Terrain Generation
One click. Full terrain. Erosion, drainage, textures, and all.
How It Works
Terraformer's generation pipeline runs in stages. Each stage feeds the next, building up from raw noise to a fully-textured, erosion-carved landscape:
- Noise Generation Multi-octave fractal noise creates the base heightmap. Octaves, lacunarity, and gain control the balance between large landforms and fine detail.
- Biome Shaping The biome preset applies a shaping curve to the raw noise. Mountains get steeper peaks and deeper valleys. Deserts get flatter mesas. Each biome has its own height distribution.
- Erosion Simulation Hydraulic erosion carves realistic channels into the surface. Water droplets flow downhill, picking up sediment and depositing it in valleys. Thousands of iterations create natural drainage patterns.
- Fractal Drainage A secondary pass overlays fractal drainage channels — the kind of branching river networks you see from altitude. These integrate with the erosion results for coherent hydrology.
- Texture Assignment Height bands and slope angles determine which textures appear where. Low flat areas get sand or grass. Steep slopes get rock. High peaks get snow. The blending is smooth and automatic.
Generation Parameters
| Parameter | What It Controls | Typical Range |
|---|---|---|
| Terrain Size | World-space dimensions (width × depth) | 128 – 2000 |
| Resolution | Heightmap grid density (vertices per side) | 64 – 512 |
| Height Scale | Maximum terrain elevation | 20 – 200 |
| Octaves | Number of noise layers. More = more detail | 4 – 10 |
| Lacunarity | Frequency multiplier between octaves | 1.5 – 3.0 |
| Gain | Amplitude multiplier between octaves | 0.3 – 0.7 |
| Seed | Random seed for reproducible results | Any integer |
Biome Presets
Each biome preset is a curated combination of noise parameters, erosion settings, height curves, and texture assignments. Pick one as a starting point, then tweak everything.
| Biome | Character |
|---|---|
| Mountain | Dramatic peaks, deep valleys, heavy erosion. The classic alpine landscape. |
| Desert | Flat mesas, sand dunes, cracked earth. Sparse vertical variation with subtle undulation. |
| Arctic | Snow-covered peaks, frozen valleys, ice-blue tones. High elevation with gentle slopes. |
| Forest | Rolling hills, moderate elevation, rich green textures. Gentle drainage channels. |
| Beach | Coastal terrain with sand at low elevations, rocky outcrops, and ocean-ready shorelines. |
| Grassland | Wide open plains with gradual elevation changes. Minimal erosion, expansive views. |
| Magical | Exotic, otherworldly formations. Floating-island aesthetics with vibrant color mapping. |
Use a small terrain size (256) while experimenting with parameters. Once you have settings you like, regenerate at full resolution. The noise algorithms are deterministic — same seed, same terrain.
Height Clamping
All generated heights are clamped to zero at the bottom. This prevents terrain from punching through the museum block base. The clamp applies at three stages in the pipeline:
- After vertex height application (generation)
- After erosion copy-back
- After fractal drainage application
This means you can push erosion and drainage as hard as you want without worrying about geometry breaking through the display base.