Build a world from the ground up.

Compare the same landscape in Atlas, Schoolroom and Natural. Atlas combines elevation and climate colours, Schoolroom shows elevation, and Natural uses colours taken from satellite imagery.

The temperature, ocean currents, winds and rainfall calculated for the same coastline.

More map styles and data views are in the generator.

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 colour-blind-safe palette.

Themes

Seventeen interface themes, including light, dark, high contrast and colour-blind options.

Editing

Edit generated names and borders. Your changes are saved with the world.

Saves

Save a world and reopen the same file in the browser or the desktop app.

Export

Export map images as PNG, WebP or JPEG, or the data behind the map: a 16-bit heightmap with its metre scale, and biome and realm index maps with their legends. Up to 4096 × 4096 in the browser and on the desktop; phones are capped at 2048 × 2048.

Resolution

Choose the world's resolution. Higher settings add detail and need more memory; the browser starts at 512, the desktop app at 1024.

Acceleration

Optional graphics acceleration speeds up erosion and export rendering: WebGPU in the browser, OpenGL on the desktop.

Choose a download for Windows or Linux, or run Cartogenesis in the browser.

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

Planned releases and what each one brings. No dates: a release lands when its work is done.

3.0.0

The realism audit: the plates, the seas, the air and the water measured against Earth, and corrected where the measurement showed how.

3.1.0

Rainfall that holds up at larger map sizes, monsoon coasts, ice sheets with the shape and weight of ice, and softer woodland edges.

3.2.0Current

Erosion shaped by rain and vegetation, rivers that begin with the slope and the flow, and ice sheets without stripes down their flanks.

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

A topographic map style with contour lines.

3.x

Hydraulic erosion on the graphics card.

3.x

A choice of world width.

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 greyscale image, as the terrain a world is generated from.

4.x

Choose the kind of world the generator starts from, and paint the land yourself: continents form where and as you draw them, coastlines stay where you put them subject to erosion, and the climate, rivers and everything else are still generated on top.

5.0

The atlas: named land and sea features, with labels arranged the way a printed map arranges them. Renaming places and moving labels already work and stay.

5.x

Estuaries, reefs and atolls.

6.0

Symbol packs placed on layers over the generated map.