Garden Sketchbook vs Terragen

Garden Sketchbook is a browser-based tool for designing gardens to scale and previewing them in 3D across the seasons. Its 2D drag-and-drop editor lets users arrange plants, while the seasonal view shows how the garden and its colors change through the year. Filters cover hardiness zone, sun, soil, bloom season, color, deer resistance, and drought resistance. Plants are sized automatically, and users can trace a floor plan or aerial photo while drawing beds, paths, and structures. The library contains hundreds of plants with growing information and specific varieties; custom varieties can be made by changing size, color, and bloom time. The software runs in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge without installation. The 2D planner works on any device, but the 3D seasonal view requires WebGL. The free demo needs no account, though gardens expire after 24 hours. Gardener costs $39 a year after a 14-day free trial and saves up to 10 gardens. A one-time $9 add-on provides PDF export in the free demo.

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.