Procedural Terrains

GPU-driven terrain authoring for the browser, with native integrations for Unity and Blender.

Procedural Terrains is a React + Vite + Three.js terrain studio. Height, normals, and biome colors are evaluated on the GPU, so the live view stays editable without relying on a baked CPU heightmap.

What’s new

Unity integration 0.4.0-alpha.1 — create seeded terrain directly in the

Unity Editor, generate tiled TerrainData, connect neighbors, and regenerate saved recipes. Version 0.4 adds fine detail, thermal erosion, procedural TerrainLayers and live placeholder water for creation and import.

Blender extension 0.4.0 — create editable procedural meshes in Blender

5.2, import validated export packages, preserve source metadata, and resize imported assemblies. Version 0.4 adds density-aware detail, thermal erosion, editable procedural surface nodes and independently toggleable placeholder water.

Real-world terrain mode — search for a location, preview geographic

elevation and imagery, then load it into the editor.

Production export presets — prepare Unity, Unreal, Godot, Blender, and

Three.js packages with meshes, textures, masks, water data, and metadata.

Local-first projects — save versioned projects, thumbnails, templates,

and recent-project history in the browser without requiring an account.

Features at a glance

| Capability | Description | | --- | --- | | Tile | Paint, assemble, and export fixed terrain boards with per-chunk LOD. | | Infinite World | Explore a streamed chunk grid with walk and fly-through controls. | | Planet | Generate a cube-sphere planet with atmosphere, clouds, and orbit controls. | | Noise Stack | Compose typed, serializable noise layers that compile to GLSL. | | Manual terrain | Import real-world elevation or shape terrain with brushes. | | Water and atmosphere | Add water, shoreline effects, sky, clouds, fog, and underwater rendering. | | Export | Bake GLB/GLTF, OBJ, color, normal, height, splat, collision, water, and preset data. |

See it in action

Terrain studio

!Terrain studio with a generated mountain world

The editor supports multiple world modes, live shader parameters, settings search, camera presets, performance controls, undo/redo, and project save/load.

!Procedural terrain at sunset

Example terrain scene with reflective water, atmospheric lighting, clouds, and mountain silhouettes.

Engine plugins

| Unity | Blender | | --- | --- | | !Unity plugin page captured with Playwright | !Blender plugin page captured with Playwright |

Both integrations can import the same renderer-neutral .ptrterrain runtime document and production ZIP exports. They also expose native procedural generation for their host application. These screenshots are generated from the local app with Playwright at a 1600 × 900 viewport.

Quick start

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:6061. Vite listens on all interfaces and prints a LAN URL; if port 6061 is busy, it selects the next available port.

Create a production build with:

npm run build
npm run preview

Optional accounts API

The editor is local-first and fully usable without an account. Login and registration are provided by the independent, self-hostable Node.js/MySQL service in api/.

cp .env.example .env
cp api/.env.example api/.env
npm --prefix api install
npm run dev
npm run dev:api

Run npm run migrate:api once MySQL is configured. Deployment guidance for Linux, PM2, MySQL, and Nginx is in api/README.md.

Unity and Blender plugins

The latest archives are available from the app and checked into public/downloads/plugins/.

| Integration | Version | Requirements | Source | Download | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Unity | 0.4.0-alpha.1 | Unity 6000.3+ | plugins/unity/Packages/com.zyfou.procedural-terrains | Unity ZIP | | Blender | 0.4.0 | Blender 5.2+ | plugins/blender/procedural_terrains | Blender ZIP |

Unity workflow

Download the Unity ZIP or add the local package through Unity Package Manager.
In Procedural Terrains, choose the Unity Terrain export preset.
In Unity, open Window > Procedural Terrains > Terrain Importer.
Import the ZIP, or use Create to generate seeded terrain natively.

The package creates native TerrainData, colliders, connected tile neighbors, TerrainLayers, and persistent generation recipe assets. See the Unity package README and Unity changelog for current limitations and release details.

Blender workflow

Download procedural-terrains-blender-0.4.0.zip.
In Blender 5.2, open Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions > Install from Disk.
Enable the extension and open 3D View > Sidebar > Terrain.
Use Create for native procedural terrain or Import for a ZIP/

.ptrterrain export.

