Terragen

(A) Terragen interface

(B) sample Terragen image

Planetside software, providers of Terragen bring us a low cost (because it's no cost) landscape and natural environmental creator/renderer. In no time at all you find yourself wading through a variety of options for terrain, water, atmospherics and lighting to create stunning still images or animations. Written for use on MAC or Windows PC systems this small but professional program let's you edit all the same settings you would find in larger, more expensive packages like Bryce, but with the interface is what I would call user-advanced as opposed to user-friendly. It does have a large amount of drag onscreen component capabilities but from my experience, not as easy to navigate a Bryce. The results are something else that always leaves me shaking my head with disbelief that they offer a freeware program this goos. Terragen has been used in a variety of commercial products by letting the artist create near photo-realistic images. For those feeling adventurous, they can continue on to Terragen 2 which gives a much larger scope of options to create landscapes and animations. With a great forum and a few nice plugins to add nice effects, this program is well worth the effort to sit down and explore. You'll be amazed at how good a picture you can make in a short amount of time.