Planetside Software program releases Terragen 4.8
Planetside Software program has launched Terragen 4.8, the most recent steady model of its environment generation tool for VFX, movement graphics and common CG work.
The replace provides assist for the Sky Paint instruments in Terragen Sky, Terragen’s companion app, the choice to export heightfields as 16-bit TIFFs, and makes important efficiency enhancements.
One of many first off-the-shelf instruments for producing VFX-quality landscapes
First launched within the 2000s, Terragen is likely one of the authentic skilled landscape-generation instruments, having been used at VFX studios together with ILM, Digital Area and MPC.
In addition to terrain itself, it may possibly generate floor water options, atmospheric and climate results, clouds and skies, and is able to producing and rendering very massive environments.
It continues to be up to date steadily, usually receiving an replace per 12 months.
Terragen 4.8: higher integration for Terragen Sky and shading of deforming objects
This 12 months’s replace, Terragen 4.8, introduces assist for the brand new Sky Paint instruments in Terragen Sky, Planetside’s devoted software program for creating skies, free in early entry to Terragen customers.
Artists can now paint clouds inside Terragen Sky, then export the mission to Terragen for additional modifying or rendering.
The replace additionally introduces a brand new ‘sticky’ world house for shading deforming objects, making it doable to make use of shaders on animated world house objects with out textures sliding.
It’s supported on the Remodel Enter Shader, Remodel Merge Shader and Distance Shader.
As well as, the real-time 3D Preview now respects the shadow-casting settings of sunshine sources.
Efficiency enhancements to rendering and heightfield era
Beneath the hood, there are some important efficiency enhancements.
The outdated most of 64 CPU threads per render has been eliminated, making it doable to make the most of extremely multi-core processors on Home windows 11, Home windows Server 2022, Linux and macOS.
The Heightfield Erode operator has additionally been multithreaded, making calculation “a lot sooner”, though not like the outdated single-threaded mode – nonetheless out there for backwards-compatibility – output just isn’t deterministic, producing barely totally different outcomes every time it’s run.
As well as, interactivity in scenes with a number of cloud layers and efficiency of animated deformations have each been improved.
Export heightfields as 16-bit TIFFs to be used in sport engines
For pipeline integration, Terragen can now export heightfields as 16-bit TIFF and RAW information in addition to 32-bit EXRs.
The 16-bit information are meant to be used in sport engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, somewhat than offline rendering.
Pricing and availability
Terragen 4.8 is obtainable for Home windows, Linux and macOS.
There are five price tiers, based mostly on how a lot you earn as a person artist or studio, starting from earnings of $50,000/12 months to over $1 billion/12 months.
Perpetual licences value between $199 and $980, relying on which tier you fall in, whereas subscriptions value between $10/month and $56/month, or $96/12 months and $492/12 months.
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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