Individual
$245$169per seatperpetual license
- One to four seats.
- Node-locked · 1 year of updates · renew $75/yr per seat
Get Founders accessLocks your Founders price. No card, no charge.
For Autodesk 3ds Max 2024–2026 · Perpetual license · Corona-aware
Scout the light. Land the shot.
ValTerra for Autodesk 3ds Max puts a cinematic sun-and-atmosphere scout on a global 3D globe — and matches your render camera to a real drone photo at 0.56 px RMS. Plan golden hour before anyone flies. Lock the shot the moment it lands. All without leaving 3ds Max.
Download free trial30 days, every feature. No card. No watermark.See how it works
The most expensive light meter in the world is a drone crew on the wrong morning.
A drone day runs $500–2,000 — and you book it blind. You guess which hour the facade catches fire, you guess the haze, you guess the cloud deck. If the guess is off, you pay for the reshoot.
Then the footage lands and the real work starts: hand-matching a CG camera to a drone photo, nudging FOV and horizon for hours per shot, never quite sure the perspective will survive client review at 100% zoom.
And the context around your building? Modeling a believable city costs 3–10 artist-days per site — or £2,000–4,000 per km² if you buy it pre-made (AccuCities list pricing).
| What you pay for | Typical cost | Why it hurts |
|---|---|---|
| Drone day | $500–2,000 | Booked blind, weather included |
| Manual camera match | Hours per shot | Redone after client notes |
| Site context | 3–10 artist-days | Or £2,000–4,000 per km² purchased |
ValTerra moves the guesswork into the viewport. Scout sun, atmosphere, and weather for any coordinate on a global 3D globe and export the exact camera and daylight rig into your scene. When the real photo arrives, match it to sub-pixel accuracy in minutes. Need context? Generate schematic city volumes, road splines, and terrain from open data — in minutes, cleared for commercial use.
Photo Studio — a location scout for the entire planet
Pick a coordinate. Pick a date. Drag the hour. Photo Studio renders analytic sun and atmosphere for any place on Earth — so you know exactly what 7:42 a.m. on October 3rd looks like from 140 meters up, before a single battery is charged.
What Photo Studio does
Analytic sun & atmosphere.
Physically-plausible sky for any location, any date, any minute. Scrub time of day and watch the shadows commit.
Weather, on demand.
Fog density and volumetric clouds across the full range — from thin cirrus to a closed deck. Rehearse the moody version and the postcard version in the same session.
Night city and stars.
City lights come on, stars come out. Scout blue hour and full night as deliberately as noon.
A day of light in one pass.
Generate a light series across the day — a contact sheet of the same view at every hour. Send it to the client and let them pick the mood before you render anything.
360° panoramas and sky alpha masks.
Export 360 panoramas and 16-bit sky alpha masks (PNG16 / TIFF16) for clean compositing downstream.
Camera lister with full-view snapshots.
Every scouted view is saved with a thumbnail of the entire frame. Review, compare, and jump between candidate shots like a shot list.
One-click export into your scene.
Each scouted view becomes a Physical Camera plus a classic Daylight system in 3ds Max — with Corona installed, a CoronaSun is placed in the sun slot automatically. The light you scouted is the light you render.
Attribution-compliant captures out of the box.
Every Photo Studio frame carries the required map-data attribution automatically. Your deliverables clear legal review without a checklist — nothing to remember, nothing to retrofit.
One free token turns everything on.
The globe is where the work happens — you scout light on it, place cameras on it, and draw the import area on it — and it streams Photorealistic 3D Tiles, so ValTerra needs one credential of your own before any of that starts. Either kind works: a free Cesium ion token, two clicks to sign up, or your own Google Maps Platform key if you would rather be billed by Google. Both are linked from inside the plugin; you paste one into a single field and the globe comes up without restarting Max. Whichever you pick, that provider sets its own terms and bills you directly, never us.
Illustration
Illustration
Illustration
Map data: Google.
Map data: Google.
Camera match — fit your render into the real drone shot
Drop in a drone photo. ValTerra reads its metadata and builds the camera in 3ds Max — position, height, heading, tilt, lens. Two independent compass readings are cross-checked to vote out gimbal drift, so the first solve lands close instead of merely nearby.
Then make it exact. Click matching reference points on the photo and in the scene — a synchronized zoom-and-loupe view on both sides puts each point where it belongs. The refine solver converges to 0.56 px RMS measured error. At that tolerance, your render doesn't sit near the photo. It sits in it.
Illustration
How the match works
Drop the photo.
Camera appears in Max from metadata.
Click a few points.
Loupe-assisted, on both photo and scene.
Refine.
Sub-pixel solve. Render. Composite. Done.
Map data: Google.
Map data: Google.
Works with any drone photo that carries standard metadata. The solve runs entirely on your own machine: your photos never leave it, and once the context is in your scene the matching needs no connection at all.
Site context in minutes — clean for commercial use
Every exterior needs a neighborhood. ValTerra builds one from open data: schematic building volumes and road splines from OpenStreetMap, terrain from open elevation tiles — with buildings and roads draped over the relief. One click, one tidy "ValTerra" layer in your scene.
Illustration
- Building volumes with real footprints and heights from OpenStreetMap — instant massing for any city on Earth.
- Roads as splines — ready for curbs, traffic, scatter systems, or your own dressing pipeline.
- Terrain from open DEM tiles, with volumes and roads draped over the relief so the site sits on real topography, not a flat plane.
- Commercially clean by construction. OpenStreetMap data ships under the ODbL open license, and ValTerra embeds the required attribution automatically. Use it in client work, promos, and broadcast without a clearance call.
