Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the mask layers would scale incorrectly when the precision was changed.

• Fixed an issue with the heatmap export.

• Fixed an issue that was causing the About Us dialog to have a wrong layout.

• Fixed an issue where the order of exported transforms was incorrect for object instances.

• Fixed an issue that was causing World Creator to crash on Thai language systems.

• Fixed an issue that caused black animation export frames.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue for object export

• Fixed several minor UI layout isssues

• Fixed several minor Mask Layer issues

Welcome to the official World Creator documentation, your best resource for unlocking the full potential of the world's most advanced and fastest terrain and landscape creation software on this planet.

World Creator is the official successor to the powerful GeoControl, originally developed by Johannes Rosenberg in 2006 - and now re-developed from the ground up by . The full story of World Creator and BiteTheBytes can be read .

World Creator is a real-time terrain generator and landscape creation tool. You can use it to create terrains and landscapes for games, movies, art, or just for fun.

World Creator is unique. It was the first terrain and landscape tool to do all its processing on the graphics card, so it did everything in real time. In addition, its workflow is super simple and the tools it provides for creating terrains are outstanding. It is not just a pure procedural generator, but it also adds extremely powerful design capabilities that allow you to create exactly the terrain you want.

The latest version of World Creator has become even more powerful. Everything has been improved (to name but a few):

The Beginning – CLODDY

In 2008, three IT students at Fulda University of Applied Sciences founded BiteTheBytes with the support of the EXIST funding program. At the heart of it all was a technology called CLODDY – Continuous Level of Detail.

It was a clever terrain algorithm that made it possible, for the first time, to display infinitely large landscapes – even entire planets – on ordinary computers. You could seamlessly fly from space down to the surface of a planet, and even jump to the next, without loading times. For its time, that was revolutionary.

CLODDY was mainly used in planetariums and navigation systems, but for us it was just the beginning.

Click on the Download World Creator section as shown in the image below:

Select which version you want to download and click either Download MSI or Download ZIP (we recommend to download the MSI installer):

The newest version is marked with a "newest" badge (see image above). World Creator 2 was released in 2017 (see the tabs in the image above) and World Creator 1 was released in 2012. The download section will also tell you if you are entitled to run a particular version of World Creator. This depends on whether your maintenance plan covers the release date when a particular version was released. If not, you will need to renew your maintenance subscription in order to run the latest versions of World Creator.

Great! Now that you have the World Creator up and running, it is time to work some terrain and landscape magic.

In this walkthrough section, you will create an example of an amazing terrain, as shown in the images below. Just follow each step (1 to 8) to get a really good understanding of how World Creator works and how to use it effectively.

There are many links in each article that will take you deeper into the full reference. You don't need to read them for this walkthrough, but if you want to know a bit more about certain features and functions, you can.

OK, let's get started 😄

From the previous articles you should now have a basic understanding of how World Creator operates. Let's start creating a real world terrain by creating a sandy river valley.

We first start by increasing our seed to a base terrain, that resembles our wanted look better. We do this in the main .

To shape the bottom of our valley we will now create a . When you first add it to your terrain World Creator will automatically generate a river network based on your terrain. As we don't need that simply press Clear Rivers on the left side while in Edit mode. After that we use Shift + LMB to place a new spring and then Ctrl + Shift + LMB + Drag to drag out the rest of our river stream from that spring.

As a final layer of detail we use a . This layer simulates individual pieces of debris rolling down the mountain and settling in the valley. After adding the layer you will see a Tint box under the Shape settings. From the presets there, we have chosen a rock-like gradient to give the debris some randomised colours.

A completely new major version of World Creator based on World Creator 2023.1 but with a much better, clean, and more modern UI, supporting a better workflow and readability.

New Features

• Octane ORBX Export Export your worlds in ORBX format for seamless integration with all Octane-compatible applications and plugins — bringing your terrains straight into professional rendering pipelines with full fidelity.

• Paint Holes in Terrain Create cave entrances directly in World Creator — perfect for visualizing caves, tunnels, and dungeons. Export the cave mask to accurately place and render the entrance in any game engine or 3D application.

• Godot Bridge Tool We are developing a World Creator Bridge tool to connect with Godot engine.

• Relief Map Export Export detailed relief maps that emphasize elevation and terrain contrast — perfect for visualizing height variations or creating stylized topographic designs.

• Border Blend Filter Update

  We updated the Border Blend filter so that it can blend both circular and rectangular shapes.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing build errors in Unity when using the Bridge Tool.

• Fixed an issue affecting Splat Map export on AMD GPUs, ensuring correct and consistent output across all hardware.

• Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause a crash during syncing, ensuring more stable and reliable workflow operations.

• Fixed an issue affecting occasionally a black color fade-out on exported Color and Splat Maps.

