Terragen Terrain .ter
Terragen heightfields. A grid of elevations, not a mesh.
What a .ter file holds
TER is Planetside Software’s terrain format for Terragen, and it stores landscape as a regular grid of 16-bit elevation samples with a base height and a scale rather than as triangles. Converting one builds the mesh the grid implies: two triangles per cell, with the file’s own horizontal and vertical scaling applied so the proportions are right.
Commonly seen in: Terragen, World Machine exports, matte painting and environment work.
| Data | Stored in TER |
|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes |
| Materials and colour | No |
| Texture maps | No |
| Animation and rigs | No |
| Scene hierarchy | No |
| Read here | Yes |
| Written here | No |
Tested against a real file
The last sweep loaded RealisticTerrain.ter from Assimp test models with its 1 sidecar files through the viewer on this site: 131,072 triangles across 1 meshes and 1 materials, in 2.1 seconds. Every format's result is on the test results page, run 2026-09-08.
Convert TER to another format
Every pairing has a page saying what survives the trip.
Other things to do with a .ter file
Questions about TER
How do I open a .ter file?
Drop it into the viewer on this site and it opens in the browser, with the scene tree, the materials and the mesh statistics. Nothing is uploaded. If you want it in another program instead, convert it to GLB, which almost everything reads.
Is TER a good format to archive in?
TER stores geometry. Anything outside that list will not be in the file at all, so archive the original alongside it if the surfacing or the rig matters.
Does converting TER lose quality?
Geometry is copied vertex for vertex, so the shape does not degrade. What gets lost is whatever the target format has no field for: convert to STL and the materials go, convert to OBJ and the animation goes. The comparison table on each converter page says exactly which.
Formats that hold the same things
Or go back to the full format reference.