- Open data, no provider bill. Schematic city and terrain come from OpenStreetMap and open elevation tiles. Importing them spends nothing from your Cesium or Google quota, and ValTerra never meters imports.
- Photorealistic 3D Tiles import runs on the same credential as the globe — your own Google Maps Platform key or a Cesium ion token. That provider bills you directly, not us.
Illustration
© OpenStreetMap contributors. Terrain: Tilezen/Mapzen terrain tiles via AWS Open Data.
© OpenStreetMap contributors. Terrain: Tilezen/Mapzen terrain tiles via AWS Open Data.
The math your producer will do anyway
| What you pay for today | Typical cost | With ValTerra |
|---|---|---|
| Drone day booked to scout light | $500–2,000 per day, weather roulette included | Scout sun, weather, and framing virtually — fly once, on the right morning |
| Hand-matching cameras to drone photos | Hours per shot, redone after client notes | Minutes per shot at 0.56 px RMS |
| City context around the site | 3–10 artist-days per site, or £2,000–4,000 per km² purchased | Minutes, from open data, attribution included |
A Studio seat is $205 — $141 at Founders pricing — and Studio starts at 5 seats, so the smallest team purchase is $705 today. If ValTerra saves your team one drone day or one artist-day, it has paid for itself. Everything after that is margin.
Context pricing benchmark: AccuCities list rates for textured 3D city models. Drone rates: typical US/UK licensed-operator day rates, 2026.
Perpetual license. One year of updates. No subscription hostage-taking.
Founders pricing is live.
Early buyers keep their Founders rate — permanently. List prices apply from version 1.0.
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Studio
$205$141per seatperpetual license- Five seats or more — the price per seat drops as you add them.
- Node-locked · 1 year of updates · renew at 30% of list
Get Founders accessLocks your Founders price. No card, no charge.
Questions studios actually ask
Can I use renders made with ValTerra commercially?
Yes. Photorealistic features run on your credential under your agreement with that provider — which is precisely what gives your renders commercial-use legal clarity. A Google Maps Platform key covers commercial work under Google's terms; Cesium's free Community plan does not, so for paid client work use a Google key or a paid Cesium plan. Required map-data attribution is embedded in every capture automatically, so compliance is built in rather than bolted on. This is a real differentiator: Google Earth Studio is a fine free tool, but it is offered without a commercial-use license — for client work, that distinction is the whole ballgame. Schematic city and terrain content comes from OpenStreetMap (ODbL) and open elevation data, with attribution embedded — commercially clean by construction. Full data sources & attribution.
Do I need a Google account or API key?
Yes — the globe runs on one. It streams Photorealistic 3D Tiles, so until you paste a credential there is no Earth in the viewport. The plugin links you straight to both options. A Cesium ion token is free and needs no payment details. Your own Google Maps Platform key puts you under Google's terms with Google billing you directly, and that route needs a billing account. Both run a free tier; we deliberately do not restate their numbers here, because they change — Cesium ion pricing (opens in a new tab) and Google Maps Platform pricing (opens in a new tab) are the current source. ValTerra itself never charges for imports. One thing to check before client work: Cesium's free Community plan is licensed for personal projects and evaluation, not commercial delivery — for paid client work use a Google Maps Platform key or a paid Cesium plan. The matching itself then runs entirely on your own machine — your drone photos never leave it, and no part of the solve touches the network.
Which versions of 3ds Max? Which renderers?
Autodesk 3ds Max 2024, 2025, and 2026. ValTerra exports native Max objects — a Physical Camera and a classic Daylight system — so it is renderer-agnostic by design. With Corona installed, the Daylight system gets a CoronaSun in its sun slot automatically.
What exactly do I receive after purchase?
A license key by email, and the installer. The key activates the plugin on your machine — one seat, one workstation. Changing computers is self-service: a Deactivate this machine link in the panel frees the seat, and the same key activates on the new one. No ticket, no waiting. The installer is a single .mzp file covering Autodesk 3ds Max 2024–2026: you run it once from inside Max and the ValTerra button appears on your toolbar. Your purchase includes a year of updates, and every version released during that year stays yours to keep using after the year ends. Nothing ships physically and nothing switches off on a date. The download page lists the install steps and the system requirements.
How many seats do I need?
One seat per person who runs ValTerra — each seat is a full license, tied to one workstation. Buy them together and the price per seat drops from five seats up; the table on the pricing page shows every total, so there is nothing to ask for and nothing to negotiate. If you outgrow your count later, add seats at the rate for your new total.
What happens when my year of updates ends?
Nothing dramatic. Your license is perpetual: the plugin keeps working forever, on every version released during your update term. Renewing costs $75 per seat per year, or 30% of list for larger teams, and gets you continued updates and support. Skip a year if you like — you never lose access to what you own.
What's your refund policy?
If ValTerra isn't a fit, write to us within 14 days of purchase for a full refund of your license fee. We'd rather have your honest feedback than your reluctant money. (And with a 30-day full trial plus a free Lite tier, we hope you'll never need this paragraph.) Read the full Refund Policy.
Is there really no watermark in the trial?
Really. 30 days, everything at full quality, clean output. Afterward, ValTerra Lite remains free forever and stays watermark-free — what changes is fidelity, not ownership: photorealistic geometry comes in at Medium (8 m), textures at Half resolution, captures at 1080p, and one photorealistic import covers at most 0.25 km². Enough to work and to judge; not enough to deliver. Schematic city and terrain stay unlimited, at full quality. We'd rather cap fidelity than deface your work.
Your next golden hour is already in the viewport.
Thirty days, every feature, no card. See what your site looks like at 7:42 tomorrow morning — tonight.
