Planetside Software releases Terragen 4.8
Planetside Software has released Terragen 4.8, the latest stable version of its environment generation tool for VFX, motion graphics and general CG work.
The update adds support for the Sky Paint tools in Terragen Sky, Terragen’s companion app, the option to export heightfields as 16-bit TIFFs, and makes significant performance improvements.
One of the first off-the-shelf tools for generating VFX-quality landscapes
First released in the 2000s, Terragen is one of the original professional landscape-generation tools, having been used at VFX studios including ILM, Digital Domain and MPC.
As well as terrain itself, it can generate surface water features, atmospheric and weather effects, clouds and skies, and is capable of generating and rendering very large environments.
It continues to be updated steadily, typically receiving an update per year.
Terragen 4.8: better integration for Terragen Sky and shading of deforming objects
This year’s update, Terragen 4.8, introduces support for the new Sky Paint tools in Terragen Sky, Planetside’s dedicated software for creating skies, free in early access to Terragen users.
Artists can now paint clouds inside Terragen Sky, then export the project to Terragen for further editing or rendering.
The update also introduces a new ‘sticky’ world space for shading deforming objects, making it possible to use shaders on animated world space objects without textures sliding.
It is supported on the Transform Input Shader, Transform Merge Shader and Distance Shader.
In addition, the real-time 3D Preview now respects the shadow-casting settings of light sources.
Performance improvements to rendering and heightfield generation
Under the hood, there are some significant performance improvements.
The old maximum of 64 CPU threads per render has been removed, making it possible to take advantage of highly multi-core processors on Windows 11, Windows Server 2022, Linux and macOS.
The Heightfield Erode operator has also been multithreaded, making calculation “much faster”, although unlike the old single-threaded mode – still available for backwards-compatibility – output is not deterministic, generating slightly different results each time it is run.
In addition, interactivity in scenes with multiple cloud layers and performance of animated deformations have both been improved.
Export heightfields as 16-bit TIFFs for use in game engines
For pipeline integration, Terragen can now export heightfields as 16-bit TIFF and RAW files as well as 32-bit EXRs.
The 16-bit files are intended for use in game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, rather than offline rendering.
Pricing and availability
Terragen 4.8 is available for Windows, Linux and macOS.
There are five price tiers, based on how much you earn as an individual artist or studio, ranging from earnings of $50,000/year to over $1 billion/year.
Perpetual licences cost between $199 and $980, depending on which tier you fall in, while subscriptions cost between $10/month and $56/month, or $96/year and $492/year.
Read an overview of the new features in Terragen 4.8 on Planetside Software’s blog
Read a full list of new features in Terragen 4.8 in the online release notes
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