Terragen easy tutorial

Rendering controls – This is your main window where you can see the preview as you go along

Landscape window

Water window

Cloud window

Atmosphere window

You can have a number of windows open at once, but it is probably easier to close a window when you have finished with it

This is a very easy tutorial about Terragen.

Terragen is a FREE program to create photorealistic landscapes (sky, clouds, water,mountains).

The program can be so simple, but it looks scary because it contains lots of options!! I've drawn red borders around those most important settings!

So, after you run the program, you see this window.The main blocks are 7 buttons on the left.

The main window is the top button.It contains options about position of the camera and a small preview image.

Sun and lighting window

3D preview of your landscape

Go to Landscape window

Click the Generate Terrain button. A new box will pop up, just click Generate Terrain again and you will have a randomly generated landscape to work with.

When I click Render Preview, I already have a pretty impressive landscape before even having to think!

As you go through this tutorial, you will find it useful to keep the rendering controls open all the time. Keep pressing Render Preview after each step and you will be able to see the changes you have made.

Don’t forget to pull the detail slider all the way over for better quality images!

The basic sculpting tools at the top will allow you to make changes to the landscape. A right mouse click will create deeper areas, such as lakes, and a left mouse click will make higher mountains.

In the landscape menu, click on the grey and white birds-eye view of your terrain. This will bring up a separate menu where you can start to make some real changes.

The darker areas are depths and the whiter areas are high mountains. The large arrow indicates where the camera is pointing. Right mouse click to change the position of the camera, left mouse click to change the direction.

Go to WATER windowHow to make the water visible? Change the water level! Input 100 or more! Click the Update button.

Here you can also change water color, water reflections and so on. Just play and adjust random settings!

The blueness on the preview image - is the water!! Try to change the water level and you'll see changes immediately.

The atmosphere window will help you give the impression of night or day and change the colour of the sky.

Try clicking edit colour and playing around with the red, green and blue bars.

Open the clouds window

You may wish to choose random clouds and then click generate clouds. Otherwise, play with the controls to change the cloud colour and maximum size.

Open the sun and lighting window. Here you can change the position and direction of the sun. The darker areas show where the shadows will form. Try moving the position of the sun (on the left) and the angle of the sun (on the right) until you have the shadows you want.

If you are happy with your landscape, then you are ready to save it. In the rendering controls window, click Render Image. When you can see the entire image, there will be an option to save.

Here is the image I created while writing this tutorial:

Here are some more options in the sun window you may wish to use

And somecreated by children using the tutorial:

Matthew Edwards, 2008