Loading...
> >

Landscape Modeling Software (Vue, Terragen, ?)

245

Comments

  • Peter FulfordPeter Fulford Posts: 1,325

    You can just screen capture, so I suppose if you want very large renders it might depend on whether there's a limit to the resolution the engine can run at (sorry, I don't know).

    An image search for "unreal engine forest" certainly brings up lots of lovely HD still images, and 4K gaming is now mainstream.

  • RobotHeadArtRobotHeadArt Posts: 911
    dreamfarmer said:

    Thanks, agent unawares. Some of those forum renders were getting me unreasonably excited so I'm glad to have a call back to reality and reasonable decision making.

    Peter: Does the Unreal engine let you render/save off stills? I was poking at Unity because there's some awfully pretty stuff over there, but it absolutely doesn't let you build and render still scenes, so... not useful to me.

     

    Unity does allow for renders, they even just recently got a free version of the Octane renderer.

  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    I suppose it's a debate, then, whether Unity (which, I guess I meant to say, didn't have any kind of 'save a still off' in the basic UI when I was playing with a forest set) or Unreal or Terragen or Vue (if it comes back again) would cost me more over, say, an 18 month period as I experiment with building a variety of landscapes and thus need to make or acquire the assets for same. 

  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513

    Unity will be the cheapest unless you buy all kinds of content. It already has a terrain and tree generator for free.

  • RobotHeadArtRobotHeadArt Posts: 911
    edited January 2018

    There is a version of Vue called PLE which is a non-commercial version used for learning the software.  When e-on's website comes back from their extended outage (been down since before Christmas) you could take a look at it without having to buy it.  I would also check Vue's EULA to make sure whatever you plan on doing with the software will be allowed by the terms of the EULA, it's got limitations on what you can do with the content you create in Vue.

    I had been looking at the similar list of software for my own terrain generation needs and decided to go with Houdini.  They had added Terrain tools in version 16 plus it has all sorts of other great tools and it has a license that fits my needs.  Here's some videos of Houdini's terrain tools.  Houdini has a steep learning curve but it is incredibly powerful.

    https://vimeo.com/228342945

    https://vimeo.com/234755478

     

     

    Post edited by RobotHeadArt on
  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    Yeah, the PLE is pretty cool and makes me sad I can’t afford or justify Infinite (but is why I’m aiming for Complete). There’s an excellent class on YouTube from some New Zealand professor that relies on the PLE and I’ve gone about halfway through the lessons. 

    Agent unawares: I’m uh.... not confident I can trust myself with the unity store. But! I should also take a look at whatever render ability it has because I do want to do something with Unity eventually as part of homeschooling my kid. 

     

    I should go look up Houdini now. 

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,822
    edited January 2018

    a normal video

     

    a 360 video

     

    Elvendell video

    a flatter terrain video

     

     

     

    Elvendell 360

    ipad was making it too hard to search and find more of my mangey Carrara videos so I will leave it at that cheeky

    if you deign to pop over to the Bryce forum you will find many beautiful renders by them too of terrains but if you want to spend lots of money Vue is probably your best choice, the PLE took forever to render anything for me and I was mindlessly frustrated with the whole program hell Bryce was faster but each to their own devil

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    Well, technically I did buy a copy of Bryce back in... 1999 or so. I doubt that's useful to me now. I do have Carrara and it's... okay? I remember enjoying playing with it some. I found the PLE's rendering speed about the same as using Daz Studio? But speed is not a priority, although the 'nearly instant' raytracing in the most recent version of Terragen does sound exciting. What ultimately keeps drawing me toward Vue isn't strictly speaking the _landscapes_, which, yeah, seem to have been a solved technology practically a decade ago. It's the light  and the atmosphere effects and the color management and stuff.

    This is some stuff I did with the PLE based on those YouTube lessons I watched.







    I have downloaded the Terragen free trial and I think I'll go see how that works next.

