Understanding Terrains
Last updated
Last updated
© 2025 BiteTheBytes GmbH
In World Creator, a terrain consists of biomes. Per the official definition, a biome is an area classified based on the species living in the location. The temperature range, soil type, and the amounts of light and water are unique characteristics of a particular place that determine niches for specific species, enabling scientists to define the biome.
To apply this definition to World Creator, it is crucial to keep things as realistic, yet simple as possible. Climate changes are highly complex and require a considerable amount of time to simulate several hundred years to achieve real-world scenarios. Nonetheless, such a workflow would be excessively intricate and challenging to manage using a computer application. World Creator does things somewhat differently as we must consider that, in most situations, users simply want to create a biome instead of fully computing it automatically based on a large number of parameters that must be comprehensively simulated.
In World Creator, a biome comprises a set of filters (that adjust and shape the terrain), a range of materials (that tint the terrain), and an array of objects (that are positioned on the terrain - although objects are not currently included in this article).
Please note that for the first major release of World Creator 2025, the biome system will be completely overhauled to make it more suitable for populating your terrain with 3D objects.
The concepts described in this article and biomes in general are valid for World Creator 2024.3 and below and will change in future versions!
In addition, World Creator provides a set of design tools that can be used to paint biomes directly onto the terrain using Biome Layers. A biome layer simply indicates the area of a particular biome as a mask. As shown in the image below, the red area (sketched by hand) instructs World Creator where to apply the Oasis biome (with its filters and materials). You can add as many biome layers as you require. The order of the biome layers in the list specifies which layer is above the other (like in Photoshop).
Biomes also have the function of creating the basic shape of your terrain. This will change with the release of World Creator 2025.1. The recommended approach to building the shape of your terrain is to use Shape Layers. Shape Layers are a collection of tools that allow you to sculpt, design and modify terrains. The reference fully documents and gives an overview of each layer, in brief these tools include:
Sculpt Layer Allows you to create or modify a terrain by sculpting, whether you start from nothing or use an existing and procedurally generated one. You can mix and match by using traditional design methods along with procedural ones without any issues. You can also tailor a generated terrain to meet your specific requirements.
2D Stamp Layer Enables you to place existing elevation or color maps onto the terrain as stamps. Think of it as assembling or modifying terrain using the terrain stamps. For instance, you can import a custom volcano and position it onto your terrain within World Creator, along with its corresponding color map if required.
Landscape Layer It is somewhat similar to Biome Base Shape Styles because each procedural layer has its own generator. For instance, there is an option named Volcano which can be utilized to create a volcano complete with conventional parameters like Crater Radius, Crater Depth, and so on.
MapTiler Layer It allows you to import real world data directly from MapTiler. Just like Google Maps or Bing Maps, MapTiler is a worldwide map service provider. World Creator has a direct connection to their service, allowing you to stream real world earth data directly into World Creator. This includes elevation and colour maps. However, you will need a MapTiler account to enable this functionality within World Creator. More details on this will be covered later.
Path Layer Enables you to create a vector path for the easy creation of simple rivers, paths, roads, mountain ranges, cliffs, canyons, and more. It is entirely vector-based and straightforward to use.
Polygon Layer Allows you to create a polygon by placing individual vertices. The resulting shape can then be modified with an inner and outer fall and can be used to create plains, mountains or lakes.
3D Stamp Layer Allows you to import your own custom 3d geometry into World Creator and add it to your terrain.
River Layers allow you to add rivers and valleys to your terrain. They offer many different river types with full customisation to create your ideal river network.
Shape Layers are movable, scalable, and rotatable. The elements can adapt to your transformations, filters, and materials applied. Blending effects can also be applied for seamless integration with the underlying terrain and with each other.
Filters are applied to customize the terrain in a particular manner. Examples of filters that can be used are Erosion, applying a depletion effect on the terrain, and Sediment, which applies additional material onto the terrain. Filters can be combined and adjusted to produce a particular appearance or type of terrain. More about Filters can be read here.
Materials are applied to add color to the terrain. World Creator provides four different material types that can be used and combined:
Color
Texture
Gradient
Adobe Substance Material
You can create masks along specific terrain features like height, slope, angle, flow, and more, using what World Creator calls Distributions. You can combine these distributions to create realistic terrains with amazing details.
Distributions can also be used as filters and objects. For instance, you can apply a terrace filter to a designated slope range to create non-uniform landscapes.
The other important aspect is the capability to add Effects to Distributions to further customize and refine them. For instance, you may blur a distribution to create a more seamless blend or invert it entirely.
Mask layers enable you to create masks that you can use for filters, materials, or later objects. Masks are typically utilized to describe an area that has been impacted by something. For example, in the image below, a mask is combined with a terrace filter to create terraces at a particular position on the terrain.
Excellent! This concise overview of how World Creator handles terrains and the accompanying tools will help you comprehend the entire concept, along with subsequent articles. Do not worry, as we will provide increasingly comprehensive explanations throughout this documentation.
