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Killer Game Programming in Java
book

Killer Game Programming in Java

by Andrew Davison
May 2005
Intermediate to advanced
998 pages
26h
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Killer Game Programming in Java

Terragen

Terragen is a scenery-generation package for Windows and the Mac, aimed at producing photorealistic landscape images and animations (http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/). It's easy to use, and a beautiful scene can be generated in a few minutes.

Class diagrams for Terra3D

Figure 27-3. Class diagrams for Terra3D

Some examples are at http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/images.shtml and http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/gallery/gallerymain.php. Terragen is currently free for personal, noncommercial use, though there are some restrictions on the size and resolution of the scenes that can be built.

A terrain can be created in Terragen using fractals (I talked about fractal terrains in the last chapter), by painting the shape of the landscape, or as a combination of the two. Terragen supports powerful surface and color maps for decorating the landscape, water effects, clouds, atmospheric elements, lighting, and shadows.

Terragen can import and export a wide range of file formats through the use of plug-ins. For example, the Firmament plug-in allows Terragen to read BMPs, STMs, POV-RAY height fields, and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) DEM (digital elevation model) and spatial data transfer standard (SDTS) files. The For Export Only (FEO) plug-in permits exports to BMP, DXF, OBJ, and RIB files.

Tip

My approach requires that Terragen exports its terrain to a Wavefront OBJ file, so the FEO plug-in must be installed ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007302Errata Page