TerraDome 3 - FeatureSet Comparison
SauronLivez
Posts: 153
First, TerraDome looks awesome, and I'm strongly tempted to buy it. But I'm also curious how it 'measures up' to the old dogs: Bryce and Carrara, both of which I own but (guilty as charged) almost never use. Are the terrains in the base TerraDome product comparable to the terrains generated by either Bryce or 'Rrara?
Also, for someone who doesn't own any of the aforementioned products, which path would you steer them on? I'm really just wondering in terms of terrain generation how the featuresets measure up.
Thanks!
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I don't think it really matters as each has there own pros and cons and uses, and for the most part, can't be used much outside of their native app. If you are a carrara user, the terrains have way more options, but you can't use genesis 3 figures in the program. Bryce is the best of the 3 when it comes to terrains, but importing any genesis character is tedious at best and it renders very slow. So if you are a DS user and want some good terrain with options, this product is your best bet for now.
@FSMCDesigns - Yeah, definitely. In the right hands Bryce and 'Rrara both produce incredible landscapes, but it's kind of a bummer that I can't use Daz's very own latest and greatest figures in either of them...I suppose with compositing you could generate a terrain in one app, render Genesis 3 characters in Studio and mash it all together in Photoshop. But oh, just being able to do it all in one app sure looks tempting!
This has been said a million times before, but if only Daz would show Bryce and 'Rrara a little love....
Agreed. If they added carrarra and Bryces terrains to DS, the modeling and import capabilities of carrara to DS, it would be the perfect program for me.
I have to admit that when I saw the video for Terradome, the first thing I thought was that it really reminded me of Bryce what with height responsive textures and atmospherics.. Too bad its iray only....
I've been having fun using it in 3DL.
You loose the one cool 'top and sides' shader widget, but you gain all the funky things 3DL does. (And I am going to experiment with the Let it Snow shader, which might let you do similar in 3DL)
I mean, fundamentally, it's a morphable terrain model and a set of shaders.
It takes a LITTLE more work, but honestly it's not that hard, if you have some decent 3DL shaders.
(I also think it might work well piped over to Carrara or Bryce, though I'm not 100% sure whether it's worth bothering if you already have Carrara or Bryce terrain generation)
@timmins.william - Awesome. Glad you got it to work in 3DL! I've been playing with iRay a lot, but every time I use it Studio crashes. So I'm glad to hear that it's kinda sort working. I love playing with shaders anyway, so I think I'd enjoy tweaking it. (Though I do eventually want to get a grown-up video card so I could use iRay without crashing....)
If you saw my polar Bear image on the main thread Will that uses the Let It Snow shader on the water prop which they are standing on.
I also ummed and ahhed, and then picked it up and am *seriously* in love... I've got Bryce 7 but never really use it except to generate copyright-free sky/sea backdrops that aren't going to be seen much in something (sorry Bryce, I know you deserve far better than that) simply because what it gives me isn't really worth all the time spent swapping shaders between it and a Daz figure import (I'm a DS/Iray user) for what I use it for. Having a morphable terrain with a shed-load of parameters, some fab atmospheric pre-sets and some truely lovely water shaders to load straight up in Daz and get going is giving me all sorts of happiness :D
Yup. as you say, it's a morphing terrain with shaders, but in terms of comparable terrains, Terradome actually has a very similar look and feel to Bryce - the main difference is that they are pre-set morphs in essentially a ring formation which lack Bryces ability to generate unique and infinitely variable landscapes. Having said that, the morphs with the pro-morph pack added are pretty comprehensive, can be mixed up together, the landscape can be duplicated and rotated to give additional hill ranges and there's options included for hi-res noise in the centre, so unless you just wack in a single morph, there's a lot of scope for unique hills and canyons. The water plane is volumetric with some nice effects. It's fast to create and pretty intuitive. In terms of render and shader quality, it seems to be stacking up very well and the shaders tile well, respond well with displacement and look pretty darn nice on altitude. I also bunged one of the shaders on a completely unrelated and very very old foreground rock model and it made it look better than it has for years. Wish I could do the same for me :D
Using the atmospheric dome can really push up render times, but thick fog is pretty much always going to do that, I guess (hint, if anyone knows a way round this, I'm all ears :D ).