    Field of Flowers FOURTH SAVE-2.jpg
    1440 x 1080 - 192K
    Field of Flowers FOURTH SAVE.jpg
    1440 x 1080 - 248K
    Terrain Lessons THIRD SAVE.jpg
    1600 x 900 - 61K
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,822

    well it looks like you have found your software 

    I hope they get their site back up soon heart

  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    They haven’t yet. *sigh*

    I tried working with Terragen 4 last night. There really is a dearth of learning resources for it. A few videos from Geekatplay seems to be about it and I’ve found those aren’t always the most accessible. And yet the forums for Terragen seem busier both at renderosity and their own site (as compared to the vue ones). How does that come about? How are people learning how to use it?

  • Peter FulfordPeter Fulford Posts: 1,325

    Maybe they're learning Terragen in those forums?

    Think I'll try out Unreal when I get a bit of time, as I liked the way it (seemed to) work in a youtube tutorial. Also, another youtube video by a guy who worked in Unity professionally compared the two and he said Unreal is probably the best for newcomers as it requires much less use of the material node system. I liked the sound of that.

    There's also Cryengine (Crytek) to consider. So much choice.

  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    Peter Fulford said:

    Maybe they're learning Terragen in those forums?

    Yeah Terragen forums are basically necessary when getting started. There are a lot of people who share clip files of different things they've made so you can see how everything works. Not much getting started tutorials and such (which is actually kinda weird because there were a lot before Terragen 2 happened).

  • Peter FulfordPeter Fulford Posts: 1,325

    Seems to be quite a lot of Terragen tutorial material on youtube.

    The program certainly has come a long way since the early days. I found its name a bit ironic back then, as the terrain capabilties were very limited, but the atmospherics were superb. Skygen seemed more appropriate (Skynet was already taken).

  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    For older versions of Terragen, though. I tend to dislike learning from tutorials based on older versions especially when there's been significant improvements/UI changes, and it looks like that's the case with Terragen 4.
     

    Well, I'll give the forums a look. I did manage to get more done with my first stab, sans tutorial, w/ Terragen than I did w/ Vue in the same situation, though I suspect that's more because I have a much better idea of how procedural terrain generation works from the Vue stuff. Though I did have to figure out that apparently terrain changes weren't being updated with raytracing preview on....

    Oh-- another landscape software and one that's much cheaper, is Project Dogwaffle. At one point I picked that up hoping it could save me from the allure of more expensive softwares. And it's fun and has some potential for certain things but seemed limited to a very specific style in its (awesome) plant life generation.

  • BradCarstenBradCarsten Posts: 856
    You must just be careful with cryengine as the TAC does not allow you to save any still images for any use other than creating promotional material for a game that runs on the engine. I wrote to them asking if I could use it to create book covers and was told that I could not. That may be the same for unreal, but I haven't looked into that yet.
  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    edited January 2018
    dreamfarmer said:

    For older versions of Terragen, though. I tend to dislike learning from tutorials based on older versions especially when there's been significant improvements/UI changes, and it looks like that's the case with Terragen 4.

    Most things from Terragen 2 through 4 will still be applicable. That progression was more of a gradual change adding new features. The jump from 0.9 and before to 2 was huge, though, nothing from before then will work.

     

    dreamfarmer said:
    Oh-- another landscape software and one that's much cheaper, is Project Dogwaffle. At one point I picked that up hoping it could save me from the allure of more expensive softwares. And it's fun and has some potential for certain things but seemed limited to a very specific style in its (awesome) plant life generation.

    Sadly.

    Post edited by agent unawares on
  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    bradrg said:
    You must just be careful with cryengine as the TAC does not allow you to save any still images for any use other than creating promotional material for a game that runs on the engine. I wrote to them asking if I could use it to create book covers and was told that I could not. That may be the same for unreal, but I haven't looked into that yet.

    Cryengine has a stupidly limited license. I would encourage anyone to read it thoroughly before putting it to any use.

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,764

    I have Bryce 7 ..never use it
    I still have an old copy of vue 6 on my mac
    and it produces better images than Bryce
    at an exponetially faster speed.

    Bryce is stuck in a 32 bit , 1990's wasteland.
    and when you use its  GI or HDRI your render times
    becomes unacceptably long.
    and then there is that obvious "Bryce look" to all it 
    produces.

