How to Use Profantasy Fractal Terrains 3

[jjleah395]

Hi all!

TL;DR I have absolutely zero experience with any software like this and only limited time to use it, are there any resources that would explain it to me like I'm 5? Also, is this a recommended program for creating geographically realistic worlds without actually having much geographical knowledge?

So, having very little geographical knowledge, I was searching for a program that could assist me in creating a realistic world - i.e. that would prevent me from designing something geographically implausible, would do the hard work of figuring out climates/wind patterns/ocean currents/etc. based on what I create, and would show me how the changes I make affect the world as a whole - and I found a free demo download for Profantasy Fractal Terrains 3.

As sort of a pre-question, can anyone with experience using the program let me know if it's actually what I'm looking for (i.e. has capabilities such as the ones mentioned above, has reliably realistic mechanics, etc.)? It sounds like it but I can only tell so much from the description.

For the real question: does anyone know of a "FT3 Guide for Dummies" type resource? I have absolutely zero experience with software like this, and the demo is only 14 days so I'd like to jump right into creating my world rather than spending ages learning the program (and then having to pay for it by the time I'm ready to create my world). I'd like to emphasize again my complete lack of knowledge or skill with this type of program so I'm looking for something REALLY easy to understand, not full of technical jargon (or at least something that explains in detail what the jargon means).

TIA!

[waldronate]

FT3 is fairly limited in terms of the level of realism that it can generate (its climate model is part of the limitations, and the use of a single level of fractal function is another). The demo is quite a bit limited compared to the full version, because it's been limited to 128-pixel-wide outputs. A major limitation of Fractal Terrains is that its climate model doesn't take into account the effects of heat flow due to atmospheric and hydrospheric effects.

http://www.fracterra.com/CGTutorial/ might be of some interest. The most effective way that I've seen to use FT3 is to elaborate on the very limited results that it provides by default, but that sounds like it's not what you're looking for.

I don't know of any tool that will prevent you from creating a world that's geographically implausible. It's possible to misuse any tool that I've seen. There are a number of world-creation tutorials out there on the internet that will help you do things that are plausible, but I don't know of any that will flag things as being incorrect or that will generate everything for you.