Forewords
OK, it’s started a couple weeks ago when my friends came by to my house, finding out that I was working on my newest Terragen renders. Well, most of them didn’t know what I was doing, but some of them knows that I was working on Terragen. It seems that they’re quite interested in what I was doing, and keep asking me to teach them how to do it. Of course I told them a brief short of Terragen, GIS (Geographic Information Systems), and it’s purposes. But it’s still not enough. Shortly when they’ve gone away from my house, I was trying to find a good tutorial for them. What I was looking for is a general landscape tutorials, and a brief theory behind GIS. That’s what I need. Unfortunately, all I found was some mid-level to pro-level GIS-specific tools tutorials. I don’t need any of these now.
At last, I decided to work on this tutorial, specifically for those people who just take the first step into landscape generating. I know that this tutorial is still far from perfect, but I still hoping that this will help you all. Then let’s start, shall we? 
A brief short of Landscape Generating
For the first step in landscape generating, we’ll need to know some basic terms that were widely used by most of GIS people. Here some of them :
- DEMs, quoting from the Wikipedia, a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is a representation of the topography of the Earth or another surface in digital format, that is, by coordinates and numerical descriptions of altitude. DEMs are used often in geographic information systems. A DEM may or may not be accompanied by information about the ground cover. In contrast with topographical maps, the information is stored in a raster format. That is, the map will normally divide the area into rectangular pixels and store the elevation of each pixel. In that sense, digital elevation model (DEM) data are sampled arrays of surface elevations in raster form. DEMs are most commonly used to extract terrain parameters, model water flow or mass movement or for pure visualization purposes (3D draping). To make it short, we can import DEM files to make a realistic terrain in our favourite landscape rendering tools. Oh, and BTW, most of DEMs are made by a real satellites owned by NASA, etc. So if you want to make a reality-based terrain render, this is perfect.
- WORLD files, still from the Wikipedia, a World file is used by GIS to coordinate raster map images. The standard was created by ESRI corporation of Redlands, California. Small-scale rectangular raster image maps can have an associated world file for GIS map software which describes the location, scale and rotation of the map. Well, WORLD files also used in many GIS tools such as Terragen, World Machine, etc.
- TERRAIN files, or also called Digital Terrain Model (DTM) is a topographic model of the bare earth or other terrain that can be manipulated by computer programs. Terrain files are pretty similar with DEMs, but Terrain files usually generated by a program, so most of it wouldn’t be based on a real-life terrains–differ with DEMs which usually captured by satellite imaging.
Softwares
After we talk about basic terms, let’s discuss a few popular programs that were used in rendering landscape. Here are some of the most popular softwares :
- Planetside’s Terragen, hence one of my fave program in rendering landscape. It’s quite simple so it won’t confuse newcomer renderers. But it has the power to create a pro-level render or animation. So, I think this program was good for all users. You can import/export DEM and DTM files. It also have a built-in terrain generator too. Take a closer look at their site here (it will open up in a new window). We’ll discuss it later at part II, which is mainly for Terragen.
- Bryce, texture-based rendering and a ray tracing program made by DAZ. We can create 3D buildings, landscapes, and another objects with this program.
And some ‘optional’ softwares for retouching renders are :
- Adobe Photoshop, one of the best photo retouching software–which is still the best–in the community. There’s a lot of effects available to retouch your renders.
- Macromedia Fireworks, which also owned by Adobe now, is another option for retouching renders. It doesn’t have effects as many as Photoshop does, but it’ll do quite nice.
The Purposes
- Art, (which is why I did this!
) Many pros are using Terragen for rendering 2D landscapes. - Movies, I don’t remember exactly what movies, but still, there’s a lot of pros still using it.
- GIS, which is the main purpose.
OK, we’ve talked about terms, softwares, and it’s purposes. Then let’s jump on it. In the next part (Part II) we’ll discussing Terragen. Starting from generate landscape, shaping the texture which we’ll used it as ‘skin’, put some waters, until lighting and atmospheres. Until then, see yah! 
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