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.

3.0.0Current

The realism audit: the plates, the seas, the air and the water measured against Earth and corrected where they were wrong.

3.1

Monsoon coasts, rain that reaches the interiors, and vegetation that follows the rain.

3.2

Erosion that reads the climate, and river channels that start where they should.

3.3

Ice sheets as bodies of ice, and waves and drift along the coasts.

3.x

A topographic map style with contour lines, hydraulic erosion on the graphics card, and a choice of planet size.

4.0

The world as a sphere: physics in metres, a globe to turn, and a choice of map projections for the whole-world map and for exports.

4.x

Graphics acceleration on a native WebGPU runtime, so the desktop runs the same kernels as the browser on Vulkan, Direct3D 12 or Metal.

4.x

Import a heightmap, from Wonderdraft or any greyscale image, as the terrain a world is generated from.

5.0

The full atlas: named continents, seas, bays, straits and ranges, with labels set out the way a printed map sets them.

6.0

Drafting a world by hand: paint, raise and lower land as you watch, choose the kind of world the generator starts from, and place symbols from packs on layers, with everything drawn still put through the generator.