Terragen2 1.8.64pre review
DownloadTerragen is a scenery generator, created with the goal of generating photorealistic landscape images and animations.
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Terragen is a scenery generator, created with the goal of generating photorealistic landscape images and animations. Although Terragen is a continually evolving work-in-progress, it is already capable of near-photorealistic results and has been used for a wide range of commercial projects, from film and television to games and multimedia to print work.
Terragen takes advantage of a number of capabilities unique to the Mac and uses Quartz for high quality graphics on OS X.
Terragen Mac uses a native user interface, as opposed to the custom user interfaces used by some similar applications. This means that the basic operation is the same as other apps you are used to and that familiarity helps you get started with Terragen more quickly.
What's New:
Faster rendering
v0.9 has a new underlying rendering system which is considerably faster than in previous versions.
Higher quality antialiasing
A new higher quality antialising method called Extra Blended Detail is available to registered users. This new method greatly increases foreground detail for a noticeably improved appearance, as well as helping to eliminate "sparkles" in animations.
Improved shadow rendering
Shadow rendering has been improved so that hard edged triangular shadows are no longer an issue.
Orthographic rendering
With v0.9 you can use the orthographic rendering mode to render top down images to be used for textures in other applications, amongst other things.
Expanded Water controls
A variety of new settings have been added to the Water window, giving you extra control over the appearance of the water surface and letting you add foam-like effects around the shoreline.
New Landscape editing tools
A new resizeable Landscape View & Sculpt window has been added, which allows finer terrain editing and camera positioning. The terrain sculpting tools have been improved and you can now control the size and effect of them.
Command line interface
v0.9 includes a tool you can use to run Terragen from the command line on OS X. This makes it possible to do things like use Terragen in a render farm.
Distributed animation rendering via Xgrid
Terragen comes with a kit that makes it simple to use Terragen with Xgrid, Apple's easy to use clustering technology for OS X. Xgrid makes it possible to utilise other Macs on your network to render animations many times faster than if you were just using the one machine. In fact, even if you have only one dual processor machine you can use Xgrid to render animations in half the time it would normally take.
Quick Scripter
v0.9 includes a new Quick Scripter, which lets you easily create simple native Terragen animation scripts. This is accessible from the Scripting menu.
Redesigned UI for OS X 10.3/Panther
The user interface has been updated to meet the layout guidelines for Panther, ensuring it looks as good on Panther as it does on earlier versions of the OS.
Improved UI layout for non-English users
The v0.9 user interface code has been revised so there are no longer the problems such as clipped text items which made previous versions harder to use on non-English versions of the OS. Japanese users in particular should see a vast improvement.
Workspace support
You can now create and restore custom window layouts, or workspaces. All of the major windows and palettes can be grouped in a workspace. You can easily create and apply workspaces from the Windows menu. This is currently exclusive to the Mac version.
Easier plugin installation
You can now install plugins simply by dragging and dropping them onto the application icon. You can use the new Reveal Plugins button on the Plugins preference panel to show you where installed plugins are kept. This is currently exclusive to the Mac version.
Custom image size preset support
You can now create and edit image size presets, allowing you to quickly set up the image sizes you use the most. This is currently exclusive to the Mac version.
Expanded AppleScript support
AppleScript support has been expanded in v0.9. As well as extra commands, you can now run AppleScripts directly from the Scripting menu. These AppleScripts can be used to extend Terragen's interface in an easily accessible way. Sample scripts are included. AppleScript support is exclusive to the Mac version.
Finer control over script execution
You can now control which commands are read from native Terragen scripts, as well as what units should used. You can also apply script effect plugins.
New online help content
Online help is available from the Help menu in Terragen Mac. At present this mainly covers features which are not already covered in the Official User Guide. This is currently exclusive to the Mac version.
Requirements:
A PowerMacintosh, including all clones with PPC chips, but excluding first generation NUBUS based machines ( 6100, 7100, 8100 etc. ). There is no support for 68k machines.
OS 9 with CarbonLib 1.5.
QuickTime 4.
At least 32 MB of RAM for Terragen itself, meaning 64 MB would be a good base amount for your machine. Terragen runs fine on OS 9 with Virtual Memory or Ram Doubler.
A colour monitor supporting a resolution of 800 x 600. Terragen is designed with 800 x 600 as the minimum screen resolution.
The recommended system would be :
OS X 10.1 or newer. Terragen runs best on OS X, and OS X 10.1 is more reliable than earlier versions. More recent versions are even better.
The faster the machine, with the more RAM, the better.
A monitor/graphics card capable of displaying millions colours. Terragen images don't look as good at less than millions of colours.
A 3D card. Terragen's 3D Preview works acceptably at the lowest quality on older machines ( tested on a 604/166 without a 3D card ), but you will get a much better experience if you have even a modest graphics card.
QuickTime 5 or newer.
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