Once you have successfully purchased World Creator, you will receive an email from us containing your personal login details (username/password). You will need these to log into our customer portal via our website, where you can manage your profile and licenses and download the World Creator application, view invoices, report bugs, request featurs, download samples, materials, and bridge tools.

Before you can download and activate World Creator, you must login to the customer portal through our website.

Clicking the user icon (see image above) will open the login dialog:

Once you have successfully logged in, you will see the contents of the customer portal together with the section buttons:

Click on License to open the license overview:

Next, a popup opens up, where you must enter a valid email address:

Enter the email of the user that wants to activate World Creator and click on Assign License.

Upon launching World Creator, the software prompts you to input your login details. The screen appears as shown below:

The licensing system of World Creator allows you to manage multiple seats for each account. In case you bought World Creator as an individual, not only are you a user but also the account manager. As a company that has purchased World Creator, you might want to assign seats to your employees or renew the maintenance plan, or more.

It is important to note that the above activation/login request is intended for a user's seat login credentials, not their account login credentials.

Consequently, to use World Creator, you must have an assigned valid seat. To assign or reassign seats, please login to the customer portal through our website.

To quickly recap the process of assigning a seat right after purchase, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the customer portal

2. Go to the License section

3. Find a seat that is not assigned yet

4. Click the Assign button

Use the email address and system-generated password for the given seat to activate World Creator.

The World Creator interface is clear, straightforward and easy to understand. It has been redesigned to provide the best workflow experience. You will undoubtedly find it very intuitive, especially compared to all previous versions of World Creator. Let's take a look at everything and understand how it works.

World Creator's 3D workspace is made up of the 3D viewport, where all the rendering takes place, the main panel (on the right), where everything is set up in relation to the desired terrain, and a toolbar (on the left of the main panel), which provides quick access to several built-in tools. There are also specific HUD elements such as the compass (top), a height meter (left) and the mouse pointer, which displays additional information as you hover over the terrain.

We will now add a Soft Flows Erosion filter. This filter is a simple erosion algorithm that uses water particles to simulate the erosion and deposition of sediment. Once you have added it, you can browse the various presets at the top of the filter settings to quickly change the look of the filter, or you can manually adjust all the parameters that the filter uses to tweak it to your liking.

To further polish our terrain, we now move on to Simulation Layers. Simulation Layers provide high quality physical simulations such as Sand, Fluid, Snow or Debris that work with simulated material on top of the filter stack. Since we want to create a desert canyon, we will use the sand simulation first.

After adding the Sand layer, click Edit and mask out the area where the sand will spawn. By default, each simulation layer comes with its own paintable mask.

To texture our sand we create a new material, give it a sand like colour and drag the sand simulation layer into its distribution stack. This creates a simulation layer distribution that references the sand layer.

To further enhance the scene we then add a second sand simulation using a darker material. This time we do not mask it, instead we reduce the Spawn Amount, which then results in a nice global fade effect.

Overview

The Swirl filter distorts the terrain in a spiral pattern around the centre of the referenced area.

Parameters

• Mask Layer

  Allows you to specify an mask layer in which the swirl will be applied.

• Use Mask Texture

  Uses the painted mask area of the mask instead of the full mask area.

• Strength

  The strength of the swirl effect.

• Size

  Scales the swirl effect.

Results

In order to have our project available at a later date, we now save it. By changing the project type to Package, World Creator will include all textures and relevant links in the file itself. This ensures that the project will load if you transfer it to another computer.

Next up we add a Rocky Plateaus filter. This helps to create a more rocky cliff look, which is exactly what we want.

While the filter itself produces a fairly nice result, it creates some sharp structures at the bottom of the valley. This is something we will fix in the next few steps, especially when applying a sand simulation.

Overview

The Deflate filter pushes the pixels along its downward slope direction inwards to create a deflation effect.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Blocks filter converts the terrain into a collection of square blocks. It provides choices for block dimensions and, based on the level you select, various degrees of blending between them.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Add/Set filter allows you to adjust the terrain by either setting it to a fixed height or adding or subtracting from the height of the terrain.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Smooth Ridge filter enables you to smoothen the sharp ridges of your terrain. Depending on the level it operates on, it can either smooth out small ridges or even larger hills or mountains on lower levels.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Border Blend filter smoothly interpolates the terrain to a given border height over a custom blend distance.

Parameters

Results

Currently, our bushes are spread across the entire terrain, which is not what we want. Instead, we are going to restrict them to the sides of the river, where water naturally collects on a dry terrain like this. To do this drag the river layer into the distribution of our object layer. This will create a River Distribution automatically linked to that layer. Also set the River Range to 0 and the Valley Range to 1 as we don't want our bushes to appear in the river itself.

As you can see, this gives us a very narrow mask around the river. To change this we'll set the Valley Width of the river to 5 so that we have a larger valley where bushes can be placed.

