World Machine vs Ymir

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.

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.