Terragen 2.1 Free Non-Commercial Edition

frank beckmann

frank beckmann

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Terragen 1 was completely free and completely unusable if I recall correctly. Interesting that it's now MORE expensive than Vue which has both a free version and products starting at $99 (with far superior vegetation options).

Edit: it looks like Vue Pioneer stamps a logo on your renders and limits their size (slightly more annoying than Terragen's free version which only seems to restrict render size). But for $69 you can remove that limitation... so it seems to me Vue 1, Terragen 0.

Strange marketing.
 

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Vue does seem to have various stages of annoying crippledness.

You want to export skybox? Upgrade to infinite. You want to export plants as geometry? Upgrade to infinite...

of course Ive got a "long way" to do skyboxes..

What about DEM maps> Unity via Vue? Any idea about that pipeline Tonio?

Aaron
 
I think Vue is stupendously superior to Bryce -- including handling of DEM maps (it is used for feature films, Bryce is a toy). Can't say much about Terragen.

Vue is basically $600 for the works, vs. somewhat more for Terragen. And Terragen can't match many of Vue's features (e.g. Terragen's pricer options include a library of pregenerated plants, Vue has plant generators).

The render I showed is from the free version and includes plants, procedural volumetric clouds, heightfields AND procedural terrain. For $69 I could render arbitrary sizes, HDR, and no logo. And Vue8's UI actually kind of makes sense to me.
 
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To be honest, for me, there is NO competition between Terragen and Vue.

Vue does a lot of things quite well but for ultimate realism in landscape rendering Terragen does wonders whereas you can distinguish any Vue renders in seconds...

That has been my experience so far, not to say that Vue 8 is virtually unusable on Mac (at least on my iMac Core i5...), has always been unstable, and, well i'll stop here before being rude !

If Terragen wasn't so slow to render, i would have bought it since a long time with its Xfrog bundle, it's one hell of a deal, and less expensive than Vue 8 Infinite.


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette :)
 
The $999 Terragen bundle includes the XFrog software, so it's definitely a good deal.

Vue Infinite is $899 though ...
 
podperson said:
The $999 Terragen bundle includes the XFrog software, so it's definitely a good deal.

Vue Infinite is $899 though ...
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Well, i was speaking of the 699$ deal, as Xfrog isn't available on Mac OS X. :wink:

The Xfrog preset trees are very good in almost every case (except they can be really heavy but Terragen deal with that without a problem...) and as i'm not a botanist, i don't have a clue how to edit the trees anyway, so the deal without editing of the trees is a really good one for me. :)

If only i had more time to understand how to optimize Terragen to render in a reasonnable amount of time, i think i'd end up doing just landscapes, as the renders it produces are perfect ! :cool:


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette :)
 
sorry for the stupid question... but will terragen be able to export Xfrog plants in other *usable* format as .obj and the like? if so then the bundle for 699$ it's a huge deal if you consider the cost of Xf plants dvds... even if you only use Tgen as a pure translator
 
I don't think so, unfortunately. :frown:

However, a DVD is "only" 140$ if i remember correctly and already contains like 30 high definitions plants so you end up quite quickly with something interesting. :cool:


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette :)
 
Tartiflette said:
I don't think so, unfortunately. :frown:

However, a DVD is "only" 140$ if i remember correctly and already contains like 30 high definitions plants so you end up quite quickly with something interesting. :cool:


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette :)
Click to expand...

yep, but unfortunately I'd like a couple of plants from each dvd... it would be nice to have single plants available for purchase...

so that's another point for Vue (from Complete on, or any with the export module... "only" 149$)

I bought some Xfrog plant samples for Bryce during last Daz3D sales and was able to export them in .obj+.mtl+textureMaps using 7beta (the Cherry tree I used in the Mies, Barcelona and Zen scene comes from there...)

thanks for the info,
Ale
 
Laurent -- I take it you've had serious stability problems with Vue? It seemed to work fine for me (and its UI is a lot less "from Mars" than, say, Vue 6 or Bryce), although I didn't try anything major.

My big issue with Terragen right now is that it doesn't export (and you aren't licensed to redistribute plant geometry from XFrog, I assume). While I agree that it looks like Terragen's renderer probably has an edge of Vue's (not that either is perfect), from a game dev/realtime viewpoint, not being able to export and distribute geometry is a dealbreaker. Terragen is promising FBX export "real soon now" -- but again, will we be licensed to distribute XFrog content? I highly doubt it.

As far as I can tell, for any given level of functionality (stability aside) Vue is cheaper.
 
frank beckmann said:
For non commercial purpose you can grab some Plants from here: http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/plantslib/

Especially some of the trees are really heavy:frown:

Cheers
Frank

PS: 7beta is able to export trees - but I´m not sure if its implementation is completed yet.
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great link Frank, thank you!
BTW for non-commercial you can always export any standard/modified plant from Vue Infinite PLE...

I own Bryce 6.x but can't really say I'm a brycer... that said I saw they have great plans for the final 7 release, so let's wait and see (well, honestly it was quite surprising for me to see some further development when 6.3 came out...)

cheers,
Alessandro
 
Especially some of the trees are really heavy
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Yeah -- I'm not sure how much use I have for 22MB maple tree models -- so whether or not I can export them is kind of moot.
 
SurfingAlien said:
I own Bryce 6.x but can't really say I'm a brycer... that said I saw they have great plans for the final 7 release, so let's wait and see (well, honestly it was quite surprising for me to see some further development when 6.3 came out...)
Click to expand...

I´m enjoying the beta right now; instancing is fun and the true ambience is now working. 6.3 was a joke and worse than 6.1 was. But it´s coming quite nicely - but I guess we have to pay at least for all the stuff that´s broken since 5.5 :frown:

Cheers
Frank
 
podperson said:
Laurent -- I take it you've had serious stability problems with Vue? It seemed to work fine for me...
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Well, stability is a problem for sure, but the most annoying thing is the UI responsivness, which is really horrible to be honest.

Something like 3/4 seconds lag when clicking on a button or trying to edit anything, even with small scenes (because except the already made scenes, it would be pure madness to try to do anything complex with Vue..). :frown:

I haven't tried the last iteration of Vue as i don't have a license of Vue 8 and i can just try the demo, but from what i have seen it doesn't push me to upgrade to the last release of this soft. :frown:

As for the possibility of exporting, i totally agree that Terragen must improve in this area, and that's probably one of the biggest reason why it has become so confidential now. I think that if they want to sell, they need to allow Terragen to talk to other applications, as the vast majority of users don't want to just "play" with Terragen. ( i admit i'm just hypnotized by Terragen renders, even if i'm far from being a "landscape Lover"... :redface: )

And, as usual, it's the user that determines what best suit his needs and his preferences. :)


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette :)
 
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