World Orogen — Procedural Planet Generator
World Orogen is a free, browser-based procedural planet generator: believable worlds from the ground up, in a studio of planet tools that gets you from a blank page to a world that makes sense — no download or account required. Its planets are shaped by tectonic plates, erosion, volcanism and a seasonal climate, with the science behind each layer simplified but real. Three tools share one climate: Generate builds a planet from sliders, Import Heightmap runs the climate on your own map, and Evolution simulates a planet's whole tectonic history, with the rocks, ores and food its land could offer.
How It Works
Start by adjusting sliders for detail level, number of tectonic plates, continents, and terrain roughness. Click "Build New World" to generate a unique planet with realistic continental shapes, mountain ranges, ocean trenches, volcanic island chains, and hotspot volcanism. Every planet is procedurally generated and completely unique.
Key Features
- Tectonic plate simulation with convergent, divergent, and transform boundaries
- Multiple erosion types: glacial (fjords, U-shaped valleys), hydraulic (river valleys), and thermal (talus slopes)
- Climate simulation with seasonal wind patterns, ocean currents, precipitation, and Köppen climate classification
- Hotspot volcanism with drift-trail island chains (like Hawaii)
- Interactive plate editing — select multiple plates for batch land/ocean toggling with visual preview before rebuild
- Heightmap import — bring your own equirectangular B&W heightmap (Earth, Mars, hand-drawn) and run full climate simulation on it
- Evolution — watch a planet's continents rift, drift and collide over a billion years, then sculpt any moment in detail with rivers, glaciers, its own climate, a satellite view and a geology view: a rock-type map, ore, fuel, mineral and gem deposits built from that history — each district with the story of how it formed — what each technological age could mine, and exports of them all (maps, richness masks, GeoJSON, a resource atlas) — and a food view (what its land could grow, what each place would live on most, and whether its people would farm, herd or gather); and save the planet as a file to open again later
- Temperature and precipitation controls that work through the climate: cool a planet and its ice spreads, warm it and it grows wetter
- Multiple visualization modes: terrain, a satellite view in summer and winter, climate, and heightmap
- Detailed inspection layers for geology and climate — pressure and wind, ocean currents, upwelling, sea ice, temperature, precipitation, aridity, growing season and more, for the year, January or July
- Map export up to 65,536px wide: every map as colour or as 16-bit data on documented scales (heightmaps, hillshade, temperature, rain, winds, currents, ice, Köppen classes), in ten map projections, one PNG or a ZIP with a README
- Shareable planet codes — copy a code to share your exact planet with others
Use Cases
World Orogen is used by worldbuilders, game developers, tabletop RPG players, fantasy authors, and anyone who needs realistic terrain. Export heightmaps for use in game engines like Unity or Unreal, or download satellite-style maps for your D&D campaign setting. The climate simulation produces realistic biome distributions for believable fantasy worlds.
Share Your World
Every planet has a unique planet code. Share the URL (e.g. orogen.studio/generate#CODE) to let anyone recreate your exact world — including any tectonic plates you've edited by hand.