Advanced Terragen Tutorial - Real World Textures/Colors

[ElDiablo (Paul)]

Hey guys,

   I put together a quick (written) tutorial over at VMX Forums, for using the textures you find in actual photographs, in Terragen. IMHO anyone who is using Terragen to render their textures will benefit from it...especially those of you who have used Terragen and been frustrated by the way it washes out the RGB colors that you plugged into it.

http://www.vmx-racing.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=84691d40d9473163d78a71b761e30eeb;act=ST;f=1;t=538;st=0;&#entry1

Check it out...and tell me what you think!

[DBR_Dodgy]

hey paul, i just read your tute as i was rendering in TG...... so i stopped the render lol,   and im going to read and read it again and see if i can make it work. 

Ian.

[VMX_SKYmx99]

He's awesome ain't he dodgy. lol

[SX5FE_STATICSAG (A)]

Can you guys drop some links here for some more basic tutorials.  I have always made mainly SX and had no need to have terragen.  I have now ventured into making nats and want to try terragen.  I have searched for a few days now and am having troubles finding tuts on setting t-gen up correctly.  I rendered using a downloadable world but i want to have some written steps as to what and how the layers should be set up.  I am not even sure if I'm asking the right thing...lol. 

Any and all links please.  I am way behind and just looking for as much knowledge as I can get.

Thnx
Saggy

[ElDiablo (Paul)]

Well the best site for Terragen is http://www.terrasource.net. You will find the BASIC stuff there...it explains the surface maps and how the heirarchy of layers works (what affects what and how). There are also links to more in-depth tutorials on how to achieve certain effects with Terragen and Photoshop...that's mostly for rendering scenic pictures...but some of it will certainly apply to rendering textures for tracks too.

The basic stuff you need to know for rendering textures for MCM2 is-

1)your terrain should always be 257 x 257
2)your gama setting should always be 1.0
3)your sun strength should always be 100%

On the render panel, make sure you have selected Terrain Units (instead of Meters), set the X and Y coordinates always at 128, uncheck FIXED HEIGHT (both) boxes. Set the camera position (Z coordinates) at 4100 and the target position (Z coordinates) at 0. Also on the Camera Settings dialogue...set the Zoom to 32. Then back on the render panel...set the DETAIL slider to the far right and uncheck SKY (you are only rendering the ground...unchecking the SKY will speed things up a bit. That's the basics of how to set Terragen up. If you need more...read the tutorials off of the Terrasource website or email/pm me.

[DBR_Dodgy]

high ya Saggy longggg time no see.  im not at home right now so i cant remember the site link, butthe best tute around for doing skys and terrain textures are by LOZ  someone should have his site link at hand,  if not ill post it at the weekend when im home. there very well explained and well easy to follow as a beginers start off.

Ian.

[DBR_Dodgy]

http://www.users.waitrose.com/~theloz/index.htm  ok found it.  good luck see ya around.

Ian.