Just personally, it's nice to have the option to create a large landscape quickly within a single scene that integrates with all my other Daz content & figures, and just wear the longer render time overall. I can see Bryce still being used for quick n' dirty backdrops but Terradome is definitely going to take over for anything that needs the landscape to be a significant part of the image overall. It's just lovely to not have to worry about matching lighting on compositing for a start.
If they bring out a waterfall expansion, I'd consider selling a kidney for it.
(Sorry I can't comment on Carrera, haven't ever used it.)
I use Reality 4 to do renders. Should I buy Terradome 3, or will it be a waste? I actually bought the original and got singed a little because it was Poser only. If it won't turn out anything decent in any renderer but IRay, I probably don't want to play...
Thinker
@Autumn - Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate hearing from someone who's used Bryce and can compare the two. The way you use Bryce is very similar to the way that I use Carrara, for backdrops or for compositing. And I'm happy with the results, but sometimes it's a pain having to switch between apps to match camera angles, shadows, the way the sun is pointing etc. At this point, I'm going to get Terradome3 when I get paid on Friday, and I'm certain it'll fill 85 - 90% of my terrain / landscape needs. All the renders I've seen with it look pretty awesome. The appeal of being able to do it all in one application is just too strong to resist!
@im_a_thinker - I can't tell you whether or not Terradome3 will work well in Reality, but other folks here have reported that it works well enough in 3Delight. So I don't see why you couldn't convert shaders over to Reality. Especially if tweaking, tinkering and fine-tuning is your thing.
Bryce was way ahead of its time, I;ve been a Brycer since the original 1996 release for Windows.. I dug out the old install disk for that and rendered this (one of the included sample files from 1996) - not too shabby for 20 years old. I might have ot have a look a Terradome and see how it shakes out vs Bryce ( I still love Bryce)
I tried using Bryce but was somewhat bothered by the user interface....to much, to many, to slow, now I used version 5.5 if memory serves, and integration with DAZ 4.5 wasn't great back then. Now that was on a budget i5 system no idea how it would perform on my new multicore i5820 machine. What I used up till now was Blender and ANT-landscape. Texturing done in Substance Designer and Painter.....no problemo. But controlability may be high, so is time consumption. And in this gap sits Terradome 3......
Pro's:
- Fast and easy and cognitive within DAZ.....add Azone, find morph and material, add Bzone, find morph and material, rotate, add rendersetting and rotate and add water and atmosphere as desired.
Con's
- Geared for exotic landscapes (in the Netherlands were I live these are rare, verry rare up to the point of non existent)
- Geared for the wild outdoors (give or take a few roads)
- Not content aware......water does not invoke a beach for instance (or an embankment, or a tidal zone) AFAIK.
So for non Bryce users (like me at the moment) great, Bryce junkies won't be impressed (except for the speed of working).
Greets, Ed.
@hacsart - Gorgeous work. I especially love the water. In your case, I don't think TerraDome3 is going to be necessarily better than Bryce; in a head to head comparison of terrain generation and variety of what you can produce, I think Bryce would win. I think TD3 is geared more towards folks like me who are primarily Studio users, and who want to get some decent, usable terrains without having to leave Studio. I don't think the TD3 terrains would ever surpass the best of what Bryce or 'Rrara could produce. But for my uses, the tradeoff of not having to leave Studio offsets the superiority that the other programs offer. If the Dark Side could be summed up in one word, that would word be 'convenience.' Ahh, the seduction of the Dark Side....
@ArtisanS - Ed, thanks for your input, and giving me a little insight of what TD3 is all about. I'm getting TD3 tomorrow, and probably will never look back! The "good enough" terrains of TD3 will beat hands down the GREAT terrains of Bryce and Carrara - because I don't want to deal with the hassle of exporting figures to those programs or worry about tracking shadows and light sources when I'm compositing in Photoshop.