vue 6 (newest 7, but I don't have it) where we could even render the real vegetation as it was exported!! I just wonder how this vegetation map could be used there..
Anyone intersted in playing with this? xD
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I have tried to, but my hypothetically acquired version is very prone to crashing.
So I have not made anything.
Might try it again once I have another working harddisk to put my dump on (current 1TB disk died while falling, still need to find a way to recover the data, 600 GB of data I do not wish to lose.)
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Might try it again once I have another working harddisk to put my dump on (current 1TB disk died while falling, still need to find a way to recover the data, 600 GB of data I do not wish to lose.)
Pr0n stash, huh?
... Amateur.
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Might try it again once I have another working harddisk to put my dump on (current 1TB disk died while falling, still need to find a way to recover the data, 600 GB of data I do not wish to lose.)
Pr0n stash, huh?
... Amateur.
No better, games like DF ;D
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Seems a few of us enjoy doing renders of DF landscapes.
I wonder if anybody would be interested in me doing a how-to for this in Terragen 2?
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Go for it.
Terragen 2 looks amazing from the screenshots.
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Is there any way to export the heightmap from DF without all the blue waterways crossing it?
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Go for it.
Terragen 2 looks amazing from the screenshots.
Woa, I'm downing the shizzle now ^^
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Go for it.
Terragen 2 looks amazing from the screenshots.
Woa, I'm downing the shizzle now ^^
Ok, importing seems to be only going to add terrain and then add heightmap (load file) and just select .bmp in the lower selection field.
I am currently trying out the generate stuff and movemens/colors etcetera.
Also, I needed not to resize my 2000x2000 heightmap!
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Now if I did have the full version of terragen, and chose to render a df heightmap in it, it would probably look something like this (rough sketch in paint)
(http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7864/1strender.th.jpg) (http://img11.imageshack.us/my.php?image=1strender.jpg)
It took like 2 hours to render (in paint). My next one is looking very promising.
:edit: 2nd render, the mountains look nice, but I want to work on getting rid of that "stair" look.
(http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/9481/2ndrender.th.jpg) (http://img165.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2ndrender.jpg)
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Is there any way to export the heightmap from DF without all the blue waterways crossing it?
Yes. There are two export options on heightmaps, one respects water height, the other does not.
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As a preliminary to me doing the TG2 thing, I'll just note that the best way is to wrap to the sphere. I have to find some settings that make this look really really good, still, but effectively you'll need a heightmap load -> heightmap resize -> heightmap adjust vertical. The last of these will proceed to wrap it to the sphere. It also allows you to change the epicness of the vertical range, and the displacement.
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As a preliminary to me doing the TG2 thing, I'll just note that the best way is to wrap to the sphere. I have to find some settings that make this look really really good, still, but effectively you'll need a heightmap load -> heightmap resize -> heightmap adjust vertical. The last of these will proceed to wrap it to the sphere. It also allows you to change the epicness of the vertical range, and the displacement.
Do you happen to know if there is a way to get the exact elevation of a point in df? It'd be nice to be able to have everything perfectly accurate scale-wise.
:edit: and just to be thorough, anyone know roughly how large a df map is by default?
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As a preliminary to me doing the TG2 thing, I'll just note that the best way is to wrap to the sphere. I have to find some settings that make this look really really good, still, but effectively you'll need a heightmap load -> heightmap resize -> heightmap adjust vertical. The last of these will proceed to wrap it to the sphere. It also allows you to change the epicness of the vertical range, and the displacement.
Do you happen to know if there is a way to get the exact elevation of a point in df? It'd be nice to be able to have everything perfectly accurate scale-wise.
:edit: and just to be thorough, anyone know roughly how large a df map is by default?
Unfortunately the actual elevation seems to be a bit iffy when exporting to TG2. Just gotta try to rule-of-thumb it. As for how large a map in DF is, a Large map is 1/8 of a planet's surface.
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I'm currently finalising a pdf document which is a guide on how to use Terragen2 for these purposes.
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(http://i42.tinypic.com/2uhr01w.jpg)
This is a sample of what I'm putting in the guide. The clouds here suck pretty bad, though, and I'm going to redo the section. Still, this is not bad for a preview.
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Looks awesome.
Just noticed there's a sample of vegetation on the Terragen 2 website, so I'm going to try that out and see how it looks as well.
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Very nice. I look forward to the guide.
