

You can do this with one Scale Vertical set to the appropriate value (5% or so, depending on your starting terrain), or you can set the dropdown to Squash and keep hitting Scale Vertical until you get down to 50m. In the Modify Terrain… popup, I glaciated the terrain once and then squashed it down to a height range of about -30 to 60 meters.You’ll need to edit the surface map later to compensate.) I set the terrain size to 513x513. (For a visible curve, reduce the radius to about 100km. I changed the planet radius to Mars, though changing the radius between Earth, Mars and Moon did not have much effect. In the Size / Radius… popup, check the Render Curved Terrain checkbox.The method, settings, and size of features may vary I used Ridged Multi-Perlin and the size setting 3 notches from the right. In the Generate Terrain… popup, generate a terrain.You can move the camera around a bit for a better view, but keep the lines parallel. Be careful not to let the two guide lines touch the left or bottom sides of the map they should be parallel with the sides. On the map here or in the View and Sculpt window, move the camera (green dot) to the lower left corner of the map and the target (red dot) to the middle.In the Camera Settings… popup, set Zoom / Magnification to 1.Under Camera Orientation, set a bank value to view the planet at an angle.Under Target Position, the z (alt) value should be 3500m.Under Camera Position, the Fixed height above terrain should be 1500m.All settings refer to Terragen v.0.9 for OSX, in order of window, but users of other versions should be able to find the corresponding values without much difficulty. Since there’s not a lot of principle behind this approach, I’m just going to give a list of settings with brief comments on what they do. I did learn a bit about surface maps in the process, but otherwise making planets is not the ideal educational experience for a Terragen beginner.

The surface map had to be scaled down to match the squashed terrain. It was created by means of some fakery: the landscape had to be squashed down and the sky altered to get the island-planet effect. This image is not just a standard Terragen terrain viewed from above, however. Except for a little sharpening, this is pure Terragen output. You can see a bigger version in my Ashundar gallery. There's also a shorter one without pictures still online. Jayhawker added an extended tutorial with lovely illustrations to the Ashundar tutorials page, neither of which, unfortunately, survived the forum updates at Ashundar. (Note this correction if you plan to follow that tutorial.) This tutorial is based on what I learned from the TERRA-Dreams Planet Tutorial #1. | how-to Links checked: February 21, 2015 A Terragen Planet Tutorial September 11, 2005

To invent new life and new civilizations.