On top of that we now add a Blur effect to smooth it out even more and give our bushes a nice wide area to be scattered in.

New Features

• A new additional fast render mode was added, supporting colored terrain rendering for quick visualizations. Best for low-end GPUs.

Welcome to the official World Creator documentation, your best resource for unlocking the full potential of the world's most advanced and fastest terrain and landscape creation software on this planet.

World Creator is the official successor to the powerful GeoControl, originally developed by Johannes Rosenberg in 2006 - and now re-developed from the ground up by . The full story of World Creator and BiteTheBytes can be read .

World Creator is a real-time terrain generator and landscape creation tool. You can use it to create terrains and landscapes for games, movies, art, or just for fun.

World Creator is unique. It was the first terrain and landscape tool to do all its processing on the graphics card, so it did everything in real time. In addition, its workflow is super simple and the tools it provides for creating terrains are outstanding. It is not just a pure procedural generator, but it also adds extremely powerful design capabilities that allow you to create exactly the terrain you want.

The latest version of World Creator has become even more powerful. Everything has been improved (to name but a few):

Now that the base of our terrain is finished, we can add a first pass of material to it. To get a nice detailed material we will use the . A gradient material works by applying a colour gradient to a given greyscale gradient. The greyscale gradient will be created using the World Creators .

We start by adding a to our material's Gradient distribution stack. You can now see the resulting mask. Next, we simply select one of the Rock Gradient presets in the Gradient material to apply a predefined gradient to the material. You can of course also create your own custom gradient based of colours or reference images.

To add even more detail, we will use a second gradient material masked with a , which has a darker tone.

Overview

The Kuwahara filter applies a Kuwahara blur to the terrain, which is a different type of blur algorithm that tries to preserve edges lines and high frequency detail. With this it can be used to flatten low frequency areas and create overall more painterly looking straighter shapes.

Parameters

Overview

The Hexagons filter converts the terrain into a collection of hexagon pillars. It provides choices for hexagon size and, based on the level you select, various degrees of blending between them.

Parameters

Overview

The Gabor Noise filter adds gabor noise and distortion to your terrain. Similar to the other noise filters you can find all universal noise parameters as well as an overview of the different noise types in .

Parameters

Overview

The Strata filter adds rock-like features to your terrain by combining several layers of directional noise lines at different scales.

Parameters

Overview

The Zero Edge filter sets the height of the edges of the terrain on the applied step to zero. By default, it is only applied on a lower level so you might have to take a look at the level step strengths to get your desired output.

Note that this filter operates based on a pixel distance, therefore lower levels will result in longer travel distances on the terrain, whereas higher levels will produce shorter smoothing distances.

Improvements

• Polished all Arid Filters regarding Invert toggle representation and Min/Max Count and Angle representation (UI).

Upon launching World Creator and activating it successfully, you will be presented with the main menu that resembles the image below:

Main Menu Options

To complete our terrain, we activate clouds by clicking on the cloud icon in the hotbar, and then adjust the so that they look like thin sand clouds that lightly cover the valley.

Even though this is a quite dry landscape we'll now add some simple bushes to our terrain to make it more detailed. For this we'll be using Bush_B.glb from the assets that come with World Creator. Simply drag and drop the .glb into the Objects layer of the biome to add it to your scene. To make it larger we'll now increase the ModelScale to 2 and change the Tint to an earthy tone picked from the terrain to make it fit better.

Next up we are adjusting the Distribution Settings. Enable Align to Normals and set the Instance Distance to 16 to get more instances. Additionally we enable Use Distribution Scale and set the Min value to .5, this will fade out the scale of our bushes at the edges of our mask which will come in handy in the next step.

Overview

The Border Blend filter smoothly interpolates the terrain to a given border height over a custom blend distance.

Parameters

Overview

The Crater filter enables you to add either a single crater or several random craters to your landscape.

Parameters

While you can export your terrain manually, we will use the much easier way of using the World Creator Bridge for Blender. This turns the export workflow into 2 keystrokes and the terrain is already nicely set up for you in Blender.

After installing the bridge in Blender, all we have to do is press the Sync button in the top right corner of the World Creator. This will export the terrain as well as the material and all other relevant information.

Now all we need to do to import it into Blender is press the Synchronise button in the Bridge UI. If you want to have access to a fully layered material setup, make sure you enable Import Layers

Overview

The Ridged filter allows you to sharpen and improve the peaks and ridges of the terrain.

Parameters

Overview

The Curve Filter allows for precise customization of terrain altitude using a spline-based curve. The filter maps terrain height to a curve, enabling detailed adjustments.

Parameters

Overview

The Balloon filter displaces the terrain either outward or inward of a pixel's downslope direction.

Parameters

Overview

The Rugged filter roughs up the terrain in a set direction.

Parameters

Overview

The Distortion filter allows you to distort your terrain. It operates on each level step.

