Heightmap Level Generator vs Ymir

Heightmap Level Generator creates procedural terrain and heightmaps in a browser for Unreal Engine, Unity and Godot. Its GPU-based generation uses WebGPU compute shaders and WGSL. Outputs include 16-bit heightmaps with features such as cliffs, hills, mountains, erosion, rivers, lakes and a raised border ring. It can also generate connected roads, towns, map exits, road grades and embankments around water, with temperate, steppe, desert and snow world biomes. Users can adjust settings live, compare 12 seeds, preview a 2D map and 3D mesh, and walk through terrain in first person. Exports include engine-specific terrain formats, Web or three.js formats, heightmaps, splatmaps, masks, water levels, color maps, layout JSON, glTF meshes and metadata JSON. Road, town and water masks and layout data can support PCG, Houdini and custom placement scripts. The free project supports share links, presets, JSON save and load, and undo and redo. Online use requires a WebGPU-capable browser; local use requires Node.js and such a browser.

Ymir is a node-based procedural terrain generator for Linux and Windows, with a graph workflow for constructing and exporting terrain. Nodes cover noise and shape generation, sculpting, filters, and thermal, hydraulic, and stream erosion. Erosion can use a mask and produce flow, wear, and deposition layers for later terrain work. Projects are stored as readable JSON in .ymir files, and node networks can be saved for reuse as .ymirsub subgraphs. Heightmaps export as 16-bit grayscale PNG, raw 16-bit R16, or 32-bit float EXR. The headless ymir-cli can build saved projects and export results; erosion runs on a GPU when available and otherwise falls back to the CPU. The editor requires a GPU with working Vulkan drivers on Linux, or Vulkan or DX12 drivers on Windows. Ymir is free software under GPL-3.0. Windows binaries are unsigned and prompt a first-run SmartScreen warning.