Atlas Studio vs World Machine

Atlas Studio is a free, open-source Roblox Studio plugin for procedural 3D terrain generation through a visual node graph. Its documented library contains 56 nodes for generators, shaping, erosion, materials, and output. The workspace previews height, material, and slope, with an optional 3D mesh view. Paint Mask nodes provide a dockable canvas for local edits. Built-in recipes include Temperate Forest, Rolling Grassland, Rocky Highlands, and Island / Coast. Projects save the graph, bounds, seed, preview resolution, masks, environment settings, and build history with the Roblox place, allowing reuse. Final builds write native terrain in chunks on Roblox’s 4-stud voxel grid and fill empty voxels below the water plane with water. Preview resolution affects interactive previews only. Installation comes from the Roblox Creator Store and opens under Plugins → Atlas → Atlas Studio. Roads, structures, landmarks, models, and vegetation are outside scope, and materials use Roblox’s built-in terrain materials rather than custom textures.

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.