Parameters

To add even more nuance to our texturing we use one last highlight material. For that we add a and apply a to it. This simulates the flow of water down the terrain, resulting in nice streaks of sediment that break up the solid colors of the sand simulations.

Overview

The Cutoff filter produces a planar cut at the specified range values. For a smoother outcome, apply it on multiple levels, but if you prefer a sharper intersection, restrict its usage to the higher levels.

Parameters

To create a valley shape, we'll add a . With the layer selected, press Edit to start sculpting. Then change the brush mode to Lower and start drawing a valley shape into the terrain.

Overview

Biomes enable you to generate specific terrain types by grouping filters, materials, objects and simulations, which are then applied to your base terrain. By storing biomes in the , you can easily perfect each one individually and then, in a second step, combine them to create a diverse landscape.

Parameters

Overview

The Denoise filter reduces noise in your terrain. Depending on the level step it is working on, this can affect larger or smaller-scale noise.

Parameters

Overview

The Inflate filter pushes the pixels along its downward slope direction outwards to create an inflation effect

Parameters

Overview

The Perlin Noise filter adds perlin noise and distortion to your terrain. Similar to the other noise filters you can find all universal noise parameters as well as an overview of the different noise types in .

Parameters

Overview

The Squeeze filter applies a directional pinching operation to your terrain which creates ridges and sharp broken up features.

Parameters

New Features

• New Shape Layer: RIVERS (MAJOR FEATURE)

• New Shape Layer: POLYGON

• All Shape Layers can now be rotated.

• Paths and Rivers can be exported to splines.

• Added Spline Import to Path Layers.

• Added ability to set Export folder to custom location.

• Added a toolbox button for quickly accessing the Screenshots folder.

• Added Saturation, Contrast and Brightness controls for Gradient Materials.

• Added Incremental Saves (check documentation).

• Added lates support for Adobe Substance Materials.

• Added Rain and Wind Settings to Hydraulic Sediment Filter which is no longer declared as Experimental.

• Added ability to load HDRI maps to be used for background and lighting.

• Added ability to set min/max values when importing custom heightmaps into a Stamp Layer.

• Added a new Filter: Hexagon

• Added a new Filter: Squeeze

• Added a new Filter: Rocky Layers

• Added a new Effect: Repeat

Improvements

• Improved all Distributions for better performance.

• Improved Path Layers regarding overlapping paths.

• Localization was removed from the Application resources and is now dynamically loaded from the webserver.

• Localization reduced to support English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese languages only.

Fixes

• Fixed all AMD related issues.

• An issue where the Curve Filter caused a full application crash.

• An issue where the Curve Distribution caused a full application crash.

• An issue where resetting Adobe Substance Materials caused a full application crash.

New Features

• Simulation Layers as paintable masks providing perfect control over sediments.

• Height-Blending was put back and is working as expected.

• Path-Layer now supports infinite width and fall-off values.

• Color map export now includes stochastic distribution.

• Added terrain grid for better scale visualization reasons (see toolbar).

• Added camera groups along with camera views also supporting the import of FBX cameras (see Scene).

• Added scaling information for MapTiler Shape Layers.

• Added new Steepness Distribution.

• Added Rain Maps for Erosion Filters.

• Added Erosion / Soil Maps for Erosion Filters.

• Added Saturation / Brigthness and Contrast parameters for Textures / Gradients and Adobe Substance Materials.

• Added gradient presets with preview (like in World Creator 2).

• Added additional export information for number of tiles created dependend of the terrain size and precision.

Improvements

• Added additional visual hints for adding export layers to prevent misunderstandings.

• Adapted the 'Fit to Terrain' button for each layer for better visual appearance.

• Adjusted initial parameters for almost every filter so they create much better results when added.

• Text color was made a bit more brighter for better visualization.

Fixes

• An issue where the export of larger terrains created seams along the tile borders.

• An issue where the export of color maps created some artefacts along the borders.

• An issue causing weird Grouping behaviors when moving groups or toggling group visibility.

• An issue causing memory leaks on the GPU.

The Level Step system is the key aspect of terrain generation in World Creator and the main reason behind its fast terrain generation speed (aside from utilizing heavily GPU-optimized filters). This article briefly explains what the system is and how to make the most out of it.

What exactly is the Level Step system?

When selecting a 1k terrain with 1/4th precision, World Creator does not only compute the terrain on a 4k map and display it to you. Instead, it iteratively works with an upsampling algorithm: starting on a 2x2px grid and increasing to 4x4px, 8x8px, and so on; doubling the resolution at each step.

This is the basis of the level-step interface that is present in each filter and various other UI elements throughout World Creator. As such, adjusting the strength of a filter at level 8 modifies the influence of that filter on the 8th texture in the upsampling chain, which equates to the 8th or 256x256px texture.

