Import a Bryce Terrain into Terragen

Author: Stargazy

Tools Needed

* Bryce 5 or 5.5

* Any graphic program

* Terragen with the plug-in

So, let's start. Open Bryce and create a terrain. Then open the 'Terrain Editor' by clicking on the small E.

At first you have to adjust your terrain size. It depends on the size of terrain you want to use with Terragen. For my example, I will use a terrain of 513×513 in Terragen, so I select '512 – ultra-fine' for this one. If you want to use another size in Terragen, select the appropriate size (Terragen size minus 1) in Bryce. You could resize the terrain later in your graphic program, but there you would lose a lot of details.

Terragen terrain size: 129 - > Bryce terrain size 128 – normal

Terragen terrain size: 257 - > Bryce terrain size 256 – fine

Terragen terrain size: 513 - > Bryce terrain size 512 – ultra-fine

Terragen terrain size: 1025 - > Bryce terrain size 1024 – massive resolution

Terragen terrain size: 2049 - > Bryce terrain size 2048 – gigantic resolution

Terragen terrain size: 4097 - > Bryce terrain size 4096 – planetary resolution

Then sculpture your terrain as you like. I added some metamorphism on this one, but it's up to you, what you prefer.

If you are happy with your terrain, click on 'Pictures' in the 'Editing Tools'. Your terrain should now show up in the left picture frame. If not, just click on the picture and it will appear.

Now click on copy. The terrain will now be copied into the clipboard. That's it for the Bryce part.

Now open your graphic program and paste the content of the clipboard as a new picture.

Now there are three things you have to do:

The first thing you have to do is now to resize the picture to the Terragen settings. In my example I resize my picture to 513 x 513.

Since Terragen works with 8 bit colors only, reduce the colors to 265 colors (8 Bit).

Then save it in BMP (Bitmap) format.

Your terrain is now ready to be imported.

Open Terragen and go to the 'Landscape' window. Adjust the size of the Terragen terrain to the size of the terrain you want to import. In my example I click on 'Size…' and select 513 for my Terragen terrain.

For importing the bitmap, you will use the 'For Export Only' plug-in. If you don't have it, refer to the following URL:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/resources.shtml

Here you will find the download link and instructions how to install the plug-in.

Click on 'Accessories' and then select 'F.E.O. – Windows BMP Inflator'.

A window will open and you can search for your file. Open it and you will get the following window:

Since we don't want to resize anything, type 1 into both fields. Then click on OK.

Wait one or two seconds and Terragen imported the terrain.

Here is a quick render with the terrain I just imported.

Happy rendering !!