Terragen is a utility that will allow us to develop landscapes on our computer with an extraordinary level of detail for free programs -although it also has a paid version-making, even the visual aesthetics seem natural for a moment. We are in the presence of one of the best software that has been developed almost exclusively for creating landscapes, and we are sure that if you like to work with your designs, you will appreciate it.

What is Terragen for? Many will be asking themselves. Well, this application has been developed to allow us to generate landscapes. Although it sounds useless or without much sense, those who work with this type of platform know how difficult it can be to get one whose results resemble reality. Here, without paying anything, we can obtain magnificent landscapes of all types.

The truth is that this program will allow us to make many changes and modifications, such as adding or removing lighting to the landscapes, or adding areas with water, if we want a pond, for example. You will also be able to customize the atmosphere, so as you can see, this service has many exciting issues.

If you have used the old versions of Terragen, you will have seen that its operation was effortless since we only had to generate a new terrain, add textures, adequate lighting, and shading, and that's it. That is why Terragen, in its second version, is a much more complete alternative within the genre, allowing you to get much more complex landscapes than before.

One of the features of this program that we have found extremely interesting is the node editor, taking into account that it is the one that allows us to modify, to our liking, almost all the parameters that appear in the scene. In this way, the path from the landscape to the rendering is seen as a pipe on which many filters can be applied and thus achieve an impressive final result.

The colossal format compatibility of this platform is undoubtedly another of its strong points, considering that it allows us to work with some of the most common formats, such as TGD, XML, BMP, TIFF, RGB, SGI, or EXR. This is a differential factor in direct competition with other programs, which, although they have good qualities, force us to download a format converter to be able to use them.

What can we say about the rendering engine of this application if it is one of the best we have tried, at least within those that can be framed in the section of those that are free for users? We do not doubt that if you have tried your luck before with other rendering engines, you will find this platform an ideal ally for all your developments.

In addition to that, and this is something that usually gives a plus to many programs that have to do first of all with the imagination of customers, we have to emphasize that Terragen has one of the most active user communities we have seen. Thanks to them, you will be able to know not only the new features introduced by the program but also, first of all, different tricks or tutorials to get the most out of it.

Of course, you can't lose sight of the fact that to get the most out of this program; you should have minimal knowledge about 3D modeling to interpret what actions can be produced. And if not, you can always start having fun, and you will see that you can handle some basic concepts after a while.

If we had to mention some not-so-positive issues of this latest version of Terragen, we would undoubtedly have to point out that although it is much more complete than the previous one, it is also a little slower when processing most of the actions, so it has lost that immediate reflex that characterized its predecessor. Besides that, keep in mind that the free version of this program has some minor limitations regarding image quality.

At the same time, consider that this is a program that, by its nature, consumes quite a lot of system resources, so you should always install and test it on a computer with enough power to avoid having to deal with screen freezes and forced shutdowns.

Beyond that, you can not lose sight of the fact that Terragen is a tool commonly used by amateur artists and even in commercial fields, allowing you to generate all kinds of movies, music shorts, applications, games, or whatever you want, in a simple way, and with multiple functions and landscape customization options.

In summary, we can say that Terragen is an excellent alternative when we think of programs created for design, in this case, the design of landscapes of all kinds. It has an endless number of tools for total customization through modifications employing a system of nodes, and we do not doubt that even its free version will be enough for your day-to-day work.