Upsampling allows World Creator to work with different resolution versions of a terrain, which significantly reduces rendering time. For example, with particle-based erosion, the sediment must move from where it is being eroded to where it settles. Sediment may have to travel considerable distances depending on the surrounding terrain. If this process is calculated on a high-resolution image, the sediment may have to travel several hundred pixels, all of which will need to be processed. Working at lower resolutions means that the algorithm requires fewer steps to cover the same distance on the map, resulting in a significant reduction in computation time.

An additional advantage of the upsampling workflow is the impact the lower terrain levels have on the shape of the entire terrain. This effect can be observed in the following pictures where the low and medium terrain levels mainly impact the overall shape of the generated terrain, whereas higher levels contribute minor details to the final terrain.

This can again be observed clearly in the two merged images below. Although the combination of low and medium levels makes the most significant contribution to the final terrain form, the extra high levels are primarily useful for producing a more defined effect on the ultimate resolution.

Proper usage of the Level Step system

Filters

In general, filters operate more quickly on lower levels. That is because just about all filters/layers operate on a per-pixel basis. On level 8, it would represent 256x256px, i.e., 65,536 pixels. On the other hand, a texture at level 11 measures 2,048 x 2,048px, i.e., a total of 4,194,304 pixels. Even though modern GPUs are very efficient at executing such parallelized processes and World Creator employs highly optimized and sturdy algorithms, you can observe how the higher levels may become more expensive. To achieve maximum performance, try decreasing the higher levels to maintain a visually pleasing result and avoid unnecessary computational overhead. This is particularly true for the erosion and simulation filters because they frequently run multiple iterations per level per pixel, making higher levels even more costly.

Shape Layers

Shape layers generally have a lower performance hit with the level system. When working with shape layers, the main consideration is how much detail you want to include in your terrain and how strong the filter effects should be.

By looking at the images below, it's clear that the shape layer becomes sharper as the level step increases because it's blended with the terrain at a higher resolution.

On the other hand, if you look at the same terrain with filters, you'll see that the effect the filter stack has on it diminishes at a higher level step. This occurs because the filters have fewer levels to carry out their work, and they tend to overlook the lower levels, which frequently have more significant effects on the general terrain shape. This was already explained above.

Overview

The Washed Off filter allows creates an uniformly eroded look over the terrain, leading to smooth rounded curves.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Billow Noise filter adds billow noise and distortion to your terrain. Similar to the other noise filters you can find all universal noise parameters as well as an overview of the different noise types in this article.

Parameters

Results

It is important to comprehend how World Creator manages Terrain Size and Detail to effectively handle sizing and detail when using World Creator terrains in other applications like Unity, Unreal, Blender, Cinema4D and others.

Video Guide

Terrain Size

The size of the terrain in World Creator is measured in meters. For example, a terrain size of 1024 by 1024 indicates that it is 1024 metres wide and 1024 metres long.

Generally, terrains have sizes that are power-of-two, such as 512 by 512, 1024 by 1024, 2048 by 2048, 4096 by 4096, and so on. However, the good news is that the terrain system in World Creator also allows terrain sizes that are not power-of-two, such as 463 by 271 or 3674 by 2839. Therefore, you can use any value for the width and length of your terrain. However, it is important to note that certain applications may require a terrain size that is a power of two to function correctly (please refer to the application's documentation).

Precision

Precision is another important parameter in World Creator that greatly influences terrain detail. Imagine a terrain covering an area of roughly 1024 meters by 1024 meters. This equates to a total of 1,048,576 pixels (1024 multiplied by 1024). Each pixel represents a 1-meter by 1-meter square. This already provides a decent level of detail, but what if a higher level of detail was desired, mapping 0.5 meters squared for each pixel?

For this scenario, World Creator allows you to modify the precision. The default precision setting is 1 meter, however, you can increase it to more precise values, for example, 1/2 meter, 1/4 meter, 1/8 meter, etc. By doing so, World Creator can generate a more detailed terrain without altering the terrain size. As a result, it maps the terrain area visible in the viewport to a more detailed depiction.

Please note that higher precision leads to more pixels in general. A 1024 by 1024 terrain with 1/2 precision creates a height map that is one-fourth the size of a 1024 by 1024 terrain with 1m precision. It is important to be aware of this because higher detail results in a more significant performance impact on your GPU and larger exported maps

Seed

In addition to the terrain size and detail precision, there is a seed value utilized to generate the initial terrain shape with random elevation values. The initial terrain shape remains constant for a given seed number. A new initial terrain shape is created by changing the seed.

Overview

The Angle Blur filter blurs a pixel in the direction of the steepest downslope and additionally allows you to shift its position in the same direction.