The extension creates ordinary editable mesh objects with UVs, source metadata, shared tile borders, and Blender undo support. Read the Blender extension README for installation, coordinate mapping, and performance guidance.

World modes

| Mode | Best for | Details | | --- | --- | --- | | Tile | Authoring and export | Fixed terrain board, multi-tile layouts, paint brushes, and close-range detail. | | Infinite World | Exploration | Streamed chunks around the camera with FPS walking and plane exploration. | | Planet | Large-scale worlds | Cube-sphere terrain with atmosphere, volumetric clouds, and orbit camera. |

Tile mode also includes square or circular layouts, radial walls, real-world heightmap import, biome painting, river tools, and procedural prop painting.

Export pipeline

The Export panel provides quick screenshots and heightmaps, plus production presets for:

Unity Terrain
Unreal Landscape
Godot Terrain3D
Blender Scene
Three.js viewer assets

Full ZIP exports can contain:

GLB/GLTF or OBJ terrain meshes, with configurable resolution, skirts, and base slabs
baked color, normal, heightmap, biome splat, and collision maps
water surface meshes and depth, shoreline, and foam masks
terrain.json, project.ptrterrain, and preset metadata for downstream tools

The Production Check validates selections before the GPU bake and flags high-memory maps or missing water masks.

Controls

Tile camera

Left-drag — pan across the board
Right-drag — orbit
Scroll — zoom
Bottom toolbar — top-down, angled, and reset camera views

Exploration

Bottom toolbar Explore — choose Walk or Plane
Touch controls are available on mobile while exploring

Shortcuts

Ctrl+K — search settings
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y — undo / redo
Ctrl+Shift+P — performance overlay

Architecture

The WebGL engine is framework-agnostic in src/engine/. The React editor lives in src/components/, and the two layers communicate through Engine methods and a callbacks object.

| Area | Key files | | --- | --- | | Core | src/engine/Engine.js — renderer, scene, uniforms, save/load, undo state | | Tile board | src/engine/terrain/TerrainBoard.js — board layout and chunk orchestration | | Infinite world | src/engine/terrain/InfiniteWorld.js — streamed chunks and culling | | Planet | src/engine/terrain/PlanetWorld.js — cube-sphere world | | Noise | src/engine/terrain/noise/NoiseStack.js — layered serializable noise | | Shaders | src/engine/terrain/terrainGLSL.js and materials | | Water | src/engine/water/WaterSystem.js — water, reflections, and underwater effects | | Paint | src/paint/PaintModeManager.js — height, biome, and prop layers | | Export | src/engine/terrain/TerrainExporter.js — mesh and texture packages | | UI | src/App.jsx — application shell and editor composition |

Technical properties

Deterministic: terrain is a pure function of world coordinates, seed, and parameters.
Layered noise: typed layers are code-generated into the terrain shader and saved with projects.
Crack-free LOD: skirt rings hide transitions between chunks at different detail levels.
Live editing: most controls update shader uniforms without rebuilding geometry.
Camera-independent terrain: the camera affects LOD, never the generated height field.
Undo/redo: project parameters, tile layout, and paint layers are tracked together.
Performance controls: GPU-tier detection, quality presets, LOD budgets, renderer options, and a live overlay.

Normals are finite-differenced per fragment to keep distant terrain crisp at low geometric LOD. On weaker GPUs, lower pixel ratio, reduce octaves or layer count, or choose a lighter water quality mode. More profiling notes are in docs/PERFORMANCE.md.

Project structure

src/                 React UI, engine, exporters, and editor state
plugins/             Unity package and Blender extension
public/downloads/    Downloadable plugin archives
public/textures/     Built-in terrain material textures
api/                 Optional self-hostable accounts service
docs/                Architecture and performance notes
tests/               Frontend and integration tests

License

The core project is released under the MIT License. Plugin licenses are documented alongside their source packages: Unity is MIT licensed and the Blender extension is GPL-3.0-or-later.

ZyFou/ProceduralTerrains: Three.js procedural terrain generator with tile, infinite world, planet mode, volumetric clouds, realistic water and GLB export.