PlanetGen — Procedural Spherical Terrain - Playable Demo

PlanetGen is a runtime C++ plugin (with full Blueprint support) for Unreal Engine 5 that generates streaming procedural spherical terrain — a full planet you can fly around, land on, and explore. Async chunk streaming, layered 3D noise, biome blending, foliage, and a water sphere, all without blocking the game thread.

Drop ACLMPlanet into your level, assign a material, and click Preview Planet. Hit Randomize for a new world.──────────────────────────────

CORE FEATURES

──────────────────────────────

▸ Spherical Streaming Terrain — Cube-face parameterization divides the sphere into 6 faces, each streamed as a grid of chunks. Actor pool recycles chunks at runtime — no spawn/destroy overhead.

▸ 3D Noise Sampling — All noise is sampled in 3D world space, ensuring perfectly uniform terrain on every face with zero equatorial stretching. No distortion at the poles or seams between faces.

▸ Async Mesh Generation — Geometry built entirely on a thread pool. Game thread is never blocked.

▸ Layered Noise Stack — Stack up to N noise layers. Layer 0 acts as a continental mask controlling where mountains appear vs flat plains. Built-in presets: HighDetail, Smooth, Mountains.

▸ FastNoise Lite Integration — Perlin, OpenSimplex2, Cellular, Ridged Multifractal, Domain Warp Progressive (MIT licensed, ships with source).

▸ Biome Blending — Vertex color blend weights for Grass / Rock / Snow / Underwater. Plug directly into any landscape material. Compatible with WorldGen flat terrain materials.

▸ Foliage System — BiomeFoliageAsset data assets drive HISM scatter on the thread pool. Per-mesh density, height, slope, scale, clustering, and collision. Same data assets as WorldGen flat terrain — configure once, use on both.

▸ Dense Grass System — WorldGenGrassAsset data assets drive ISM ground cover at high resolution. Slope-aware instance sinking, surface normal alignment, per-chunk random jitter. Same data assets as WorldGen flat terrain.

▸ Procedural Water Sphere — Smooth UV sphere at sea level. Configurable subdivisions (default 64) for silky-smooth appearance at any planet scale.

▸ Seed and Randomize — Every planet is seeded and deterministic. One click generates a completely new world. Seed is exposed so you can save and share specific planets.

▸ ACLMPlanetSunSky subclass — Optional subclass with full SunSky integration. Requires SunPositionCalculator plugin (bundled with UE5). Automatically configures the scene's SkyAtmosphere radius and VolumetricCloud layer height to match your planet size.

▸ Editor Preview — CallInEditor buttons (Preview Planet, Clear Planet, Randomize Planet) rebuild terrain without entering Play mode.

──────────────────────────────

TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS

──────────────────────────────

▸ Full Blueprint Support — All properties are Blueprint-readable and writable. PreviewPlanet(), ClearPlanet(), and RandomizePlanet() are all Blueprint-callable at runtime. Trigger planet rebuilds, seed changes, or clear events from any Blueprint graph.

▸ ProceduralMeshComponent-based geometry

▸ Cube-face parameterization — equal-area distribution, no pole distortion

▸ 3D noise sampling — zero equatorial stretching on any planet size

▸ Fully exposed parameter categories with tooltips and clamped slider ranges

▸ Seeded RNG per chunk — deterministic foliage placement

▸ Compatible with WorldGen flat terrain foliage and grass data assets

──────────────────────────────

INCLUDED

──────────────────────────────

▸ Full C++ source

▸ Pre-built planet material (M_Planet) with biome blending wired up

▸ Water sphere material

▸ Sample foliage data asset (trees, pine)

▸ Sample grass data asset (grass clump)

▸ Sample tree and pine meshes with materials

▸ Sample grass mesh with material

▸ BPCLMPlanet Blueprint subclass for easy editor configuration

▸ PlanetMap demo level — ready to Preview Planet out of the box

──────────────────────────────

PERFECT FOR

──────────────────────────────

Space games, planetary exploration, sci-fi survival, alien world prototypes, and any project needing a fully streaming spherical planet with real terrain — without writing cube-sphere math, noise systems, or chunk management code from scratch.

Playable Demo

Project files