Terragen Sky now lets you paint clouds into the sky directly
Terragen Sky’s new Sky Paint tools let artists paint clouds directly, working non-destructively on a 360-degree canvas. Video from the TerraTuts YouTube channel.
Planetside Software has updated Terragen Sky, its new tool for creating and rendering skies for use in matte painting, virtual production, game environments and architectural visualization.
The December 2024 update introduces a new Sky Paint workspace, making it possible to art direct skies by painting clouds into them directly.
Generate photorealistic CG skies for VFX, virtual production and games
Unlike Planetside’s flagship application Terragen, which also generates terrain, Terragen Sky is focused on creating CG skies, and features a more streamlined UI and intuitive workflow.
As well as sky elements for matte paintings or backdrops for VFX, Terragen Sky can generate 360-degree HDRIs that can be used as environment lights in DCC tools and game engines.
You can read more about it in this story on the original early access release.
New Sky Paint workspace for painting clouds into skies manually
The December 2024 update introduces the Sky Paint workspace, a new environment for painting clouds into skies directly.
Each cloud and haze layer has its own 360-degree Canvas on which to work, with users able to paint or erase cloud or haze from the layer using a brush-based workflow.
Painting is non-destructive, with users able to edit brush strokes by moving entire strokes around, or using the Stir tool to distort them in a similar way to the Liquify tools in 2D paint apps.
It is also possible to change the size and opacity of strokes after they have been created.
Users can create and store up to 10 POVs in a scene from which to paint, and can import a reference image to the background of a viewport from which to work.
Sky Paint nodes are supported in Terragen 4.8, the latest version of the software, making it possible to export skies created using the new tools to Terragen for editing and rendering.
There are also a number of smaller updates and bugfixes: you can find a list in this blog post.
Pricing, release date and system requirements
Terragen Sky is available in early access for Windows only. Planetside Software hasn’t announced a final release date yet.
The early access build is free to anyone with a current subscription to or a current maintenance contract for Terragen. Find pricing details for Terragen in this story on Terragen 4.8.
Read more about the new features in Terragen Sky on Planetside Software’s blog
Read the online documentation for Terragen Sky
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