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Terragen Quick Start Guide

By DesertStorm®



To get Terragen : Planetside Terragen

First look at Terragen :



When you start Terragen, two windows, called Landscape and Rendering Control, show up. The Landscape window is the one we gonna use to generate terrains. The Rendering Control window is used to have a first look at our future map.

How to create new terrains?



We need to use the Landscape window.


Notice the width of the terrain is indicated under the black box. By clicking on this button, you can select the size of your map in the Landscape Settings windows :


Better not modify the Planetary Context, unless you want to make a photorealistic render of your map later.

129, 257 and 513 are the standard terrain size. Notice all three are one pixel larger than needed. That means we will have to modify the height map once it will be done. We’ll see this later.

Now, let’s go back to the Landscape window by clicking "OK".

To create a terrain, we just have to click on the "Generate Terrain..." button. The Terrain Genesis window will show up.


As we can see, it offers a lot of options to help you create your terrain. I’ll let you play with them. They enable to create a huge variety of terrains. Just a few words on some options :

Action area :

"Erase first and generate new terrain" will make your terrain blank and create the new method you ask.
"Generate features on existing terrain" will allow you to apply the method you will select on the terrain you’re working on. It means you can apply several methods on same terrain, simply by clicking this radio button (e.g. "Subdivide & Displace II" for first pass and "Ridge Perlin" for a second pass)

Settings area :

"Glaciation" will allow you to level the terrain, so that it will flatten.
"Canyonism" will make the opposite, making the terrain full of valleys.



Let’s go with a multiple methods terrain.

Pick "Subdivide & Displace II" and click "Generate terrain". Check "Generate features on existing terrain" radio button and select "Ridge Perlin" for a method. Click "Generate terrain" then "Close".

An height map has been created and appears in the Landscape window :


Time to save your work. Notice Terragen saves terrains as *.ter files. This format is also the only one Terragen can open (don’t mistake open and import).

Remember you can add any method to the terrain by clicking the "Generate Terrain..." button and check "Generate features on existing terrain" radio button.

How to modify my terrain?



There is a "Modify Terrain" button. Clicking on it will open the Terrain Modification window :


We already talked about Glaciation and Cannyonism. "Clear/Flatten" will erase your terrain. Other options seem understandable enough.

Let’s close the Terrain Modification window and go back to our Landscape window. We’ll now take a look at a really interesting button : "Combine with...". It opens the Terrain Combination window :


This window will enable you to merge two terrains as you wish. This obviously implies you need to have created two terrains. The one you’re working on is displayed in the "Combination Preview" area and if you don’t have a secondary terrain, nothing will be displayed above. Terrain combination can lead you to very interesting maps.

How do I add material to my terrain?



In the Landscape window, we can see a "Surface Map" area. A click on the "Open" button will open the surfaces library. Let’s apply "GrassAndSnow2.srf" to our map.


Notice you can edit the surface map, and reorder the different surfaces. If you’re looking for other surfaces, try to look at them on the Internet.

How do I get my heights map?



In the Landscape window, click on the "Export" button. Terragen will allow you to export your terrain in a *.raw format. An 8 bits raw file seems enough for MechWarrior maps.

How to render my terrain texture?



Now it’s time to take a look at the Rendering Control window :


Set details to max, to have a fine preview of you map. Your terrain appears in the "Camera" area. Moving the camera here is a bit tricky. Right click sets the target position and left click sets the camera position. Clicking on "Render Preview" will render a quick preview in the window (Over the "Render Preview" button).

If you want to render a high detailed high sized image of your map, click on "Render Image" after having set the image size. Depending on your machine, this rendering can take up to a few minutes. This image rendering will allow you to render your terrain texture. The trick is to look at your terrain from above. To do so, set camera as follow :


x and y positions for both Camera and Target position should be set to be half the size of your map, to place camera right in the middle of it.

The preview will render a top view of your textured terrain :


Now, you will need to make a full render of your terrain to get your terrain texture file. Unregistered versions of Terragen are set to limit rendered images size to 1280x940. Set it to 512x512 is enough though.

What to do now?



Now that you have your heights map and your terrain texture, you’ll still need a few work on them. Open your favourite drawing program. I, for my part, use Adobe Photoshop.

For your heights map :

Open your heights map (still a *.raw file). Resize your height map 2 pixels lower than the size of your map (e.g. 510 pixels for a 512x512 map). Save your work.
Create a new file, the size of your map, black background.
Copy your heights map and paste it over in the new file. Save this file in a *.tga format. This will be your final heights map.

For your terrain texture map :

Open your rendered image (*.bmp format). Resize it at your convenience and save it into *.tga format.


Now you can go and start your Map Creator.