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Procedural Planet Generation

Procedural Planet Generation (PPG) is an Unreal Engine plugin for building large spherical worlds from runtime-generated terrain chunks, material-driven elevation, biome masks, foliage, water, and optional volumetric cloud integration.

The plugin contains runtime code, shaders, editor-facing data assets, material nodes, and example content. Its main workflow is centered around a Planet Data Asset assigned to a Planet Spawner actor.

Example planet rendered with PPG

What PPG Provides

  • Runtime spherical terrain generation with streamed chunk meshes, configurable LOD recursion, collision support, and editor-time regeneration.
  • Material-driven planet authoring with custom nodes for elevation, biome masks, vertex colors, biome material blending, planet-space coordinates, water, and underwater effects.
  • Planet-wide biome generation with up to 16 biome layers, Voronoi cell controls, smooth transitions, height blending, and name-synced material outputs.
  • Biome-based foliage spawning with mesh variants, density controls, slope and height filters, vertex-color masks, cross-chunk clustering, per-entry LOD/WPO settings, and CPU or GPU rendering paths.
  • Planetary ocean support with generated water meshes, water skirts, custom-depth underwater coverage, water material nodes, and Niagara wave simulation parameters.
  • Rendering options for standard static mesh chunks, Nanite terrain chunks, collision, and ray tracing proxy generation for Hardware Lumen projects.
  • Volumetric cloud parameter helpers, gravity-relative controller utilities, and a double-precision floating origin for spherical-world gameplay.
  • Blueprint-readable generation phase, progress, timing, and error reporting for loading screens and runtime diagnostics.
  • Example content, materials, data assets, and an example level to use as a working reference.

Main Workflow

  1. Place the planet spawner Blueprint in a level.
  2. Create or duplicate a Planet Data Asset.
  3. Assign the required planet, generation, and biome mask materials.
  4. Configure biome layers and matching material output entry names.
  5. Run Rebuild Planet Pipeline.
  6. Assign the Planet Data asset to the placed spawner.
  7. Build or regenerate the planet.

Repository Layout

ProceduralPlanetGeneration/
  Config/
  Content/
    Example/
    Materials/
    Water/
    Clouds/
  Shaders/
  Source/
    PPG/
    ComputeShader/
    VoxelCore/

PPG is the main runtime module. ComputeShader contains the planet compute shader dispatch/readback layer. VoxelCore is bundled support code derived from VoxelCore, so users do not need to install a separate VoxelCore plugin.