    My advice is vue or terragen.

  • DustRiderDustRider Posts: 2,691

    I'm guessing that the website downtime is due to a major change to make the website more integrated/manageable with Bentley Systems web infrastructure (thought this would happen right after Bentley took over, not 2 years later).

    Like th3Digit noted, it sounds like you found the right landscaping software for you. The important thing is that you are getting results with Vue, and so far seem to be struggling with Terragen.

    I think the one possible plus to Terragen, IIRC, is that it is created/programed buy two people, so it really is a labor of love, and users have noted that they are very responsive. The down side is it is done by two people, so innovation and support is limited to them. Terragen users really love it, and it does create some awesome images.

    As a side note, Blender has also been getting more landscape creation support. It has a tree generator, at least 2 different landscape generators (one free, the other is about $10), terrain shaders, and a lot of tutorials on landscape creation. the plus with blender is you also have all of the other tools available that come with Blender. The cost in terms of $$ is outstanding with Blender, however the learning curve may be more costly than Vue, but possibly about the same as Terragen????

    But Vue has some really great landscape creation/population tools, and is designed specifically for landscaping, so it will no doubt be easier to get the results you want than Blender. I have Vue 2016 Complete (and an old version of Infinite), but haven't used it enough to really be of any help. I got it for other projects I am working on. I actually started with Vue Esprit, and did the gradual module upgrade process to get to Vue Studio, then upgraded to Complete during the 2016 pre-release sale, so the ouch ($$$$) factor wasn't quite as bad, and by grabbing the modules when they were on sale the cost was about the same (maybe a bit less, like $10-$20). For my intended purpose, Vue will work very well, and simplifies the project a bit compared to other software options (recreation of a large archeological site/complex). The ability to create "roads", or other cultural features on the landscape via splines introduced with Vue 2016 is a critical element for me (will save me a lot of time). As a side note here, I've been using Carrara for the same purpose for years, but I want/need to get more realism/detail that is rather difficult to achieve in Carrara. The area I'm working on has a lot of cliffs/canyons, and Carrara doesn't have any good way to create displacement along a canyon walls (to mimic sedimentary layers). Vue does this very well, and the ecosystem painter will also help a lot with my project.

    Bentely Systems has been around for a long time, so I don't think you need to worry about Vue going away. I'm hoping that it will actually get a little more GIS/CAD friendly now, since that it their main focus, and it would help for what I do (outside of the fun I have with DS).

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,140

    For me, it was never any other choice but Vue. I'm familiar with the interface, which hasn't changed all that much in nearly 20 years and it's the first 3D software I ever  used. It also makes lovely skies, atmospheres and landscapes, tho I will agree that Terragen landscapes are just as beautiful (and sometimes are better looking than) Vue's. But with all the drawbacks that Vue has with render times (back in the day I used to have renders going for a WEEK...lol), I personally see more drawbacks for me with Terragen. So I guess I'll  have to wait until they reappear, whenever that is.

    Laurie

  • artd3Dartd3D Posts: 165
    Greymom said:
    AllenArt said:

    I don't have a problem with exporting Daz figures into Vue...I used to do it long long ago with Vue and Poser figures (long before there was Poser integration). I mostly just wanted to do some realistic landscapes (and potentially some skies).

    Laurie

    Vue is pretty good about importing static figures, but being able to adjust poses of figures within VUE is a feature that would be perfect for what I want to do.

    Also, once I saw the demonstration of the plant movement animation with wind, and the "ShimmerWind" wind-on-water-surface animation plug-in (ooooh shiny!  Flashy lights!) I was sold!

    If you export your Daz characters in collada format you will get all textures, you get all of the bone structure and can pose the character in Vue, and you can import your character with animations created in Daz Studio. Just make sure to set the preset in your collada export to generic collada. Exporting in collada format does make your character have a mirror finish when opened in vue. You just have to turn the reflection down for each texture to get rid of this.

    Vue also has a product called skinvue, which allows you to customize the skin to give an almost photoreal look. You can even add wet drips and drops, blood, and dirt to the skin. I have not gotten skinvue to work in Vue 2016 yet, though it works very well in earlier versions.

