Gaea vs Mapgen4
Gaea
quadspinner.comMapgen4
redblobgames.comSide by side
| Figure | Gaea | Mapgen4 |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 0 |
| Spec score · Game Map Generators | 8.3 (#4) | 7.3 (#19) |
| Maker | QuadSpinner is a bootstrapped software studio based in Questa, New Mexico, founded in 2008 by Dax Pandhi and Cynthia Najim. | Red Blob Games identifies Amit Patel as its maker and says he makes interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms. |
| Purpose | Gaea is a terrain design platform for VFX, games, and virtual production. | Mapgen4 is a procedural wilderness map generator. |
| Simulation | Gaea provides physics-driven terrain simulations including erosion, debris, glaciers, rivers, snow, and vegetation. | The generator simulates evaporation, wind, and rainfall to determine biomes and rivers. |
| Support | Support, maintenance, and minor updates are included at no additional cost, and the company says it does not offer a guaranteed support SLA. | The Mapgen4 page invites users to email the maker or comment on the page. |
Plans
Gaea
- Indie$99, paid once
- Professional$199, paid once
- Enterprise$299, paid once
- Community EditionFree
- Indie$99, paid once
- Professional$199, paid once
- Enterprise$299, paid once
In their own words
Gaea
Gaea is a Windows terrain design application for VFX, games, and virtual production. It builds terrain from procedural forms, imported data, or hand-drawn elements, then applies simulations for erosion, debris, glaciers, rivers, snow, and vegetation. It can produce terrain-aware color, textures, masks, material zones, vegetation data, and flow maps. Exports include heightfields, meshes, point clouds, textures, masks, and other terrain data. Bridges connect Gaea with Unreal Engine and Houdini; the Gaea2Houdini plugin requires a Professional or Enterprise license. Gaea also offers node-based compositing and a hybrid render engine.
The Community Edition is free for non-commercial use. The listed perpetual-license prices are $99 a month for Indie, $199 a month for Professional, and $299 a month for Enterprise; each is described as a one-time price. Gaea requires Windows, an AVX2-capable CPU, and at least 16 GB of RAM. CPU-only operation is supported; GPU compute needs CUDA 12.5 or higher or HIP 6.0 or higher.