[Instant Terra] the high-performance terrain creation tool

Wysiman

Hi, I'm one of the people working on Instant Terra, a software package for terrain modeling, and I'm happy to join the Polycount community.
Instant Terra allows artists to create terrains with the help of a node-based editor. It's a procedural tool aimed at generating very large landscapes in real time (16K or 32K terrains!). The first version was released in February 2018 and we release a new version every 2 / 3 months. The indie version comes with a perpetual license. There's a trial version to download from our website www.wysilab.com.  Schools and students are eligible for free educational licenses: contact us to receive your license!
Here's our 2019 showreel => https://youtu.be/mGgzibYCoJs
Next release 1.7 in a few weeks will bring a great improvement to the erosions, and the following release later this year will allow custom nodes to launch user scripts.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask here and I'll try to answer every one of them.

Wysiman

If you're interested in using Instant Terra with Unreal Engine 4, we have posted a quick tutorial to help artists setting up the landscape and texturing it with masks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaM1NAoCzSs

Wysiman

A new video from Wysilab shows how to use the tile export from Instant Terra to Unreal Engine.
https://youtu.be/GflDfPMBCh8

frmdbl

Looks very cool. I sure will test it.

@Wysiman

Edit: I gave it a shot. My quick impressions are as follows:

-The speed is great it makes the whole process very interactive

-Some nodes seem to have too specific inputs, so I didn't find a way to blend masks (only terrains), I could just plug in a number to the Alpha-Blend node.

-As much as I love the speed, the quality seems to be that one shade short of World Machine.

I mean I certainly am not well versed with the software, but even the examples show that there's a little bit of definition/sharpness missing compared to WM.

The erosion filter is pretty good, but it just creates a way blurier effect, so even at 4k the terrain feels kinda blurry.

Wysiman

@frmdbl , thanks for your feedback.

You can find the nodes to blend masks in the ‘Mask composition’ category: sum, difference, average, min, max, multiply, and the full composition node which allows us to translate, scale and rotate a mask before blending it to another mask.

Have you tried the different erosion nodes: rock erosion, hydraulic erosion, mountain erosion, sedimental smoothing? They produce different results.

You can control the effect and the strength of an erosion node by plugging a mask (painted mask, generated mask or imported mask) to a blue/orange connector.

You can combine different erosion nodes together to reach the result you want to achieve.

I encourage you to try the multi-erosion composition node which is available on the Instant Terra components library (in Instant Terra, click on ‘Get new nodes’, or directly go to https://www.wysilab.com/Library). This node is not as fast as the native erosion nodes because it combines several erosion nodes to give superior results. This node is optimized for 1024 x 1024 terrains. We will release next week another multi-erosion component node that will work on terrains of any size.

Wysiman

For people who'd like to try  now, there is a Black Friday offer: https://www.wysilab.com/Editions_Pricing.html

Wysiman

Hi all,
A new release v1.8 is now available, featuring the Custom nodes.  The Custom nodes open up increased flexibility with Instant Terra, as you can to run your own algorithms or launch your own tools from your own scripts.
See details here.

Also available, a new swirl node to distort and twist your terrain.

Download the free trial version at www.wysilab.com.

Wysiman

Hi guys,
last available version is now 1.11. To answer previous remarks, new blend modes are now available for terrains AND for masks.
And much more ways to handle color maps, alone or following the terrain.
The new colorize nodes make it very easy to have a first nice result.

Free trial licenses available at www.wysilab.com, and free educational licenses offered to students and schools.

Be safe!

Alex_J

does it support tiled builds? key benefits over world machine?

gnoop

Can It produce something like this river  splitting streams?    I saw no  terrain generator  yet that would be able to do it nicely  other then old Geocontrol  River tool     which is insanely uncontrollable and inconvenient to use.                      

Wysiman

Alex Javor said:

does it support tiled builds? key benefits over world machine?

Hi Alex,
Tile export is supported by all the versions.
Tile import is only in the Instant Terra Pro edition: https://www.wysilab.com/OnLineDocumentation/index.html?page=Nodes%2FNodes_Import_TerrainFromSeveralFiles.html
Is that what you were talking about?

Key benefits over World Machine? Well we strongly built the bases of the technology for more than 2 years, digging into R&D, to get the more robust technology for a tool dedicated to handle very large terrains. The result is here: the realtime operations make it possible to test and test again with all the different combinations and settings you like to try, as you are no more limited with the calculation time.
Terrains of different sizes and resolutions can be composed together and handled through manipulators.
For the most technical profiles of you, It also comes with custom nodes where you can write your own scripts in Python (call any external tool for example to update the terrain), but also in a simple native "GPU" script language that provides the same high-speed calculations than any native node.
Instant Terra is rather easy and quick to learn.
Main features have been collected in this page: https://www.wysilab.com/Features.html
World Machine is a great terrain editor, for sure. Now what tool is the best depends on your needs, the size of the terrain you want to work with, the delay you have, the goals to want to achieve.
For example the ability to easily compose terrains of different sizes is a key feature for most teams working on ambitious projects. Now if you are working on your own, you'll like the speed of any operations and the immediate feedback.

Alex_J

looks pretty smart workflow with the tools I need and good documentation too. Is there any plan to release a trial version?

Wysiman

You can get a free trial version from the website. Just download it from www.wysilab.com. Now this is the basic edition.
If you want to try the Pro edition, just contact us at contact@wysilab.com and we'll be happy to provide a trial for the Pro edition.

Wysiman

@gnoop,
sure it's very tricky to get this result, mainly because the difference of altitude is very small.
I challenge artists to try and get this kind of result!
I have the feeling we can archieve something similar by drawing painted masks and use them to drive the hydraulic erosion on a slope then "flatten" the slope.
We'll take some time to give it a try and we'll come back here when we have some nice results.
However,  in a later version we'll have a spline editor. It will be easy then to get this kind of water bed.
Stay tuned!

Wysiman

If you are interested, here's what is coming next in Instant Terra (version 1.12 in a few days). 
Want to try this version when available? Subscribe to the newsletter here: https://www.wysilab.com/#contact
Do not hesitate: we send emails only to inform about our releases, that's more or less once a month.

--------------
And after snow : Water :-)

Wysiman

We have just published a video that demonstrates how to create a moutain just by painting it.
Watch here: https://youtu.be/ZdOTxzrEJME
If you'd like to try it, the project is available in the latest release 1.12.6 => www.wysilab.com to download the free trial and play with the sample.
We'd be happy to see what result you can get! The recording project was my 10th attempt at least, but I'm happy with this result. It only takes a couples of minutes from the provided project to get some result.

Wysiman

Here's a new video to demonstrate how to create terrains in Clarisse: <a href="https://youtu.be/hLi17ZIeVi4">https://youtu.be/hLi17ZIeVi4</a>
The example shows how to start from Instant Terra, but it works the same from any other software.

Wysiman

Hi, the plugin for Unreal Engine is now available from the UE marketplace.

You'll find there the version compatible with UE 4.26 and 4.27: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/instant-terra-terrain-generator

If you are willing to try with UE5, you'll find the dedicated plugin on Wysilab's website at https://wysilab.com/Features/Features-unreal-engine-plugin-terrain.html.

Enjoy!