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 Satellite 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 mountain range and the land round it: a violet plate to the north-west, a yellow-green plate under the range and to the south-east, a pink plate to the east, and a glowing seam along the range's north-western foot where the plates meet.
    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 land in the elevation view: green lowlands and low hills, a brown range with pale plateaus running diagonally across it, and the sea in blues.
    02

    Erosion

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

  3. The same land in the Satellite style before its rivers: a snow-capped range, dry tan hills to the north-west, forest to the south-east, and a pale band of shallow shelf water round the coast and a bay, with the deep blue sea beyond.
    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 land in the biomes view: pale tan dry ground to the north-west, the range in gray and white, and green forest and olive grassland to the south-east.
    04

    Climate

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

  5. The same land in the Satellite style with its water: rivers running from the range to the coast and the bay, and lakes standing in the range's ice.
    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 land in the political view: realms in flat tints of orange, teal and yellow over the relief, the orange realm lying north-west of the range.
    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 Satellite style: a large continent in the west crossed by a snow-capped range, a long mountain chain down its west coast, two long islands to the east across a strait, ice-capped lands at the north and south, and ocean over much 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 42 · Open the whole map at full size (4096 × 2048 pixels)
A range in the Satellite style: a long ice-covered crest running from lower left to upper right with valleys cut down both flanks, dry tan ridges to the north, forest and a drowned valley to the south-east, and the sea at the edges.
A 3D view of the same land, lit from the upper left. Move the pointer over it to tilt it. Seed 42

Map styles

Compare the same landscape in Atlas, Schoolroom and Satellite.

  1. A mountain landscape in the Atlas style, land tinted by height and climate: a gray and white range with lakes in its ice, tan dry hills to the north-west, olive and green hills cut by rivers to the south-east, a bay in the south-west, and a blue sea deepening offshore.
    01

    Atlas

    Combines elevation and climate colors.

  2. The same landscape in the Schoolroom style.
    02

    Schoolroom

    Shows elevation alone.

  3. The same landscape in the Satellite style, the ground as seen from orbit: a white range with lakes in its ice, tan dry hills to the north-west, forested green hills to the south-east, rivers in pale blue, and a cobalt sea.
    03

    Satellite

    Shows the ground as seen from orbit.

All three at the same scale. Seed 42

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 coast in the temperature view: the land warm orange in the north, paling to white and then blue toward the cold south, and the sea fading from orange in the north to blue.
    01

    Temperature

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

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

    Ocean currents

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

  3. The same coast in the winds view: large orange arrows blowing north-west over the south, and blue ones blowing east across the north.
    03

    Winds

    The prevailing wind through the year.

  4. The same coast in the rainfall view: the land pale yellow where it is dry, shading to green and deep blue where rain is heaviest in the north-east, 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 42

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
Thirteen map styles, opening on Satellite, painted from the ground itself, and 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 20 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 [email protected] to suggest a feature, or click the Suggest a feature link at the bottom of the page to send it through GitHub.

3.1.0
More consistent rainfall on large maps, monsoon coasts, more realistic ice sheets, and softer edges between forest and open land.
3.2.0
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.
3.3.0Current
An Earth-sized planet with a real atmosphere: seasons, high-pressure cells, monsoons and trade winds that decide where rain and deserts fall; plains and continental shelves in Earth's proportions; and a new map style that looks like satellite imagery.
3.x
Storms and the jet stream, and cold ocean currents that make coastal deserts.
3.x
Waves that shape beaches, spits and barrier islands, and rivers that widen downstream, with meanders, braided reaches and marshes.
3.x
More control over how the map is drawn, and a topographic style with contour lines.
3.x
Faster generation on the graphics card.
3.x
A choice of how big the planet is, and saved worlds that keep opening after an update.
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
3D models of your world: terrain for game engines, 3D-printable regions and globes, and cross sections through the land.
4.x
Start from your own terrain: import a heightmap from Wonderdraft or any grayscale image, or paint the land yourself and let the climate, rivers and everything else generate around it.
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; then 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected].