Open source · Free to use

Build a world from the ground up.

Generate a world map from a seed. Shape its terrain, rivers, climate and borders, then choose a map style and export the result.

The map: seed 1 · Open it in the app

A band of a generated world in the Natural style, all the way round it: a continent whose snow-capped range drains by rivers to coasts on both sides, a lake in its southern lowlands, a wide ocean, and forested islands and the coast of a second land beyond it.

How a world is made

  1. The tectonic plates view of a peninsula: the continent's plate in pale blue over the shaded relief, an ocean plate in pink to the west and another in yellow to the south-east, with a glowing seam where each meets the continent's plate.
    01

    Plates and mountains

    Moving tectonic plates form mountain ranges, volcanic arcs and broad plateaus. Where plates pull apart, rift valleys can fill with water.

  2. The same peninsula in the elevation view: green lowlands and hills cut by valleys, darker ground along its steep south-east coast, and the sea floor in blues.
    02

    Erosion

    Erosion reshapes the terrain. Slopes collapse, rivers carve valleys, and sediment builds floodplains, fans and deltas.

  3. The same peninsula in the Natural style before its rivers: a pale band of shallow shelf water along every coast, and the deep blue sea beyond it.
    03

    Seas and ice

    Continental shelves lie along the coasts. Glaciers shape cold mountains, and ice sheets leave behind basins and lakes.

  4. The same peninsula in the biomes view: green forest along the coasts, yellow grassland across its dry middle, and paler country to the north.
    04

    Climate

    Seasons, ocean currents and terrain shape temperature and rainfall. Climate zones decide where forests, grasslands and deserts form.

  5. The same peninsula in the Natural style with its water: rivers running from the hills to both coasts, and a lake at the head of an inlet in the east.
    05

    Rivers and lakes

    Water flows downhill into rivers, lakes and seas. In dry inland basins, evaporation shrinks lakes, and some dry out completely.

  6. The same peninsula in the political view: realms in flat tints of yellow, violet, blue and green over the relief, their borders following rivers and ridges.
    06

    Realms and peoples

    Geography shapes borders and settlement. Realms follow rivers, coasts and watersheds. Peoples spread through land like their homeland, whatever the borders.

From continent to valley

See the whole world, then look closer at its rivers, valleys and coastlines.

The whole of a generated world in the Natural style: a northern continent with a snow-capped range down its middle, an eastern island across a strait, a southern land in the south-east, and ocean over most of the rest.
Move the pointer over the map to magnify it. On a touch screen, press and hold. With a keyboard, press Tab to reach the map and move the magnifier with the arrow keys. Seed 718106 · Open the whole map at full size (4096 × 2048 pixels)
A peninsula in the Natural style: a ridge of brown hills along its south-east shore, forested valleys behind it whose rivers gather into a lake, and the sea falling away beyond the coast.
A 3D view of the same land, lit from the upper left. Move the pointer over it to tilt it. Seed 718106

Map styles

Compare the same landscape in Atlas, Schoolroom and Natural.

  1. A peninsula in the Atlas style, land tinted by height and climate: olive hills cut by rivers, the drowned valleys of an estuary at the top, a darker coastal range along the south-east shore, and a blue sea deepening offshore.
    01

    Atlas

    Combines elevation and climate colors.

  2. The same peninsula in the Schoolroom style.
    02

    Schoolroom

    Shows elevation alone.

  3. The same peninsula in the Natural style, in satellite colors: forested green hills, brown slopes along the coastal range, rivers in pale blue, and a cobalt sea.
    03

    Natural

    Uses colors taken from satellite imagery.

All three at the same scale. Seed 718106

The data behind the map

The same coastline again, showing the temperature, ocean currents, winds and rainfall the generator worked out for it.

  1. A peninsula in the temperature view: the land in warm oranges, paler and cooler on the coastal range, and the sea orange, warmest to the west and paling southward.
    01

    Temperature

    The average temperature over the year, from cold to hot.

  2. The same peninsula in the ocean currents view: the land a dark ground, and rows of small pale arrows over the sea indicate the direction of ocean currents.
    02

    Ocean currents

    Surface currents, colored by whether the water is warmer or colder than usual for its latitude.

  3. The same peninsula in the winds view: large orange arrows blowing west over the land and the sea beside it, and blue ones blowing east across the open sea to the south.
    03

    Winds

    The prevailing wind through the year.

  4. The same peninsula in the rainfall view: the land in greens and blues, driest in a pale band across its south and wettest on its west coast and its coastal range, and the sea dark.
    04

    Rainfall

    The annual rainfall, from dry to wet.

Four views of the same coastline: its temperature, currents, winds and rainfall. Seed 718106

More map styles and data views are in the generator.

Every seed is a world

Five more worlds, each from a different seed, made at 512 rows with the starting settings. Each opens in the older browser preview, whose earlier generator makes it a little differently.

