So. Much. Testing.

 I've continued testing True-Terrain 5 to the point where I'm starting to go over the same workflow steps, repeating things a lot without getting much for my time.

I figured out the steps for importing splat maps. These are image files that contain masks for terrain textures. This method is more memory-hungry and less flexible than True Terrain's built-in masking system. It can be helpful if you use a third-party terrain generator such as World Creator or Gaea that generates masking data you want to import into True Terrain 5. 

Settings for bringing in a splat map file as a terrain mask

Flow lines generated in World Creator -- you can generate these in TT5, probably at a much lower memory cost.

Monster Terrain file

I managed to import four tiled height maps that had been generated in World Creator. Each 256MB file was imported into a single terrain, then aligned using the transform tools, then masked with an "add" function. This created the biggest terrain (in terms of data, not dimensions) I'd successfully and usefully loaded into Blender -- I'd occasionally managed to load terrains in, only to find Blender unresponsive to the point where you couldn't do anything. I was able to work this this 25million vert monster!

Great landscape rendering isn't about file sizes. You should always be looking to do things more efficiently because it's faster to work with, faster to render, and probably more stable. That said, it's good to push the limits. In this case, I got VRAM Out-of-memory errors when I pushed it up one more notch.

Quick Tests

The following quick test scenes were all part of this week's efforts:

Geo-scatter covering up subdivision-enabled details - a bit of a waste then.

I need more practice with material masking

A lake in the mega terrain

Earth noise!