Terrain Nodes add-on for Blender 3D

System Requirements: 

>>> 64bit Windows or Linux>>> NVIDIA GPU compute capability 3.5 and above! See this list for compatible NVIDIA GPUs. Also, latest driver is recommended (but not windows insider).

>>> Requires Blender 3.6 or above

11/14/23 : Work continues on the next version.

UPDATES:

• 10/29/2021 - Still version 1.1.1, but I did fix a couple small issues with terrain scaling, sediment slope erosion, basic noise random value issue.
• 10/13/2021 - Version 1.1.1 has been uploaded. This is a bugfix release. Fixed multiple calls to mesh update. Fixed mesh scale change causing multiple mesh generations due to int instead of float. Switching between node groups no longer will loose cached data during session. Added fake user by default to newly added node groups.
• 9/27/2021 -Version 1.1.0 has been released! Unfortunately previous node setups will have a completely different behavior due to many changes that took place. I hope this will be the last time this happens. See below for updates in this release.
• 3/13/2021 - Landscape Output node now updates after each node and during erosion, making it easier to see results. Also several small bugs and stability improvements were made.
• 2/23/2021 - Added new experimental Landscape Output node. This node will be receiving a lot more improvements.
• 2/09/2021 - Added Linux support.
  

FEATURES:

• Very fast GPU powered erosion on massive scales - Resolution of terrain erosion will depend on GPU RAM. From experiments 2GBs was enough for 4096 x 4096 resolution, but your results may very. On my GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GPU it only takes 3-4 seconds to erode 512x512 terrain, with every erosion setting enabled.
• Cache system - calculated nodes are cached and reused unless settings change.
• See Erosion as it happens as a 3D mesh and / or Image.
• Hydro Erosion - 2D water simulation runs down slopes and picks up sediment, slowly (or quickly) eroding the terrain. Sediment is deposited in lower areas or where speed of water flow is reduced.
• Thermal and Sediment Slope Erosion - Thermal erosion erodes steep edges, smoothing out the landscape. Converting terrain and rock to sediment. The sediment slope erosion moves sediment down until a stable slope is reached.
• Dissolution Erosion - Dissolution is chemical erosion in slow moving bodies of water. For example a lake will slowly erode the rock and terrain around it, forming smooth bed.
• Diffusion Reaction
• Diffusion Plates - This a new experimental node that grows terrain at a chosen angle (not based on any natural process).
• Solidification - Over many years sediment begins to harden this converts sediment back into terrain.
• Fast import of ANT Landscape objects, or any object that is a perfect grid when looking from the top view down (so only displaced in z-axis). If you are used to using other landscape generating tools, but not satisfied with their erosion capabilities or level of resolution then this is for you!
• Bake Vertex and Color data to a grid object (like bank to the ANT Landscape mountain).
• Export layers as either single images or as channels packed into an image.
• Procedural Texture Nodes and Math Node for generating complex noise based terrain (there will be a lot more improvements in this area).
• And lots of other small "features", like making sure the user does not crash when running out of GPU ram and so on :)

Version 1.1.0 Release Notes:

Note: Previous node setups will have different behavior with this new release due to many changes that had to take place. This should not happen again in future releases.

This release includes new example files due to above note:

Iceland.blend includes a procedural grass shader, procedural cloud shader and geometry nodes generated cloud object:

reef.blend includes procedural terrain material and advanced water shader:

• New Diffusion Plates Node:

• New Gradient Node:

• New Status Bar (old one was removed from inside the Erosion Node):

• New Add menu. User can add a terrain object that will erode as soon as added and load a simple Terrain Nodes setup as well as a default material. Add menu also has an option to add a Terrain Nodes plane that uses Displacement or Micro Displacement:

• Improvement to the Sediment Slippage erosion algorithm, now slightly faster and better handles stable slope angle.
• Improvements to Thermal Erosion, now also effects Rock layer.
• Texture Baking now uses CPU by default, this was desired for higher resolution bakes that could not fit on the GPU (let me know if you want an option to choose GPU).
• Large code refactor and restructuring for future development.
• Fixed deleted objects hanging around.
• Slightly faster speed for Noise generator nodes.
• Removed some settings from the Erosion Node for complexity reduction. Options can be still found in the advanced settings.
• Improvement to noise algorithms for simulations only.
• Various minor improvements to erosion and simulation algorithms as well as fixes.
• Various usability improvements.
• Additional improvements to GPU out of memory protection.
• New "Auto Scale Parameters" option in the erosion node. This option attempts to preserve the same erosion result at every scale. At 512x512 resolution it has no effect, but anything above or below will be scaled (mainly designed when going to higher resolutions for the final erosion). It works by scaling total number of cycles, rain frequency, and many other parameters from a base 512x512 resolution.

All future updates for this Add-on will be free!

Links / Contact

Terrain Nodes Website/Docs  (still work in progress)

Twitter

Discord

If you experience any crashes / bugs message me on Discord / Twitter or email val.barashkov at Gmail. (Discord is preferred)

How to Un-install old versions

Go to Edit > Preferences > Terrain Nodes and uncheck Terrain Nodes, now close Blender and open Blender again. Now you can click "Remove" to uninstall Terrain Nodes. If you get an error just close Blender, open it again and click "Remove" again.

Please use #TerrainNodes on Twitter or share you results at our Discord channel!