Last night, just before going to sleep, I watched a YouTube video about the latest releases of Blender Addons. The first one covered was The Nature Generator, which provides a library of customisable procedural terrains and terrain-related objects -- mostly different rock structures. Oh my! This is what I've been failing to deliver for about three days. It wasn't super-cheap; about £50 for the personal edition, but it looked great.
I was hesitant due to the high cost and the number of times I've purchased an add-on, only to quickly find a show-stopping deficiency. I watched the release video and read all the comments on SuperHive. Despite any limitations that appear during testing, this looked like a handy landscape toolbox, so I bought it this morning. If only a couple of the components work well, I'll make use of them and the addon will pay for itself in the long run.
The Nature Generator
Let's jump in and learn the basics before I move on and forget how it works.
Installation
There are two files to download:
Note: The Nature Generator requires Blender 4.1 or later
1. Drag and drop The_Nature_GeneratorX.x zip file into the Blender desktop. The addon will then be installed and appear on the N-panel.
2. The Optional NatureGenerator_Texture_Options.zip file needs to be extracted and placed on your file system, preferably on a local SSD drive, so as not to cause stuttering.
Using The Nature Generator
When installed, you pick from the available assets in the Asset Browser. Once an asset is dropped into the viewport and selected, the N-Panel shows the available parameters. While there are many standard parameters, most assets have some unique properties. Lots of options for customisation!
The Nature Generator is ready to spring into action.
Categories
01 Rocks
There are eight rock objects, each available with three different materials (Desert preset/Moss_preset/Snow_preset).
NG-Balanced Rock Stack in Desert, Moss-covered, and Snow preset materials
The rock objects are geometry node-based splines, faces or objects. For exactly, the Balanced Rock is driven by a spline.
Edit the underlying spline to change the stack.
Comment: The number of parameters that drive these rocks is dizzying. As there's currently no documentation, the only way to do customisation is to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.
Warning: Resolution parameters are unbound, so with a clumsy mouse motion, you can ramp up resolution to a point where Blender will crash.
02 Cliffs
Cliffs
This will be really useful as I need a lot of cliff rock.
Simple Textured Cliff at eye-watering resolution
Layered Formation cliff (high resolution)
Cliff Stack with a touch of moss
03 Ground
Grounds are like Geoscatter biomes, except just two rock types: large and small.
Rocks with True Terrain water
These are nice. I'll need to test the scatter with a target terrain.
04 Mountains
Pretty straightforward. Drop in a mountain!
05 Terrains
There are a few functions for deforming terrain with rivers and ridges. I've not played with them yet.
Desert
Lovely bright grassy mountain range. I love this!
Instant terrain! Lovely! I think that True Terrain provides a richer and more flexible system for building very distinct terrains, which is much greater. Like Terrain Mixer, Nature Generator has some drop-in terrains that produce eye-popping results. After a few outputs, you'd realise that all the outputs are variants of the same set of procedural elements.
NG-Scatter Objects
A collection of scatter objects to put grass on your terrains?
Summary
This is a very useful set of terrain assets. I can see myself using it widely for creating terrain objects such as cliffs, rocks and ground scatters. I doubt it could replace True Terrain, which provides a workflow that gives me a lot more terrain creation tools. There will be times when I want an instant terrain, and this could be great for that.
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