TerreSculptor has been increased to Version 3.0 with this latest build release.
This is due to the large number of changes in the software:
– It is now retail, which was a tough decision.
– The new Terrain Stack, which is a major milestone feature.
– The new Brush Modifier, which is a powerful feature.
The Terrain Stack was in the original design documentation from the beginning, to provide an Autodesk 3DS Max or Blender 3D style of Modifier Stack, with more features such as Device Item Masks. The Stack has now been completed to its first release iteration, with additional features planned for the future.
The Brush Modifier is a new concept and feature, employing Unreal Engine 4/5 style Landscape Alpha Brushes in a new Modifier. This feature works well up to terrain sizes of 8192 and possibly even 16384, although the preview starts to get a little small by that resolution. Future design considerations may include 3D Widgets for Location, Scale, and Rotation in the main viewport when a Brush is selected in the Terrain Stack — we’ll see how that goes.
I decided to take this new version to retail. This choice was made because Patreon Support didn’t come anywhere near covering development expenses, and I gave it a few years to see if people would step up.
With more than 100,000+ downloads, there are only about 30 Patreon subscribers, with most paying $1 per month ($12 per year). That is only 0.03% of the people who downloaded the software decided to help support it. Or about 1 person out of every 3400. And since going with Patreon I have brought in just under $3000 in total support income. That doesn’t even cover one of my software development yearly subscriptions for the years that I was on Patreon.
Over the past few years I have gone into debt by almost $40,000 for development tools and development software, to provide the TerreSculptor software for free to the terrain design community. I decided that I couldn’t continue on that trajectory, since I am a single individual making only average income in northern Canada.
So the choice was made to make TerreSculptor 3.0 now retail software. However, a low price was chosen so that the software is still obtainable by people in countries with low income. The price of $99 CAD or about $77 US was chosen, which puts TerreSculptor significantly less expensive than any of the competing terrain software, and even less than their Indie versions which have significant limitations. You get the full TerreSculptor for the low price.
There are many new and powerful features still under development for the software. The plan is to release new versions every 12 to 18 months for resale that will include major feature updates, such as the File Format Update and the BigArray Update. And build updates every month or two that are free updates for those who have purchased a copy of the software. The free updates will include such features as bug fixes, performance enhancements, multi-threading of devices, and other minor features and improvements.
For anyone who downloads the version 3.0 builds and tries to run them without a registration key, the software will run in Demo Mode for about three minutes. TerreSculptor 2.0 is still freely available to anyone who wants to use it.
-eof-