SimpleXTerrain vs Worldsmith

SimpleXTerrain is a free, MIT-licensed addon for procedural terrain generation in Godot 4 .NET using C#. Its node graph editor defines heightmaps, biomes, splatmaps, and scattered instances. Heightmap sources include Perlin, fractal, and Voronoi noise, radial shapes, splines, and images. Modifiers include levels, curves, slope masks, hydraulic and thermal erosion, terraces, beaches, ledges, and blur.

At runtime, the addon evaluates terrain chunks asynchronously on .NET background tasks around a moving camera, then streams heightmaps and control maps into Terrain3D regions. The documented workflow uses a Terrain3D node with a camera or character attached to a terrain streamer to build Godot scenes. Requirements are Godot Engine 4.6 or later in its .NET or Mono edition, .NET SDK 8.0 or later, and the Terrain3D plugin. Setup involves copying the addon into the project’s addons directory, rebuilding the C# solution, and enabling the plugin in Project Settings. Foliage and object scattering can generate placement data, but the feature is experimental. Some GPU-capable work has RenderingDevice compute helpers; the documentation identifies CPU evaluation as the reliable path.

Worldsmith is a free, open-source browser application for generating fantasy world maps from a numeric seed, with a mode for rendering real Earth. Procedural terrain uses domain-warped fractal noise, including ridged mountain ranges, while biomes derive from elevation, moisture, and temperature. Rivers use D8 flow accumulation to form tributary drainage networks. Exports include PNG maps up to 5120 pixels, editable SVG maps up to 3840 pixels, JSON world data, and 8-bit or 16-bit heightmaps. The maker says heightmaps can be imported into Unity, Unreal Engine, Blender, and World Machine. Earth mode uses NOAA ETOPO1 elevation and bathymetry, averaged to about five kilometers per sample; synthesized detail is disclosed and can be disabled with Detail set to 0. The app runs entirely client-side without an account, server, or dependencies, and is offered under the MIT license.