     

     

  • dreamfarmerdreamfarmer Posts: 2,128

    I don’t believe the downtime was scheduled but it’s quite possible they’re taking advantage of it to do some upgrade/integrations that they’d otherwise be doing later— that’s a good idea and very reassuring. 

    I think a lot of people have been worried under the new ownership because I guess they were expecting more frequent updates than have been happening. 

    I’ve seen a lot of really spectacular planetscapes with Terragen. Is that a particular feature of the software or just the tendencies of the users?

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,140
    edited January 2018
    dreamfarmer said:

    I don’t believe the downtime was scheduled but it’s quite possible they’re taking advantage of it to do some upgrade/integrations that they’d otherwise be doing later— that’s a good idea and very reassuring. 

    I think a lot of people have been worried under the new ownership because I guess they were expecting more frequent updates than have been happening. 

    I’ve seen a lot of really spectacular planetscapes with Terragen. Is that a particular feature of the software or just the tendencies of the users?

    I'm quite sure it's the skill of the user, like it is with everything (even Vue). I've seen some landscapes done in Blender that would blow BOTH of those softwares out of the water, but that doesn't mean I want to do landscapes in Blender. LOL I think Vue will at least do planets in the sky now, but I could be wrong about that. Everything seems to blend together at times when I'm looking at a bunch of different softwares that do similar things. LOL

    Laurie

    Post edited by AllenArt on
  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    dreamfarmer said:
    I’ve seen a lot of really spectacular planetscapes with Terragen. Is that a particular feature of the software or just the tendencies of the users?

    Both. People do it because they realize "holy crap you can make an entire procedural planet" and that bug gets stuck in their head.

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,140

    By the sound of e-on's facebook page, it looked like they needed some maintenence over the holiday and since most were on vacation, they got someone that really wasn't up to the task. Now that they've started, they've got to follow thru to the end, even with sub-standard help. Oh well...if it was me, I'd have waited ;). Of course, maybe they couldn't wait. Who knows.

    Laurie

  • GreymomGreymom Posts: 1,104
    artd3D said:
    Greymom said:
    AllenArt said:

     

    If you export your Daz characters in collada format you will get all textures, you get all of the bone structure and can pose the character in Vue, and you can import your character with animations created in Daz Studio. Just make sure to set the preset in your collada export to generic collada. Exporting in collada format does make your character have a mirror finish when opened in vue. You just have to turn the reflection down for each texture to get rid of this.

    Vue also has a product called skinvue, which allows you to customize the skin to give an almost photoreal look. You can even add wet drips and drops, blood, and dirt to the skin. I have not gotten skinvue to work in Vue 2016 yet, though it works very well in earlier versions.

     

     

    Many thanks for comfirming the Collada route, I have heard conflicting accounts!   I recently purchased SkinVue and I have VUE 2015, so that should work.  Hopefully they will be back up so that I can download and activate programs.

  • Peter FulfordPeter Fulford Posts: 1,325
    wolf359 said:

    and then there is that obvious "Bryce look" to all it 
    produces.

    Bryce has many limitations (due to lack of development) but that isn't one of them.

     

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited January 2018

    .

    wolf359 said:

    and then there is that obvious "Bryce look" to all it 
    produces.

    You have got to be joking      a Bryce look?      No way.       Peruse some of the render threads in the Bryce forum and then describe what look it is you mean

    This one for example     https://direct.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/68441/bryce-render-challenge-surreal-worlds-we-have-winners/p1

    Post edited by Chohole on
  • Panzer EmeraldPanzer Emerald Posts: 727
    th3Digit said:

    Bryce

    Get them to update it so it's 64-bit and can run on macOS Sierra/High Sierra, and _then_ I might consider it.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,822
    Finlaena said:
    th3Digit said:

    Bryce

    Get them to update it so it's 64-bit and can run on macOS Sierra/High Sierra, and _then_ I might consider it.

    Me?

    whoa ok, now where is that placard and airline ticket to Utah, damn I have no passport

Sign In or Register to comment.