She asked me to guest blog about a new program I just got called Terragen. Terragen Basic is FREE --gotta like that!
I really like Terragen. Why? Well I've been doing 3d work for 8 years now and this is by far the most easy to use, intuitive, simple program out there. It does one certain thing, and it does it VERY well.
What does it do? It makes landscapes. Really nice ones, I must say. I can even export the terrains as a .lwo and import them into Bryce for use there. Handy.
It generates the terrains very quickly, sculpting and modifying tools are easy to use also. You also have control over the cloudscapes, sun, atmospheric conditions, and water.
The very first landscape I made I used default values for the water, sun, clouds, and atmosphere. I just concentrated on the surface mapping, camera placement, and terrain mapping.
This first one took about 2 minutes to make. It then took about 30 minutes to render at high quality on an old P4 with only 1/2 gig of ram. I like to render my 3d images with a fairly high gamma so all the detail comes through and then use Irfanview for the post-production clean-up. Quick, easy, and... FREE!
Just click on the picture to embiggin it to 1200 by 900 and feel free to use it as wallpaper, no worries. It also holds its integrity if you have a widescreen monitor so go ahead and stretch it to whatever dimensions you need.
If anyone is interested in Terragen Basic version 0.9.43 you can download the free version right here and they have both PC and MAC versions. Then have fun and impress your friends with your new, cool landscapes!