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some teasers that I made whilst doing the guide:
(http://i41.tinypic.com/2n0pxcj.jpg)
(http://i43.tinypic.com/efktiq.jpg)
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http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=973
Here's the file, enjoy.
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Anybody interested in a free, lightweight image converter
here's the one I use (http://xnview.com/). It's a bit quicker to start up than a full-featured program like Paint.Net, and has loads of file compatabilities and quality levels. If I ever post screenshots, know that they were saved and compressed in XnView.
As far as Terragen, you (http://ragefactor.com/images/Trinary%203.jpg) could (http://ragefactor.com/images/AshenSkies.jpg) say (http://ragefactor.com/images/Crimson%20Skies.jpg) I have some (http://ragefactor.com/images/gliderboard4%201280x720D.jpg) experience (http://ragefactor.com/images/mountainous.jpg)...
(Terragen 2 is a little harder to work with, partly because I don't have a computer that breathes fire and makes the Monolith from 2001 look obsolete.)
(Also, it really is time for me to make some more wallpapers, all the ones I have are over a year old.)
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Sure would love to see some feedback...
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Great tutorial.
I was playing around with it the other night, but I don't have any screenshots yet, Now that it is my weekend I'll see what I can do. ;)
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Sure would love to see some feedback...
Lovely guide, although I personally got stuck very early:
When I zoom out I do not get the sphere you have at a certain moment, could you help me with this?
Also, the sqr.root(diameter of planet/*) is rather... hard to decipher.
Where can I find this diameter? Should I have selected somewhere that I wanted a planet?
Here is a screenshot of the problem:
(http://i43.tinypic.com/11gjeao.jpg)
Thanks for the tutorial :)
Hopefully you'll want to help me with this problem.
greetings,
Nicolas.
EDIT:
The low values were a test I did, with the higher value's it did not make any difference.
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the radius of the planet can be located by double clicking on Planet 01.
All the nodes should tend to lead there anyway.
I increased the size of the planet to compensate for the weird horizon curvature that you'd get without doing so.
That particular formula is about finding the resize dimensions to make the amount of land correct, given the size of the planet.
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the radius of the planet can be located by double clicking on Planet 01.
All the nodes should tend to lead there anyway.
I increased the size of the planet to compensate for the weird horizon curvature that you'd get without doing so.
That particular formula is about finding the resize dimensions to make the amount of land correct, given the size of the planet.
Thanks, I'll try it out soon. Maybe I can find more hard to understand things and you could make a version 1.1 with changes?
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Sure.
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Ok, I'm working on this right now and was thinking, maybe you could add small windows to the pdf in the corners, explaining how you do stuff like finding the planet radius or inverting your picture (I did it in paint, with the negative command) in step-by-step method.
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Ok, I'm working on this right now and was thinking, maybe you could add small windows to the pdf in the corners, explaining how you do stuff like finding the planet radius or inverting your picture (I did it in paint, with the negative command) in step-by-step method.
Ok, I'm going to put this on hold for now, I'll try this with Vue, I have experience with that program, so it might go better that way.
sorry mayday.
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Does anyone know of a program I can use to turn it into a 24-Bit Uncompressed TGA? Gimp can't seem to do it, I can turn it into a TGA but Terragen won't take it.
Gimp can't do the 24-bit uncompressed tga, but it can do the 8-bit sgi that Terragen also accepts.
Granted, this may just be a feature in the 64-bit version of Gimp, but that's exactly how I got a 24-bit uncompressed TGA file. Gimp. I just scaled the image to 513*513, then when I went to save it, I changed the file format to the readily available TGA, and when it asked if I wanted to compress it, I said no. And that's that.
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(Terragen 2 is a little harder to work with, partly because I don't have a computer that breathes fire and makes the Monolith from 2001 look obsolete.)
(Also, it really is time for me to make some more wallpapers, all the ones I have are over a year old.)
Hey, I own that thing, it has no screen.
okay, I downloaded this thing, but I can't even generate the simple stuff(peaks that go up forever)
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TG 1 or 2?
1 is easier to work with. I can give you a tutorial that'll have you generating terrain images in 2 minutes from running the program to saving the rendered image. Probably 15-30 minutes for some of the prettier stuff I've done.
For 2, you'll probably want to read the Captain's tutorial.(I'll be doing that, too.)
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I'd love a new tutorial that's a bit more clear and for the updated version of Terragen 2. I tried to follow it best I could, but I got really mixed up at the resize portion...nothing was looking like I expected it to