Grand Designer

First of all, this is of course not a game, but a software aimed at digital artists. It is a hidden gem though! While I do not work as an artist professionally, I have been creating digital art since the mid 1990s, and in doing so have used a wide range of 2D and 3D applications. My main focus are space and Science-Fiction. If am working on a texture for a planet within a space scene for instance, that usually means painting from scratch with the occasional use of my own and public domain stock photos, as well as NASA resources. That is time consuming, and while fun, not always practical. [u]Grand Designer eliminates two distinct disadvantages:[/u] [olist] [*]It minimizes the time it takes to create a texture, and due to it's randomization features, you won't run into the problem of repeating patterns too much. [*]When painting a 2D texture intended for use on a 3D object, you usually don't really have a full grasp of what it would look like until you have created the object, plac...

From the perspective of what is available, it is great. Integration with engines other than Unity particularly UE4 is not simple and does not serve a plug & play material system. So if working with materials & textures is not already your skill set the power of this program cannot be appropriately utilized. Author is highly responsive to service inquiries.

I have been playing around with this for about 5hrs, and frankly I am still not 100% happy about using it to create planets (which was one of the reasons I bought it). The planets that I have created, don't look anywhere near as crisp as the planets I created soley in Photoshop. The way this software exports (actually just a snapshot) is something I am definately not sold on, using a render engine would be a much better way to go, especially for the kind of digital art this is will be used for. I can see a time when crisp images can be rendered, but at this time I think I will only be using Grand Designer to create moons and asteroids. UPDATE: After a lot of time trying to improve the output with post processing in Photoshop with little improvement, I cannot recommend this software, at least not at the asking price. The quality of output is the big let down on this software, the developer really needs to re-think the snapshot approach.

The software is not being kept up to date, there are many bugs, the most annoying one is not being able to load your own planets. The textures look really noisy even at an 8K reolution, the fractal maps are blurry. Overally i feel like i've wasted 80$ on this software.

I bought this thinking it may fast track things but instead I lost a full days worth of work. I am a graphic designer and if you buy this and mess around with the first five or so tutorials you have now spent about five hours. I am not sure if I will get a refund but I asked for one. I spent all this time learning this, what I thought was a great short cut. Made this wonderful planet just the way I wanted. Shut down for the day and came back the next day to find out save preset does not work. There is no way to save anything. The saves get lost. On top of that it just randomly dumps presets, saves, png for animation, and so forth all into one folder that you later have to go and search through. This was such a great idea, to bad it doesn't work right.

Amazing software, got it while it was in early access. The developer is very helpful and listens.

I've only just opened this program so have a little less than an hour of use as of writing this. In this amount of time I can say that this software is great so far. The output options for textures are extensive so the uses for these texture sets go far beyond just game engines or planets. There are a few issues on some of the rendering within the software that I can see, but nothing that has been a deal breaker for me and considering it is in pre-release, this is looking really good. In addition, there are several sample planets and asteroids to get you started, as well as the ability to bring in custom textures. I have a middle of the road gaming machine, and previewing at full resolution will drop your fps, but there are options to work at lower quality levels and render your final textures at full res. I am considering dropping the extra money for the pro version. I can see this program might be useful for not only planets but heightmaps for terrain generation as well. If...

Well was easy to learn. Had a planet made and exported to lightwave 3d in about 3 minutes and that time included learning how. Nice maps and interesting. When your in the program the clouds are moving in real time. Did not see that till I zoomed in closer. This would be great for far away shots and really would need to study more for fly buys or close ups. I will update this in the future when I get some time to play some more but I like how easy it was to use the software and going to give a big thumbs up. I think if this develops it could be a spectacular plugin and lightwave should grab it.

Very easy and cool App. Works fine in Iclone 6. Really want to see the next tutorials!!

If you want to create realistic planets and even astroids then this program really is the best. The sheer number of options for creating your planets is mind boggling and no two planets will be the same. The one complaint I do have is that you can't export your models to an FBX or UE4 format which would be preferable. On the whole though a really great tool to make unique planets quickly and simply.