No, this isn't another page about a trip I took to a far away land. This is a page about an amazing program called Terragen. It is freely available, although the website claims it is still under construction. However, this is one of the most amazing "beta's" that I have ever tested.
The picture above (as well as all the pictures and videos on this page) were created with Terragen. The program allows you to set just about anything - atmospheric conditions, red and blue light decay, sun position, sun power, sun color, type of water, type of land, etc. Extremely realistic terrains can be created, as well as a land that could only exist in your memory. As you look at the pictures on this page, please remember that I have only been using this program for a while. I still have a lot to learn, and this program is capable of much more than I show here. The only way to truly appreciate this program is to download it, read some user guides, and start to play with it yourself.
|
|
Another great place to view amazing examples of Terragen is the Terracon contest. The participants in this contest could easily be considered experts. There are no prizes other than the satisfaction of a job well done. I tried to run with the big dogs and submitted an entry for the April contest. It was a very interesting topic. They gave us the terrain file and camera position. Those were fixed and couldn't be changed. Other than that, we could change anything including surface maps, cloud layers, sun position, atmospheric effects, sun position, etc. It was really interesting to see what people came up with. There were about 70 entries and they were all unique. My first entry (seen on the left) wasn't quite the success I was hoping for as I ended up in a 15 way tie for last place with no votes. But I had a good time doing it, so I suppose that's what counts. Hopefully I'll have some time in the future to enter another contest. |
|
After the Rain |
To see what I have done so far, just click on these pictures for a bigger view. Note: These pictures are best viewed in 32-bit color. Anything lower will produce banding (most noticeable in the atmosphere.) You can find larger versions of the picture on the right in the wallpaper section.
As if this wasn't enough. I also downloaded data from the United States Geologic Survey (data from around the world is also available) and converted it to a format this program could read. What does that mean? It means that I can render an accurate picture of anywhere on the face of the planet. And it's not just limited to this planet! Data for the entire surface of Mars is also available! Here is a picture of a section of the Grand Canyon, and two more pictures from Mars.
 36 19' 28" N 112 7' 6" W Heading: 354 300m off the surface |
 27 8' 25" S 106 27' 36" W Heading: 216 300m off the surface |
 6 24' 36" S 68 2' 0" W Heading: 285 10m off the surface |
This is all interesting, but the best is yet to come. You may have noticed from other pages on my site that I enjoy videos. So naturally I wanted to find a way to make videos out of these amazing pictures. Below are the fruits of my labor. They took approximately 15 hours each to render. They both take a little while to download, but I promise you that they are worth the wait.
|
|
 2.5 MB |
Over Thanksgiving break, I ran another render. This took five days to complete. Fly through mountains? Why yes I can! Ok... so I didn't do it on purpose. But I don't have time to let my computer sit for another five days to fix it. (Please note the size of this file before you start downloading.)
|
|
