Free, open-source tools for building believable planets, right in your browser. No install, no account. Pick the one that fits how you like to work.
A planet in seconds, shaped by hand.
Set the continents, plates and climate with sliders, then reshape any plate you don't like: Ctrl-click on desktop, or tap in edit mode on a phone. Every planet comes with wind, ocean currents, rain and Köppen climate zones.
Bring your own map; see its climate.
Upload an equirectangular heightmap, whether hand-drawn, from another tool or of a real planet, and Orogen wraps it onto a globe and runs the full climate simulation on it. It starts with Earth, so you can see how well the climate matches.
A planet with a past.
Watch a supercontinent break up, oceans open and close, and continents collide and gather again over hundreds of millions of years. Stop on a moment you like and add detail: rivers and lakes, glaciers and fjords, its own climate and a satellite view.
The blogs, channels and tools that shaped how I think about worlds. If you like World Orogen, you'll probably like these too.
The channel that got me to fall in love with worldbuilding, and made cartography seem approachable to a non-artist like myself. They have a deep catalog worth exploring, going over all sorts of scientific worldbuilding topics.
The biggest single inspiration for this project. It goes more in depth than anywhere else on the internet into how you can make a realistic planet. Following their guides will get you something better than any tool out there can provide.
An excellent addition to Artifexian and Worldbuilding Pasta. She provides a more analogue guide to the same topics, but with the same scientific angle. She also goes very deep into the cultural and societal implications of the worlds she builds, and backs it up with in-depth research. Her writing channel, Madeline James Writes, is worth a look too.
A lovely worldbuilding channel that helps me let go of “realistic” worlds, while at the same time creating some of the most beautiful, strange, and believable worlds.
A brilliant channel going over a tool called Gaea, which uses noise and simulated erosion to create realistic landscapes. They pioneered using it for world-scale projects, and were a conceptual inspiration for this project. (I regularly export regions of the maps I generate here to Gaea for a nice finish.)
The original project was heavily and directly inspired by their video Maps: Fractals, Tectonics and the Fourth Dimension, but their channel goes deep into philosophy, design, games and culture. Really worth checking out for any worldbuilder.
A great channel for worldbuilding and writing advice (and for Avatar: The Last Airbender references). An excellent, accessible place for newcomers to worldbuilding, with some nuggets of wisdom for the veteran worldbuilder too.
A huge catalog of videos going over history, mythology, story tropes, and so much more. An excellent place to get inspired and have fun.
Interesting dives into history with a fun, blocky art style. A must if you’re interested in Roman history (though there are plenty of other topics as well).
