Natural environment creation in Maya

[Line_DreamWeaver]

Hello, 

I'm looking for a good software to use with Maya to create natural environments.

I used Gaea while working with Unreal Engine and I enjoyed it but I wonder if it is as good with Maya? 

I want to do indie animation shorts with VFX. I also heard of World Creator and Easy Terrain 2 for that. 

Can you tell me if what are the industry standard softwares for this and maybe how to decide which software to get? I'd also enjoy good resources to learn how to thar job properly.

Thanks a lot and take care

[damaggio]

Gaea is good, World Machine and Houdini. But you can also create with free DEM files and Lidar.

All these are used in the industry. You can do the shading in Maya or import the maps from the other software.

[Line_DreamWeaver]

Thanks a lot!

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Some Artists are playing around with direct importing image data from Gaea in Bifrost.

Here is the thread on the Bifrost discord. The interesting part would be to use Bifrost for scattering on top of the terrain. All in one place.

https://discord.com/channels/872260298508222534/1268214731462803595

And here a nice Article about Bifrost in production.
https://blogs.autodesk.com/media-and-entertainment/2023/10/15/bifrost-for-autodesk-maya-helps-pixomo...

[damaggio]

There's also the new real time terrain tool from Janga FX "GeoGen"

I haven't tried it yet.

https://jangafx.com/software/geogen

[damaggio]