World Machine vs Worldsmith

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.

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.