TERRAGEN TUTORIAL

This tutorial was originally written for Terragen v0.6. Some sections have already been updated for v0.7.x and some are in the process of being updated for v0.8.x.

I shall be updating it a section at a time as soon as possible, and any updated sections will be marked (v0.7.x or v0.8.x) in this index. Pages with page numbers followed by letters, as PAGE 9A, are pages covering completely new features added after v0.6.

Meanwhile, most of what is in the sections is applicable to the later editions. Many of the options have not been changed and the instructions still apply. If there are features on a controller not mentioned in the section, this is because that section has not yet been updated, but the features which existed in the previous edition are still there and the instructions for those will be relevant.

The main problem is in the illustrations, most of which were made with v0.6 and are therefore not of the quality of the 0.8/0.9 renderings. And where I have updated earlier pages and made a new rendering with a later version, the next page illustrations will appear not to follow if they are older ones. But they still illustrate the features they are supposed to illustrate and will still help you to use the program.

PAGE 1 (v0.7.x)		Generating terrain and setting camera and target viewpoints
		Preview rendering
PAGE 2 (v0.7.x)		Water
PAGE 3 (v0.7.x)		Surfaces, and surface distribution settings
PAGE 3a (v0.7.x)		Sculpting the terrain, and Surfaces - child layers and advanced distribution settings
PAGE 4		Lighting (1) - Sun direction
PAGE 5		Lighting (2) - Light and shade
PAGE 6		Atmosphere (1) - The settings
PAGE 7		Atmosphere (2) - Sunsets
		Atmosphere and lighting settings in combination (1)
PAGE 8		Atmosphere (3) - Night scenes and moonlight
		Atmosphere and lighting settings in combination (2)
PAGE 9		Atmosphere (4) - Mist and fog
		Atmosphere and lighting settings in combination (3)
PAGE 9A (v0.8.x)		The sun's rays (1) - Setting the scene
PAGE 9B (v0.8.x)		The sun's rays (2) - Creating the rays
PAGE 9C (v0.8.x)		The sun's rays (3) - Making changes
PAGE 10		Advanced terrain generation settings (1) - Method, size of features, realism, smoothing.
PAGE 11		Advanced terrain generation settings (2) - Glaciation, canyonism, bound vertical, scale vertical
PAGE 12		Advanced terrain generation settings (3) - Adding to a terrain at generation, combine with
PAGE 13		Camera settings (1) - Camera and target position and altitude
PAGE 14		Camera settings (2) - Pan, tilt, bank, film or camcorder, exposure and zoom
PAGE 15 (v0.8.x)		Cloudscapes (1) - Adding a cloud layer, black areas at the horizon, cloud cover size, altitude, depth/thickness
PAGE 16 (v0.8.x)		Settings - accuracy settings for atmosphere and cloud shading
		Cloudscapes (2) - 2d and 3d clouds, cloud colour, cloud lighting, density shift, density contrast, cloud generating, cloud size, persistence, producing an overcast sky and dull weather
PAGE 17		The Scripter (1) - Simple animations using changed camera positions
PAGE 18		The Scripter (2) - Moving sun, clouds and target position. Script commands
PAGE 19		Last words - the finished scene, acknowledgements

If you wish to download the tutorial, or any part of it, to work offline, each page is available in a downloadable self-extracting .exe file. Click on the page name below to download its file to your hard drive. Open your browser, double click on the filename in Windows Explorer, and the page will be displayed in your browser. (The graphics and html are not extracted to your hard drive.) Do not use the previous, next and contents links to move to another page, nor any inter-page links in the body of the tutorial, because they are online links. Simply open the download file for the page you wish to move to.

Please note that the zips for pages 1, 17 and 18 do not include the surface maps, the animated gifs or the avi files. If you wish to download them, follow the instructions on the tutorial pages while on line.

INDEX	PAGE 1	PAGE 2	PAGE 3	PAGE 3a	PAGE 4	PAGE 5	PAGE 6	PAGE 7	PAGE 8
PAGE 9	PAGE 9A	PAGE 9B	PAGE 9C	PAGE 10	PAGE 11	PAGE 12	PAGE 13	PAGE 14	PAGE 15
PAGE 16	PAGE 17	PAGE 18	PAGE 19

 

© Carol Brooksbank. 1999-2000