Terragen images

This is one of my first experiments with the new water transparency features in Terragen 0.8.44. I maxed out the clearness setting of the water, hoping to make it look extraordinarily deep and clear. Instead, it mucks with the scale perception of the image — the water looks only a few meters deep, when it actually should be a hundred.

The odd-looking blue field at the left part of the picture is because the terrain ends abruptly there. My mistake.

A somewhat more successful experiment with water transparency. Here, I have given the water a dark bluish-green tint, and it makes wonders in making the water appear deep. I would guess about 10 meters, wouldn't you? On the other hand, I think the effect would have been improved by moving the camera closer to the water surface.

These two images use the same terrain. The one without a sunset is one of my few images with lots of clouds, and overcast (or nearly overcast) lighting. It does sometimes make Terragen images look a bit more real, but it has the side effect of making them less dramatic. The light becomes dull, in more than one sense.

This is (AFAICR) the only image I have submitted to the Terracon contest. I didn't expect it to win, but I was a little bit surprised that it ended up almost last. Hopefully it is because it is a little bit difficult to see what is going on in a thumbnail version of it, and that few people have the patience to click on and view the 50+ images that were submitted each round in the contest.

IIRC, the assignment of the month was creating a typical Christmas image from the participant's part of the world. Well, this is what a fine midwinter afternoon looks like where I come from. Although it can get quite bright outside around noon, the sun never dips above the horizon from late November to mid-January. That is what is called the dark season, and I think everyone should experience it, more so than the midnight sun.

The image is not based on a real terrain, but is quite typical of Vesterålen.

One of my favourite things to do in Terragen, is to fool around with the athmospheric and solar settings, to create pictures from non-Earth planets, real or imaginary. These two pictures belong to the planet of Narn in the Babylon 5 universe, which is depicted as having a dark yellow athmosphere.

The two pictures have exactly the same terrain and settings, except that in the second, the water level is raised a little bit.

Another one of my "alien planet" images, this time wholly unnatural. The star's colour has been changed to green (no green stars really exist), and the sky has been turned purple (I think I set this "athmospheric blue" directly, without touching the "haze" setting.)

Now look at these two pictures. They both have the same terrain and athmosphere settings, the only difference is in the size, position and colour of the sun!

I don't think this is a very accurate depiction of an Earth-like planet orbiting a blue giant, though. For starters, the light of the star is much too dim, for the planet to be this close. And if such dim blue giants as this did exist, more of of the surface structure of the star ought to be visible. It should not be a uniform disc, such as this.

But then again, Terragen is only a terrain generator, and I shouldn't expect very much in the way of proper-looking stars from it. If I want a space simulator, I can always get Celestia...

A little bit more realistic this time, perhaps, but Celestia makes better stars.

I still think that this was a good idea, but perhaps a little bit lacking in execution. I used a completely black sky in Terragen, generated the starfield in Fractint, and overlayed the two images in — Windows Paint! Now, Paint doesn't really support layers, but only transparancy. So, everything in the picture that was supposed to have stars in it (ie. the sky), had to be set to the same colour. The odd look of the edge of the sun is because I was a little bit over-zealous in colouring the sky.