appleseed vs Terragen

appleseed is a free, open source rendering engine for animation and visual effects, built around physically based global illumination. It is designed for individuals and small studios and runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Rendering methods include unidirectional path tracing, stochastic progressive photon mapping, light tracing, progressive and interactive rendering, and spectral rendering. For shading, it supports Open Shading Language and on-the-fly shader compilation. Production tools include motion blur, AOVs, Cryptomatte, adaptive sampling, denoising, and resumable render checkpoints. Native integrations are listed for Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, Blender, and Gaffer. It works with OBJ geometry and image formats including OpenEXR, TIFF, HDR, PNG, JPEG, and PSD. Developers can use C++ and Python APIs or extend the engine with external C++ plugins. The listed plan costs nothing and is under the MIT license. The download page lists version 2.1.0-beta, released September 21, 2019.

Terragen builds, renders, and animates natural environments for landscape visualization, visual effects, and artistic work. It creates procedural and heightfield terrain, can use real-world terrain data, and adds details such as cliffs and overhangs. Its spherical planetary atmosphere model includes volumetric clouds and fog, multiple scattering, and global illumination. The hybrid renderer combines micropolygon rendering and ray tracing, with support for anti-aliasing, motion blur, depth of field, and render elements. Nearly every project parameter can be animated, and image sequences can be rendered through the interface or command line. Terragen imports 3D objects and camera data, exports terrain as heightfields or geometry in formats including TER, EXR, LWO, OBJ, and FBX, and handles camera data in FBX, Nuke CHAN, and Maya MOV formats. It can also generate HDR environments for lighting in other renderers. Windows and macOS are supported, with Linux render-node support. The free edition is for non-commercial use or 30 days of commercial evaluation, with still renders limited to 1280 × 900. Professional subscriptions start at $10 a month.