Generator Rules/Tips

Some basic rules and information useful for creating a generator material.

Texture Usage

For textures used in Generators / Layers, make sure "Never Stream" is true in the texture properties. If this is not done, the terrain will generate before textures have time to load.

Using textures will also cause precision errors in your terrain. This will result in unintended lines or randomness in terrain. Enabling "Resample Generator" and adjusting the "Resample Level" will help reduce this. Resample Level is the subdivision level at which the terrain will sample the main generator information from. This will not include the information from layers that overwrite the generators. This means you can layer higher precision details over of the smooth, resampled terrain.

Layer Sampling

Example of a simple biome generator using a color gradient texture.

To sample a previous Layer in a Generator, you must create a Texture Parameter with the name of the layer you want to sample. You can also use the method for sampling Layers in Render Materials. To sample the generator, create a texture parameter named either "EXOSKY_Planets_GeneratorTexture" or "Generator".