Parameters

Results

Once you have successfully downloaded World Creator, double-click the MSI installation file to launch the World Creator installer (which may differ from the screenshot below):

Please follow each installation step until the installer has completed its work. Once installed, you will find a shortcut to the World Creator application on your desktop.

Also, in some cases, the installer may fail to install the Visual Studio C++ redistributables and the .NET Desktop Runtime that are required to run the application. In this case, you will need to download and install them manually. You can find them here:

Overview

The Spike Removal filter enables you to eliminate small-scale or larger spikes that may be produced as a by-product of certain World Creator filters or simulations.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Voronoi filter applies a Voronoi effect to your landscape.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Scatter filter much like the Splatter distribution scatters a given pattern across the terrain. You can thereby chose between several procedural patterns or a custom image.

Parameters

Results

Overview

The Phasor Noise filter adds phasor noise and distortion to your terrain. Similar to the other noise filters you can find all universal noise parameters as well as an overview of the different noise types in this article.

Parameters

Results

Before you can run and use World Creator, you must purchase it through our website or be a reseller with access to our reseller procurement portal (only reseller companies can apply).

Here is a quick step-by-step guide to purchase World Creator htrough our website:

Step 1: Navigate to our website

• Navigate to the

Overview

The Shore filter gives you control over the area above and below a given sea level. It works based on World Creators global Sea Level, but can be offset to give you maximum control.

Parameters

New Features

• Fluvial Advection / Color Erosion Simulate rain and rivers washing colors across your terrain for natural, realistic weathering. To activate this feature, you must use a gradient material and apply a gradient distribution (e.g. height gradient). Then add the Smear effect to see the results. In World Creator's main menu, check the Color Erosion Sample under Samples.

The toolbar enables quicker access to certain functions in World Creator, saving time and maintaining focus on your project.

Overview

The Terrain Panel is used to set the boundaries and base terrain of the project, as well as to specify its size and level of detail. It also provides the option to activate and configure a High Detail Preview. This feature is particularly useful for large terrains, as it prevents real-time rendering performance from being compromised.

Terrain

Base Noise

World Creator uses the diamond-square algorithm to build its terrain. This means it starts at a low resolution and iteratively upscales the previous terrain until it reaches the desired final resolution. The Base Noise is applied at the start of each upscaling step, according to the parameters of its level step.

Shape Settings

The Shape Settings control the base terrain on which , , and everything else operate. It is defined once for each terrain and can then be individually shaped and adjusted by Biomes.

Base

These settings are available for alls Shape Types and control how the shape is applied.

Placement

Shape

These settings are shape type specific and enable you to adjust the base shape to your liking. For an overview of the different shapes and there parameters have a look at the r as most of the shape types are also available there and fully documented.

High Detail Preview

The High Detail Preview is a designated preview area where highly detailed terrain is rendered. This feature comes to play in scenarios where the terrain size is too large to render in real-time. It ensures a smooth and efficient terrain creation process, even when working with expansive terrains.

The main panel includes everything necessary to set up and design your terrain, rendering, export, options, and more. All actions can be performed in this panel, with no hidden pop-ups or windows.

The Main Panel can be split into:

• The Application bar (topmost)

• The Tree View (left)

The 3D viewport displays your terrain in three dimensions. Three different rendering modes are available:

• High-Quality Render Mode

• Textured Render Mode

• Shape Design Mode

By default, World Creator uses its High Quality Render Mode when running. The program utilizes a high-quality, real-time ray-tracing algorithm to render a photorealistic version of the terrain. This rendering mode is expected to perform well on a computer using a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU), for example, an Nvidia 1080 Ti and above, or an equivalent AMD GPU.

Additionally, you have the option to use the Textured Render Mode. It allows you to work on your textured terrain while disabling advanced rendering features and light computation to provide a more responsive workflow.

The Shape Design Mode, while not as realistic or sophisticated as the High Quality or Textured Render Modes, is much faster and allows the user to concentrate on designing the terrain without the need for a powerful GPU. To further customise your experience, you can load your own custom matcaps or choose from the available matcaps that ship with World Creator. See for more information.

By opening the Scene node in the Tree-View, you can access all available World Creator's renderer settings, which can be customized as needed (detailed in a later topic on this). For the moment, it is recommended to keep the default settings unchanged, as they should suffice.

The 3D viewport displays two notable HUD elements:

• Directional Compass

• Altitude Meter

The Altitude Meter is situated to the left of the viewport. The Altitude Meter displays the altitude of the viewer (i.e. the camera which is used to view the scenery) and the min/max height of the whole terrain.

Next, we will examine the camera controls, as well as additional shortcuts that allow for quick access to useful functions inside World Creator.

To move the camera, use the following keys:

• W, A, S, D

  to move forward, left, backward, right

• Q, E

  to move downwards or upwards

You can move the camera faster by holding down the left SHIFT key or by using the Mouse Wheel to adjust the speed even further to cover everything from giant terrains all the way down to individual pebbles.