Features

Views
Fifteen views, including political borders, peoples, elevation, biomes, seasonal temperature and rainfall, tectonic plates, ocean currents and winds.
Styles
Twelve map styles, including Atlas, Vellum, Ink wash, Nautical, Pen and ink, Mars, Natural and a color-blind-safe palette.
Themes
Seventeen interface themes, including light, dark, high contrast and color-blind options.
Editing
Rename realms, capitals and landmarks, edit their details and notes, and place your own labels. Future updates will add a full atlas system for editing borders, landmarks and labels in more depth.
Saves
Save a world and reopen the same file later, with your edits and labels.
Export
Export the map as a PNG, WebP or JPEG image. You can also export the data behind it for other tools: a 16-bit heightmap with its scale in meters, and biome and realm maps with their legends. The desktop app makes every world at 1024, and its map images are 2048 × 1024 pixels.
Resolution
Every world is made on one grid of 1024 rows, each cell about 6 km across.
Acceleration
Optional graphics acceleration uses the graphics card to speed up erosion, ocean currents and ice sheets, through OpenGL on the desktop, and the desktop app draws exported maps on the graphics card.

Notes

The browser preview

The browser version is an older preview and is no longer updated: it runs an earlier generator than the desktop app, so its worlds differ from the pictures on this page. For the current version, download the desktop app.

The preview runs in a recent Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. The first visit downloads the generator, about 4.7 MB, and caches it; nothing you make is uploaded anywhere. The desktop app opens worlds saved in it.

Sizes, formats and speed

An export is the world on screen, one pixel to a cell. Map images are twice as wide as they are tall, so a world of 1024 rows exports as a 2048 × 1024 picture.

PNG keeps every pixel. WebP is smaller and softens thin rivers and borders slightly.

The Atlas panel is a work in progress

Today the Atlas panel in the app lists a world's realms and landmarks. You can rename them and place your own labels, and your changes are saved with the world. Version 5.0 is planned to add named continents, seas, bays, straits and mountain ranges, labeled the way a printed atlas labels them.

Desktop versionWindows · Linux

The desktop app makes larger worlds, up to 2048, or 4096 with 24 GB of memory or more, and spreads the work across your processor's cores. See the download section below for each system's files and how to install them.

Get the latest release ↗

Download and install

Choose your system to see its downloads and how to install them. The desktop app is the current version; the browser preview is an older one, kept online as it was.

MSI installer Portable zip

The portable zip installs nothing: unzip it and run Cartogenesis.exe. The MSI installer runs a wizard to install it in your chosen program directory like any other program. It is unsigned, so Windows shows a SmartScreen warning. If you trust the download, choose “More info”, then “Run anyway”.

  • Java is included, so there is nothing else to install.
  • Draws exported pictures on the graphics card where there is one, and runs erosion, ocean currents and the ice sheet on it when you switch graphics acceleration on.

The apt repository is recommended, so later releases arrive with apt upgrade. These three commands fetch the signing key, add the source line and install:

sudo curl -fsSL https://cartogenesis.com/apt/key.asc -o /etc/apt/keyrings/cartogenesis.asc
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/cartogenesis.asc] https://cartogenesis.com/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cartogenesis.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install cartogenesis
.deb package Portable tarball

Or install the .deb with apt, or unpack the portable tarball and run it.

  • Java is included, so there is nothing else to install.
  • Graphics acceleration has been tested with the open-source Mesa drivers, but not yet with NVIDIA's own driver.
  • Saved worlds go in ~/.cartogenesis/worlds unless you choose another folder.
Try the older browser preview

An older preview, no longer updated: it runs an earlier generator than the desktop app. It runs in a recent Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari; nothing is installed, and nothing you make is uploaded.

  • Makes worlds up to 1024; on a phone, worlds generate at 512 by default.
  • The desktop app opens worlds saved in the preview.
Every file, with the release notes ↗

What comes next

Recent releases, the current one, and upcoming plans. Email dev@cartogenesis.com to suggest a feature, or click the Suggest a feature link at the bottom of the page to send it through GitHub.

3.0.0
Plates, oceans, climate and rivers checked against real figures from Earth, and corrected where they fell short.
3.1.0
More consistent rainfall on large maps, monsoon coasts, more realistic ice sheets, and softer edges between forest and open land.
3.2.0Current
Erosion that depends on rainfall and plant cover, rivers that start where the slope and water flow allow, and ice sheets without stripes down their sides.
3.3
Waves that shape beaches, spits and barrier islands.
3.x
Saved worlds that keep opening after an update.
3.x
Wetter continental interiors, and cold currents that make coastal deserts.
3.x
Rivers that widen downstream, with meanders, braided reaches and marshes.
3.x
More control over how the map is drawn: how tall the hills look and where the light comes from, the smallest lake shown, the strength of the climate colors, line thickness, and the spacing of the latitude and longitude lines.
3.x
A topographic map style with contour lines.
3.x
River erosion on the graphics card, for faster generation.
3.x
A choice of how big the planet is.
4.0
The world as a sphere: a globe to turn, and a choice of map projections for the whole-world map and for exports.
4.x
Faster generation on more desktop graphics cards.
4.x
Import a heightmap, from Wonderdraft or any grayscale image, as the terrain a world is generated from.
4.x
Choose the kind of world to start from, and paint the land yourself. Continents form where you draw them, coastlines stay close to where you put them (subject to erosion), and the climate, rivers and everything else are generated as usual.
5.0
The atlas: named land and sea features, labeled the way a printed atlas labels them. Renaming places and placing labels already work and will carry over.
5.x
Tidal estuaries, coral reefs and atolls.
6.0
Sets of map symbols, such as trees, hills and towns, to place over the map.

Found something wrong? Report it with the seed and the generation resolution. Open an issue, or write to bugreport@cartogenesis.com. Help ▸ Report a bug… in the app fills the form in for you.

Have a feature in mind? Say so. Suggest a feature, or write to dev@cartogenesis.com.