Terragen 3d background rendering/animation (Updated Nov 18, 2004 HI-RES)

[poc301]

I was browsing the forums and was going through the "Recommended Free Program" area, and came across a 3D terrain rendering program called Terragen so I decided to give it a try.Ã,  I was AMAZED at its power and ease of use.Ã,  I tinkered with it for about 30 minutes and got my first video done with it.Ã,  I am SO AMAZED at this program, especially considering it is free.

The potential this program has for the AGS games is phenominal.Ã,  I will be using this video with some other stuff I have in the works for the intro movie and so forth for my game.Ã,  I also will include cutscenes with this thing.Ã, 

Anyways, tell me what you think of my first 3D rendered background animation.Ã,  The resolution is very low (for speed so I could make sure it came out ok before cranking up the resolution for the next rendering), so the filesize is about 1 megabyte.Ã, 

It plays in 15 frames per second, so it is pretty smooth.Ã,  Criticism is welcome, like camera angles, height, etc, etc.

I WILL be removing the occasional freeze (it was 4 sections of animation combined into 1).

www.cmtonline.net/intro.avi


UPDATE NOVEMBER 18, 2004

I just finished rendering it and making one additional frame where a jutting of land comes up, and the final frame is the menu-screen from my new game with the title etched into the rock.

DIV-X HI RES : http://www.cmtonline.net/DivX_Intro.avi    (2.6mb)
INDEO_5  HI RES : http://www.cmtonline.net/Indeo5-Intro.avi  (8mb)

I did the Indeo because I did it on accident one time I compiled, and noticed the video quality was quite a bit better than the DivX version.  So I am keeping it too

[mornin@work]

I think there is something wrong with the file. I can't play it and it's not because of my player which can play avi-files. I've tried it several times, but still doesn't work for me...

[poc301]

It is compressed in MPEG-4 / Div-X format.Ã,  Do you have the codec installed?

As an aside to this, I tried converting it into several various other formats, but the filesize was 40-50 megabytes.  I abandoned that idea pretty quickly.

I have downloaded the file off my website (thinking something might've gone wrong with the upload, but it played fine in my Media Player 9 with WinXP Pro SP2).

[mornin@work]

Nope, I didn't, but I have now. Looks really good for just 30 minutes of work, but there are some black areas here and there that are quite disturbing. It definately has a lot of potential. Maybe I'll try this proggy myself.

[Isegrim]

Nice job...
You should read the texturing tutorial linked at the homepage, it's really great. Besides, did you know that you can transfer terragen files to other 3d-Renderers/modellers?
There sure is helluva lot of potential in that program, I'd say!

[poc301]

The black spots are because of the super-low resolution

I have converted 1/2 of it to hi-res graphics, and it looks pretty sharp.  It also has no black spots

I will check out that website and into the other options.  I had no idea that other stuff was inter-linkable with it.

Thanks!

[InCreator]

whoah! Pretty nice.
30 minutes of work? Terragen took me at least five minutes to render each frame! How long did your half-hour work take to render?

Anyway, I didn't believe Terragen could do such nice scene.
But then again, I didn't try it too much - 3ds max 6 + Dreamscape 2 is all I need to finish this life peacefully and powerfully

[poc301]

Hahaha

I used the program for about 10 minutes to figure out how the Camera Positioning (X, Y, Z Coordinates) worked, and then I used the scripter to compile 4 individual scripts to move the camera where I wanted it.  Then I used the animation mode and it rendered/saved the pictures in order.  I chose 45 to 60 frames per scene, with 15FPS so it would be nice and smooth. 

I run a P4 2.6ghz with about 512mb RAM so it didn't take that long to render.  The longest part I've noticed is the water.

[fertoff]

Nice animation...
water looks very nice

Critics:
-surface,,,add more layers
-the tarrain is too fake,,,try terragen's terrain generator o terraformer or , the one i like best, world machine
-clouds look to flat
-the edge of the tarrain is visible in some parts

the atmo is up to you...

the rest looks fine

pd: i forgot!! try lowering the gamma for more contrast! i generally use 1.4

[Neutron]

i like to use terragen too,...it's a great program.  i have gotten some interesting otherworldly terrains by using various grayscale procedural textures saved as .raw in photoshop.  the built in ones are good too.  especially the perlin noise.