Terragen Review
Terragen is a fractal image generator. A fractal image generator generates random landscapes, and worlds, based on various settings that you input. Terragen is the best of all programs like that. It is free for non-commercial use, and only $99 for commercial use.
Terragen gives you an enormous amount of things that you can do. You can adjust the lighting, change the parameters of the random generation, and much, much more. The only thing that it won't let you do is to include 3d objects in the random generation. If the program would let you do that, you have things like trees spread throughout the place. On the bright side, the next version will support 3d generation.
When you create a landscape, you first select the what colors you want everything to be, and select the distribution of them, based on area and height. Then you can generate the rough draft, which is basically a small chunk of land. From there, you can change lighting settings, set up clouds and water, and pick your vantage point.
Picking the vantage point is entertaining. The chunk of land is rendered in 3d, and you can either click where you want to start, or you can walk around using the arrow keys.
Once you pick where you want to take the picture from, you can then render the image, and save it as a bitmap.
This sounds complex in writing, but in practice it is very simple to do.
By using a plugin, you can also set it up to follow a set path through the land that you render, and have it play back as a movie. That is a lot of fun to do, though it takes a while to run.
Terragen is a great program, and well worth a download. If you decide that you want to sell what you make with it, you can buy a license for $99 from the company. Buying a license also allows you to make images larger than 1280 x 960.
I give it 4 out of 5 stars. If they add native animation support, and 3d object support, it would be a 5 star product. Still, it is well worth the download.
| Pros | Cons |
| Cheap Great Images Easy to Use |
Animation is done by plugin No 3d object support |