From FT to Terragen (Part One)

[Greason Wolfe]

Assuming you've installed Terragen (0.9.43) and the requisite plug-ins as listed above, let's get that started up and set-up our editing area.

Once you've started Terragen, you should see three things;

1) The main application window
2) The Rendering Control window
3) The Landscape Window

We're going to start by clicking on the Size button in the Landscape window. This should bring up the Landscape Settings window. If, like me, you are using an unregistered version of Terragen, the maximum Landscape size you will be able to work with is 513, so we'll click that button and agree to use more memory for rendering. We'll also tell Terragen to keep the terrain flat for now.

Now we are going to need that range information we captured earlier. Your Landscape Settings window should now look like this;

(see first image below)

We need to adjust the point spacing. We could do a little bit of math for this, but the easiest way to get this adjustment is to insert our range value into one of the two Quadrant boxes. In this instance we need to convert from Kilometers to Meters which gives us a result of 2726000 meters. This is very important. Smaller values tend to result in very exaggerated elevation results like so;

(see second image below)

Not exactly what we were looking for. So lets make sure we get that setting adjusted.

Now we need to import our grey-scale image. We're going to do this through Landscape>>Accessories>>F.E.O. - Windows Bitmap Inflator. This will open a directory listing and allow you to select the grey-scale image for rendering. Once you've opened this image, a new Dialogue will appear. It gives you the option of calculating elevation settings and that is exactly what we want to do at this point, so we'll click the Calculate button.

If you look in the upper left portion of the Calculator Window, you will see an area called Pixel Values. We are going to need these two numbers since they represent the darkest and the lightest shades of grey in the image. In this case, our darkest shade is 19 while our lightest shade is 115. We're going to save those values for later use. For right now, however, you can click on the OK button here and in the previous window.

At this point, there are a number of little things we need to do. First, lets set our water level at 0 meters. Next, we're going to modify our elevations. We do this through the Modify button in the Landscape window.

Using our numbers from the calculator we start with our lowest level. This particular grey-scale image is set for a sea level at a shade of 45, so that gives us 26 shades (45-19=26) that are below sea level. Multiplying this number by 30 (remember we defined each shade as being 30 meters of elevation) gives us 780 meters. Next we will work with the highest peak. In this instance that will be 2100 meters (115-45=70 70x30=2100). We'll plug these number into the Set Height Range section of the Terrain Modification Window and click Set Height Range.

It is a good idea, at this point, to go back to the Size button on the Landscape window and make sure our numbers there haven't changed. If they have, reset them to the proper values (2726000 meters per quadrant) and then go back to Modify and make sure our Height Range hasn't changed. Again, if they have, set them to -780 and 2100 respectively and click Set Height Range again. (There is a small bug that sometimes crops up here and causes these numbers to change so double checking them as we go along is always a good idea)

Now lets take a look at our results. Because of the area we are looking at, to get a good overall view, we are going to have to elevate our camera considerably. I used an elevation of 300000 meters and pointed the camera almost straight down to render the following image;

(see third image below)

For this image, I used the GrassandSand surface that is included with Terragen. It doesn't do a very good job of showing the elevations, but there are a number of free surface files available for Terragen if you do a web search for them. Alternatively, you can develop your own surfaces (for which there is a most excellent tutorial in pdf format available from http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/smgdl.shtml).

But that, for the most part, is it. You will probably have to play with the settings some and, if you have a registered version, you can always use larger sizes for both the grey-scale image and the editing in Terragen.

As a brief side note, I hacked this tutorial together in a relatively short period of time in hopes that it would get those of you interested in using it started in the right direction. I have every intention of re-writing this tutorial with much clearer language and many more examples in the future and will make it available as a text file for those of you that are still interested in using it. Hopefully, however, there is enough information here to get you started such that you can figure out the little details on your own. If there are any immediate questions, feel free to post them here or PM me and I will get back to you as soon as possible.