Arcadium 3D vs World Machine

Arcadium 3D is a browser-based tool for designing landscapes, houses, floor plans, and interiors. Its landscape tools cover property boundaries, terrain, patios, paths, retaining walls, fencing, planting, and outdoor features. The landscape planner includes hundreds of trees, shrubs, flowers, garden furniture, pergolas, fences, and outdoor structures. Users can create 3D designs, generate photorealistic landscape renders with AI, take first-person walkthroughs, and export printable 2D plans as PDFs. Projects can be shared by URL, and viewers can open shared designs in a browser without an account. The service runs without software installation and lists Mac, PC, iPad, and mobile device support, with web, iOS, and Android platforms. The free plan allows two projects, up to 30 objects per project, and one floor plan generation. Pro is $18 a month billed yearly; Power is $60 a month billed yearly. Paid plans raise limits and include custom model import, AI images, storage, and additional floor plan generations.

World Machine is procedural 3D terrain-generation software for artists creating realistic or stylized landscapes, including game, film, and visualization work. Its node graph offers more than 100 devices for terrain, erosion, rivers, masks, materials, and outputs. Simulations cover flow-based and thermal erosion, snow accumulation, river channels, lakes, and coastal erosion; Dragontail Peak adds terrain with overhangs, cliff faces, and caves. Exports include heightfields, meshes, masks, and PBR textures in standard formats, with listed file types including RAW, EXR, TIFF, PNG, TER, OBJ, glTF, and GLB. Compatible tools named by the maker include Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, Blender, Maya, and Cinema 4D. Professional and higher editions support tiled builds for worlds larger than memory and can resume builds after interruption. The free Basic edition has the Indie toolset but caps each output asset at 1025×1025 pixels and is limited to non-commercial use. Paid plans are Indie at $119 a month, Professional at $299 a month, and Studio Site at $1,999 a month. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.