Moving the mouse and pressing the right mouse button allows you to change the vantage point. You can also use the mouse to move quickly across the terrain. To move quickly, click the middle mouse button while targeting a location on the terrain and move the mouse. Use the mouse wheel to zoom into the terrain. To rotate the camera around a specific spot, press the right mouse button together with the left ALT key on your keyboard and move the mouse.

For a detailed list of all key bindings, refer to .

Biomes

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 each project has one base terrain which is then modified by the different biomes below it. Each biome comprises a set of filters to adjust and shape the terrain, a range of materials to tint the terrain, an array of objects to position on the terrain, and localised simulations such as water, debris, and sand.

New Features

• New Biome System We’ve completely replaced the old biome system with a brand-new, more powerful version. The new Biome System gives you unprecedented flexibility:

  • Custom Distributions – assign procedural distribution rules to your biomes and let World Creator place them intelligently across your terrain.

  • Multiple Biome Layers – create and paint biome layers by hand directly onto your landscape for full artistic control.

  • Object Support – biomes can now include 3D objects (see Object Importing & Scattering below), allowing you to build ecosystems that go far beyond textures and colors.

  • Biome Simulations – each biome can now run its own simulations, including sand, water, snow, debris, and even lava. These simulations themselves can be distributed procedurally for maximum realism.

  World Creator automatically handles blending in all cases, ensuring smooth and natural transitions between biomes. Whether you prefer fully procedural generation or hand-crafted landscapes, you now have the best of both worlds. Creating diverse, rich environments has never been easier than with version 2025.1.

• Object Importing & Scattering We’ve finally brought back what was already possible in World Creator 2 – importing, placing, and scattering your own 3D models such as vegetation, rocks, houses, and more. But in version 2025.1, this feature has evolved far beyond its predecessor.

  • Biome Integration – import your custom models directly into biomes and distribute them procedurally with all the powerful tools World Creator offers. Super easy, super fast, ultra realistic.

  • Scene Placement – import models into the scene node and place them manually, anywhere you like. Use a brush to scatter large numbers of assets by hand for ultimate control.

  Each object comes with extensive customization options – size, material, height, distance, displacement, terrain blending, per-material gradients, emissive properties, and much more. No placed object ever looks the same, giving you incredible diversity and variation. Objects can even exclude each other to prevent overlaps (unless you want them), or be placed on top of one another to create entirely new structures.

• Blender Bridge & GTA 5 Modding Support World Creator 2025.1 introduces a brand-new Blender Bridge Plugin, opening up entirely new workflows:

  • Direct Blender Integration – export complete World Creator scenes directly into Blender, ready for ultra-professional rendering engines like Octane, Cycles, or Eevee. Take full advantage of Blender’s ecosystem while keeping all the power of World Creator’s procedural tools.

  • GTA 5 Modding Support (FiveM) – for the first time ever, you can build custom GTA 5 maps in World Creator and bring them directly into the game world via Codewalker using the Blender Bridge. Scatter millions of assets, design new landscapes, and share your creations with the GTA 5 community.

  The Blender Bridge makes it possible to push entire worlds from World Creator into Blender with ease – and because World Creator can scatter millions of assets in real time, you’ll be creating scenes so dense that even Blender might start sweating.

• New Licensing Options

  With World Creator 2025.1 we are introducing new licensing models designed to fit the needs of every creator – from indie developers to large studios.

  • Studio License – a brand-new license tier tailored for small development studios and indie teams. Affordable, flexible, and designed to give smaller teams full access to World Creator’s power.

  • Lifetime License (Limited Offer) – for the first time ever, World Creator is available as a lifetime license. Pay once, keep it forever – with all future upgrades included at no additional cost. ⚠️ This license will only be available for 4 weeks after release.
• Included Assets World Creator 2025.1 comes packed with high-quality assets to get you started right away:

  • 140 PBR Material Scans – physically accurate, royalty-free material scans ready to use out of the box. Perfect for building realistic terrains without the need to buy external packs.

  • Introductory 3D Asset Pack – a starter collection of 3D models such as rocks and vegetation to help you populate your worlds instantly. This is just the beginning – more asset packs will be added in the future.

• New Material System World Creator 2025.1 introduces a completely redesigned material system, bringing more flexibility, realism, and ease of use than ever before.

  • Unified Material Workflow – simple colors, textures, Adobe Substance materials, and satellite maps (gradients) can now be blended together seamlessly without the need to create multiple materials.

  • ZIP Import – pack your own materials into ZIP archives and import them directly into World Creator. All maps are automatically detected and assigned correctly.

• Ray Tracer Denoiser World Creator 2025.1 introduces an extremely efficient denoiser that dramatically reduces viewport noise when using the ray tracer.

  • Clean Visuals – enjoy smooth, noise-free rendering directly in the viewport.

