Looking for a terrain engine

[Soln]

Anyone have any favorites?  In particular, I'm looking for a fly-through modeller, a la Bryce, but something that leaves me with extensible output I can dumb down.  i.e. to drop in a gaming engine. 

[Stephen Zepp]

Anyone have any favorites?  In particular, I'm looking for a fly-through modeller, a la Bryce, but something that leaves me with extensible output I can dumb down.  i.e. to drop in a gaming engine. 

Are you looking for freeware, or a library to drop into an existing engine, or something to play with, or...

Torque has a pretty nice terrain engine, and the Atlas engine just recently dropped into TSE (early adopter, next gen tech) is pretty damn smooth, given that your terrain size is only limited by your hard drive space. Theoretically, given enough storage space, Atlas can handle more square feet than their are particles in the universe.

[Margalis]

Or you looking for an engine or a modelling/creation tool? Because it sounds more like the latter from the description.

I can't think of any terrain generation tools off the top of my head other than Bryce.

[Signe]

Bryce!  I used to love playing with that!  I think I'll play with it some more... and maybe fractals, too!  I love making swirly bits.  Who needs games when you can just play with the swirly bits?

[Soln]

thx all for the feedback, I will check out Torque/Atlas.  I'm ideally looking for freeware, and/or something I can customize.  I'm looking for something to help me with prototyping, but I want my tests and early models to be useful later on, even if I'm able to port to my own engine (or "contraption", which is more realistic for me) someday.  thx.

[Krakrok]

There is Terragen which is free. But if you already have Bryce what more do you need? Here is a Bryce Terrain export tutorial. Simplest way is in the Bryce terrain editor just press CTRL-C to copy the grayscale heightmap image and paste it in your favorite paint program. It can create from 16x16 to 4096x4096 heightmaps. That tutorial tells how to export the data to a .OBJ as well. You can render a static texture of the terrain to an image by just pointing the camera 90 degrees down.

[e_bortion]

thx all for the feedback, I will check out Torque/Atlas.  I'm ideally looking for freeware, and/or something I can customize.  I'm looking for something to help me with prototyping, but I want my tests and early models to be useful later on, even if I'm able to port to my own engine (or "contraption", which is more realistic for me) someday.  thx.

You can download the free Torque Demo from Garagegames.com, which includes a terrain editor (hit f11), it outputs .ter files which are pretty much only useful if you are using TGE as your 3D engine. You can get the source code for commercial use for $100 bucks.

[Soln]

There is Terragen which is free. But if you already have Bryce what more do you need? Here is a Bryce Terrain export tutorial. Simplest way is in the Bryce terrain editor just press CTRL-C to copy the grayscale heightmap image and paste it in your favorite paint program. It can create from 16x16 to 4096x4096 heightmaps. That tutorial tells how to export the data to a .OBJ as well. You can render a static texture of the terrain to an image by just pointing the camera 90 degrees down.

yes Bryce is the bomb, but I'm experience with only an older version.  I'll need to upgrade :)  thx

[Jobu]

Leveller is a pretty nice heightfield tool. It has a little brush space that works like a dumbed down photoshop, so you can paint the terrain pretty intuitively. It exports to several formats, and has lots of plugin support for fractal generation and things like erosions.

[Fabricated]

How about this engine?

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

Looks fancy, and from the looks of it, does what you need.

[Soln]

How about this engine?

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

Looks fancy, and from the looks of it, does what you need.

Bloody helll... this is nice. Thanks so much.  Not sure why I didn't root around SourceForge more.  See you in a while :D

[Signe]

That one does look like good fun to play with, actually.  On the sourceforge site there is a bit showing Projects in the Works which is interesting.  The first one has a video showing off an engine based on Irrlicht.  I wish I could find my really, really old vesion of Bryce, though... it was coolness to play with.  Fractint is keeping me smiling, though.  God, I love fractals.  I had forgotten how much fun they can be!



Who needs acid?

( I didn't make that fractal, btw, but I can't stop staring at it today)

[Soln]

GarageGames' Constructor looks impressive:  Any word on a beta or full release?  FYI .

[Stephen Zepp]

thx all for the feedback, I will check out Torque/Atlas.  I'm ideally looking for freeware, and/or something I can customize.  I'm looking for something to help me with prototyping, but I want my tests and early models to be useful later on, even if I'm able to port to my own engine (or "contraption", which is more realistic for me) someday.  thx.

You can download the free Torque Demo from Garagegames.com, which includes a terrain editor (hit f11), it outputs .ter files which are pretty much only useful if you are using TGE as your 3D engine. You can get the source code for commercial use for $100 bucks.

Minor correction to the above: the INDIE source code license is $100, which can only be used for making games (there are other restrictions as well).

The true commercial license (basically, no restricitions) is a higher price.

Also, note that Atlas does not have a downloable demo at the moment, and also that Atlas (TSE) is the terrain implementation for TSE (Torque Shader Engine, full game engine), so if all you want to do is just to play around with making various terrains, they probably aren't applicable.

FYI, Atlas is literally generations better than the TGE demo terrain implementation!