I’m actually starting this post on the same day as day 4, but who’s going to know? ;-).

At the end of Day 4, I was able to fly around in my new (but very bland) scenery.  Now, as the video instructor says, comes the hard part.  The first step apparently is to export the terrain to Terragen files, and this was accomplished easily in the Landscape editor

• Launch the Landscape editor and select ‘CaesarCreek’ from the Landscape dropdown list
• Select Tools –> Export Terrain to Terragen, and wait for about 30 seconds for the operation to complete
• Select File –> Save Landscape to save the work

The Terragen files show up in the ‘Working Folder’ in the CCSC scenery folder under C:\Program Files\Condor\Landscapes.

OK, now on with the adventure.  I started viewing the ‘Terragen Topo Maps’ video (http://vimeo.com/8584046), and right away ran into a problem – what is ‘Terragen’,  and where do I find it?  A Google search netted a bunch of hits, including a Wikipedia article – neat.  Anyway, I found the Terrgen website (http://planetside.co.uk) and downloaded their free non-commercial version (V2.4).  There are some limitations on what it will do relative to the commercial version, but I’m not willing (at least not yet) to plunk down USD 299 to get the unrestricted version.

I also downloaded Hitzi’s free TerragenForCondor, but I have no idea (yet) where this comes into play.

I have also heard the dreaded word ‘PhotoShop’ uttered more than once now, so I’m very afraid I’m going to wind up jumping down that particular rabbit hole at some point.   I take great pride in the fact that I have had a very successful 40+ year highly technical career without ever having to learn PhotoShop, LaTex, or AutoCAD, but it may be that PhotoShop is about to catch up with me – bummer! ;-).

Installed Terragen V2.4 Free Edition and then launched it.  Interesting interface, but at the moment I have no clue what comes next.  I have reviewed the start of the ‘Terragen Topo Maps’ video a couple of times now, and the first few minutes indicates that I should copy ‘My Terragen Files’ to another folder called Terragen_Topo.  Hmm, are these the files that were installed with Terragen, or the Terragen files that were generated by the terrain export from Landscape Editor?  One of the files discussed in the video is ‘strata1.bmp’.  I did a search for this file in my CCSC scenery folder and got zero hits.  Then I did another search on my entire PC, and still didn’t find anything.

Searched through the Condor Scenery forums looking for clues.  Found a reference to SOPack, and followed that trail.  Seems this is a required plugin for Terragen, available from XXXXX.  To make SOPack work, there is yet another required library, TGPGuiLib, available from http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jomeder/tgpguilib/#download.  So, I downloaded/installed SOPack into the Terragen Plugins folder, downloaded and installed the library (note here that the Terragen install folder was changed from C:\Program Files\Terragen to C:\Program Files\PlanetSide Software\Terragen 2 Free Edition somewhere along the way, so the default install folder for the library won’t work anymore – have to use the Browse… function).

Oh, great – now I get an error dialog that Terragen can’t locate a required entry function in the SOPack plugin?  Back to the forums I guess.

 

So, I posted on the Condor Scenery forum, and as it almost always the case, I got a reply in just a few hours (from ‘NoXylophone’).  Seems there are two different, incompatible versions of Terragen – Terragen ‘Classic’, and Terragen 2.  I had installed Terragen 2, and I needed to use Terragen ‘Classic’.  So, I uninstalled Terragen 2, installed Terragen ‘Classic’, and I got a little bit farther.  I’m still stuck with the problem that the video seems to magically conjur a [sceneryname].tgw (Terragen World) file that I don’t have, and the missing ‘strata1.bmp’ and ‘strata.bmp’ files, but that is tomorrow’s problem! ;-)

 

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