  • Real-Time Efficiency – the denoiser is highly optimized, removing noise without sacrificing performance.

  • Sharper Results

• New Terrain Filters World Creator 2025.1 adds two brand-new filters to further expand your terrain creation toolkit:

  • Spike Removal – automatically smooths out unnatural terrain spikes for cleaner, more realistic results.

  • Cliffs – generate dramatic cliff formations with sharp edges and vertical structures, adding variety and power to your landscapes.

  These filters give you even more control to refine and shape your terrains into natural or stylized forms with ease.

• World Scaler New in version 2025.1 is the World Scaler, a powerful tool that lets you adjust the overall size and proportions of your world with a single slider.

  • Procedural Flexibility – if your world was built procedurally with noises, you can now instantly rescale it without rebuilding.

  • Global Scaling – objects, materials, distributions, and terrain features all scale together automatically.

• Scene Layer Node World Creator 2025.1 introduces a brand-new Scene Layer Node, giving you more freedom to build and customize your worlds.

  • Custom 3D Models – import your own models and place them by hand, just like in Unity, Blender, or Unreal.

  • Camera Objects – create and manage cameras directly in the scene for more control over composition and rendering.

• Simple Video Creation World Creator 2025.1 introduces the ability to create simple video sequences directly inside the application.

  • Easy Camera Flights – just set a start point and an end point, and World Creator automatically generates a smooth camera flythrough.

  • High-Quality Output – the rendered image sequence is exported in perfect quality and can easily be assembled into a video using any editing software.

• LUT Support World Creator 2025.1 now supports LUTs (Look-Up Tables) to enhance the visual style of your renders.

  • Instant Grading – apply professional color grading directly in the viewport.

  • Creative Flexibility – quickly change the mood and tone of your scenes with just a few clicks.

  • Cinematic Quality

• Additional Features World Creator 2025.1 also comes with a series of smaller but highly useful enhancements:

  • Grid Overlay – refreshed visuals for a cleaner and more modern look.

  • Shape Layers – now come with their own masks for greater flexibility.

  • Path Tool – improved with additional functions and more control.

Fixes

• Fixed tons of AMD related issues.

• Fixed an issue creating spikes when debris is used.

• Fixed an issue causing an undo bug when using the rivers layer.

• Fixed UI ordering issues.

New Features

• New import / export buttons for sculpt layers (you now can directly import existing height-maps and export the sculpt layer to a new height-map)

• New application title now shows the update version (e.g. World Creator 2024.3 | 9)

• New sculpting hotkeys added

• New Spike Removal filter added (experimental)

• New Cliffs filter added (experimental)

• New brush import button added

• New Rocky Edges distribution added

• New Rocky distribution added

• New font added to support all available languages

• New bake functionality added to shape layers, allowing you to bake your terrain into a sculpt layer

• New languages added: Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Turkish

• Added new TEMPLATE menu Option where user can select a Project template to start a Terrain

• Gradient material now has additional detail settings for creating high quality gradients

• New ambient occlusion material

• New ambient occlusion map export

• New simulation layer export

• New heatmap export

• New filter: Strata

• New filter: Chipped

• New filter Shore (for easily cretaing beaches)

• New filter: Scatter

• New filter: Kuwahara

• New filter: Sediment Flow

• New experimental filter: Spike Removal

• New experimental filter: Cliffs

• New distribution: Rocky

• New distribution: Rocky Edges

• New distribution: Height Gradient

• New distribution: Occlusion

• New distribution: Melt

• New distribution: Filter Change

• New distribution: Sea Level

• Added Import button for brushes

• New shape layer: Polygon

• 2D / 3D Stamps: Added saturation, contrast and brightness Settings

• 2D / 3D Stamps: Unlocked all Level Steps for better adjustments

• New shape layer: 2D Primitive (supports many primitives)

• New shape layer: Landscape (supports many typical real-world terrain shapes)

• New simulation layer: Debris

• New simulation layer: Snow

• Created new Presets for all filters and renamed existing ones

• Incremental export: Enable it using placeholder under the naming convention Setting

• Sync-Export now calculates brightness, contrast and saturation into the exported textures

• Sync-Export now exports Adobe Substance Materials including settings into classic textures

• Gradient material now has range controls allowing you to define the region of a gradient

Improvements

• Improved Sculpt Layers by allowing a maximum resolutions of up to 1024 by 1024 pixels

• Improved Sculpt Layers so that they have the same transformations when created by a Map or Stamp Layer

• Improved rendering of GPU statistics so that they are now visible regardless of the background color

• Improved sculpting performance in relation to undo operations

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where pasting map-tiler coordinates did not work

• Fixed an issue where the generator time did not update properly

• Fixed an issue where World Creator would rarely crash when renaming layers

• Fixed an issue where backed up project files did not save textures