At one point, I somehow removed something and the entire scene was blank, so I started over. Shaders are more complicated and in the TerraTuts tutorial, I found myself going back over the adjustments several times to get it right.

Getting the terrain to look the way you want it to is very easy using Terragen's numbers and sliders. They also recommend using a lower-quality image (by adjusting normal render settings) to check your work periodically. Planetside recommends that you use the normal renderer for Objects and Terrain, but for Shaders, Clouds and Lighting, use the Ray-Traced renderer. You have the option to use the normal 3D renderer, which is pretty good and fairly fast, or a Ray-Traced Preview, which is slower but shows more detail. Lastly, Terragen 4 uses your computer's CPU to render in the 3D Viewport. This puts the camera at the view in the preview window so that you can render from this perspective. One fact that is repeated in all tutorials is to click the 'align the view to camera' button at the bottom of the preview window. Navigation is primarily through keyboard shortcuts, but there's also a circular button on the top right of the preview window that opens up to a tool that allows you to move the camera in any direction you like. More on the Painted Shader tool later in the article. Near the end of the tabbed 3D preview window are the Painted Shader tool and the Measurement tool. Depending upon your CPU speed render times will vary. The 3D preview (all rendered from your CPU) lets you choose a variety of render settings including a ray-traced preview, adding atmosphere and lighting (or removing).

It is recommended to turn off this view as it requires advanced skills with nodes to use. You then have the main 3D preview window and the nodes window beneath it. Both numerical and slider adjustments are featured. This is just above the Options panel on the left side of the main interface. You also have the Scene Elements list which shows all of the various parts of the scene you are creating. This is where you make adjustments to the Shader (and all the other Scene Elements). When you select a Scene Element like Shaders, a corresponding Options panel opens up on the left-hand side of the interface.

Terragen butte tutorial