GeoControl2 is not only the succesor of GeoControl1, it is the terrain generator, GC1 was developed for. Although GC1 was good usuable in many situations, it was never the tool, I had in mind - there I had the idea of an software for really professional landscape creating. But now may ideas are turning into realtiy. Most of the needed features and skills are developed.

So, GeoControl2 is really different to GeoControl1. Although it is still easy to use with the well known presets of GC1, it has gotten very complex. There is in general never only one way to create the desired result, but many possibilitys. Understanding the complexity of the level generation and using it for sophisticated landscapes is a challenge and it needs time to understand all the dependencies of filters, levels, selections and post work tools. That is why I have finished several video trainings, which are available in the forum, before I published this pre-release.

The video trainings do not only show, how to work with the new tools, but also show, that GeoControl2 is not only promising but keeps the promises.

Overview

GeoControl2 is now a complex system of different creation tools:

-- The basic subdivision algorithm
-- Level control, for noise, all filters and the isolines
-- The isolines
-- The general forming filters
-- The shape filters
-- The erosions filters
-- The selections, which can be used for all the filters (including noise control!)
-- Most filters as post work filters
-- The special tool "river and lakes
-- "The special tool "vector"

This all together, in a workflow optimized GUI, enables the user, to create nearly every thinkable landscape.

Watch the isolines video to get an impression, of this revolutionary new tool. (click on the image!)

Isolines are the perfect tool for scetching a terrain, for adding details, for creating rough river beds, for nearly evering you can imagine.

You can use them to define rough basics, like a sloped terrain from top left to bottom right, for adding medium forms like mountains, valleys or for adding details like rocks, rivers or flat areas for urban situations.

They are very easy to use, can be changed afterwords and are stored in the small settings files.

Height filter (see filter curve on the right)

Smoothing (with radius up to 8px for post work smoothing)

Height displacement (based on a selection)

Shift displacement (based on selection)

The shape filters are improved, and are now artifacts free, even on very smooth terrains.

All erosion filters were improved. Flows are now longer and do not produce unnatural straight flows on smooth terrains.

New are two high end erosions filters: "Thins flows deep" and the semi scientific erosion "Thin flows sediment".
While the thins flows deep is for cutting deep and detail rich into the terrain, thin flows sediment simulates the effect of natural sedimentation. The sedimenations can not only be controlled in the amount, but also in the way, the sedimentation reacts to different slopes. The bandwidth of that filters is enormous, take a look at the trainings video in the geocontrol forum!

A cominbation of thin flows sediment and the river and lake tool, rendered in Terragen 2 (tech preview)

A combination of "thins flows deep" and "thin flows sediment" and vector tool, rendered in GeoControl2

Relavtive position and roughness are GeoControl innovations and are able to select parts of the terrain by anaylising the surrounding!
The selections can be added, subtracted or mixed!

Additional, every erosion, the "river and lake" tool and the "vector" tool also create selections, with the opportunity to mix them with the 5 basic selection types......

All selections can be used for restricting the filters, the noise and the erosions to specific parts of the terrain or to drive the displacement filters and of course for shading the terrain.

Selections can also be imported from images and also this selections can be combined with the basic selector types.

At all the selections tools are complete and can solve nearly every thinkable selection problem.

The new postwork section adds filters at the end of the final productions row. This made it possible, to check after a change, from what state the changes were done and GeoControl2 only calcualtes the new or changed filters. This makes it much more comfortable to use erosions, even if they take some time to generate.
But also this helps to concentrate on the atucal level or to work on imported terrains.

It is up to you, where a post work starts. And of course, you can enlarge the terrain and work then on the enlarged terrain with post work filters.

Last but not least, the postwork section offer the brandnew special tools "river and lakes" and "vector".

I do not want to speak long about the impossibility of this tool. Well I think it was really a mixture of hard thinking and luck to create an algorithm, which is able to simulate on an pc the flow of water, including building lakes (with flows in and out!) on a high resolution terrain. Here it is and I am very proud of this tool!

You can simulate with this tool:

Rivers and lakes
Complex river and lake systems
Glacial erosion
Strong fluvial erosions

Of course the tool is ready to use for an artist. So you can with simple sliders control the rivers wideness, the river bank smoothness, the amount of water, the water filling in the rivers .... and more.
Take a look at the video training to see how really simple that works!

Complex river network on a simple terrain, one spring with a great area - rendered in GeoControl2

The vector tool create roads, which prefectly fit into the terrain and follow the relief.

Winding road in an isoline terrain - rendered in GeoControl2

GeoControl2 offers a extrem fast full resolution raytracer. You now can get a really preview, how your terrain will look in the final rendersoftware. It contains a complete layer based shader system. The produced textures can be exported and so of course all selections.
The render engine is no open GL or direct X engine, but software based. It is supposed for a preview of the terrain, but that in a high quality. Most of the images here are rendered with this engine.

The normal maps were deeply improved.

A 16bit tif export was added (for example Vue uses that for import)
And of course all standard formats for 16 bit heightfields, raw, pgm, tga, ter and obj export, which together with the normal map should enable everyone, to use GeoControl2 terrains for his outdoor renders.

Click on the images to see the quality of the maps in full resolution (4096*4096)