News: Terrain mapping with Terragen

Within hours of the recent landing on Titan of the European Space Agency probe Huygens, amateur artists had posted on the Internet fantastic photo-real images of what the alien moon might look like. Forget the grainy snapshots of rocks and drainage channels created by the probe itself, the 'net artists' pictures included spectacular 3D renderings of Titan's topography based on data collected by the probe.

Mike Zawistowski created the image linked above by mapping the details from a real picture of Titan into Terragen, a software tool that is capable of creating detailed 3D images of geographical features. Terragen has many features: "random fractal terrain," which allow for extremely varied terrain shapes and can be used to "fill in" realistic terrain on a user-defined landscape; extreme close-ups of landscape details with automatic level of detail adjustment; terrain sculpting tools, which can be used to "paint" the shape of the landscape and position mountains and valleys; modifications such as adding glaciation or combining terrains; import and export of terrain data; and "hierarchical surface color map," which allows artists to divide landscape into different components, such as grass and rock.

Terragen is already used by many companies to make films, videogames, magazine illustrations, and even music videos. Game titles that have used Terragen include Battlefield 1942, Formula 1 2000, Ground Control 2, and the Serious Sam series.