Planetside Software has released Terragen 4.2, the latest update to its software for creating realistic natural environments.
The new release sees improvements to the ray tracing of displaced surfaces, especially for rays that travel nearly parallel to the surface in a addition to fixes to cloud rendering when the camera was above the base altitude of a cloud layer. Reflections can now pass through a Surface Layer that has child layers and Luminosity (emission) can pass through a Surface Layer that has child layers too.
The Micro Exporter now allows you to choose which texture space to use for the exported UVs or UVWs. Choices include Image UV (render projection) and UVW from Compute Terrain or Tex Coords).
Group and notes in the nodal view have been improved so that following moving or resizing groups, those groups auto-capture any nodes they surround. Groups and Notes now also snap to the grid and are much easier to resize.
Other node improvements include renamed inputs plus reworked labels arrows that fade when zoomed out to reduce clutter.
The Heightfield and Simple Shape shader now have an option show a bounding box and manipulation handles and the camera can now show the frustum and path in previews in addition to the existing option to show the camera body in the preview.
Various other small improvements include improved file and image handling plus improvements and fixes to licensing and renewals.
Terragen 4 Creative costs $349, and the Professional version with additional render nodes, no cap on output resolution and additional costs $699. A free version is also available. Find out more about this release on Planetside Software’s website.
