What are the rules or opinions applied to using Terragen? I've seen several
images use just Terragen which to me doesn't seem right since it isn't
really a ray tracer. I decided against using it as a background this round
because I found isosurfaces a better fit, but for future opertunites, how is
the use of Terragen looked upon as a background? Good? Bad?

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3cb1d609@news.povray.org...
> I've seen several
> images use just Terragen which to me doesn't seem right since it isn't
> really a ray tracer.

Not a problem, any rendering program is acceptable (see Acceptable tools
3a).

> I decided against using it as a background this round
> because I found isosurfaces a better fit, but for future opertunites, how
is
> the use of Terragen looked upon as a background? Good? Bad?

There are no rules against using a Terragen background (or a photograph, or
any sort of non-rendered background). Of course if the final image is a
beautiful Terragen background with raytraced sphere plastered upon, some
people may rightfully object. Otherwise using Terragen to generate skies or
terrains is not a problem per se. I did use a Terragen background in my
Fortress entry, but as it was only a background (mostly sky with a little
bit of ground), not the centre of attraction of the scene, nobody
complained.

G.

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> There are no rules against using a Terragen background (or a photograph, or
> any sort of non-rendered background). Of course if the final image is a
> beautiful Terragen background with raytraced sphere plastered upon, some
> people may rightfully object. Otherwise using Terragen to generate skies or
> terrains is not a problem per se. I did use a Terragen background in my
> Fortress entry, but as it was only a background (mostly sky with a little
> bit of ground), not the centre of attraction of the scene, nobody
> complained.

One must, I think, also be careful that the compositing of the rendered
portion over the background is done *in the renderer* as opposed to an
external graphics manipulation program such as GIMP, lest one run afoul
of the "no post-processing" rule. Other than that, I don't see a problem
with using Terragen. In fact, I don't think that there's a real
requirement that the renderer be a "raytracer", despite the official
name of the competition... I've seen entries from Blender, which is not
a raytracer, and nobody squawked.

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