Landscape

Every project has one landscape: endless ground that streams in chunks around the camera. You shape it in three layers. A base surface gives the overall form, shapes add non-destructive features such as flattened plots, hills and roads, and brush edits sculpt and paint the ground by hand. Caves, craters and biomes all build on the same ground.

Sculpt and paint the ground

1. Click Landscape in the viewport toolbar, or open Window → Landscape. The Landscape workspace opens with the brush switched on.
2. Choose Sculpt or Paint at the top of the workspace, then pick a tool.
3. Left-drag in the viewport. Hold Shift to invert the tool, for example to lower instead of raise.
4. Press [ and ] to shrink and grow the brush.
5. Press Esc, or click Select in the toolbar, to return to selecting objects.

Each stroke is one undo step, and terrain collision updates with the ground. Discard stroke drops a stroke that has not been committed yet. Reset edits… → Reset landscape edits removes all sculpt and paint edits but keeps the base surface settings.

Sculpt tools

Tool	Effect	Shift
Raise	Lifts the ground	Lowers
Lower	Digs the ground down	Raises
Smooth	Evens out bumps	—
Erode	Weathers the ground like rain over ages: branching gullies run down slopes, silt fans out at their foot and ground steeper than about 39° slumps into scree. Strength is how much rain falls. The same dab on the same ground always weathers it the same way	—
Flatten	Levels to Target height; Use height under cursor samples it from the viewport	—
Erase	Removes sculpt and paint edits under the brush	—

Paint tools

Tool	Effect
Texture	Paints one of the terrain’s texture layers. Shift paints the base layer back
Remove foliage	Erases scattered trees, bushes and grass. Shift restores them
Restore foliage	Brings erased foliage back
Tint	Tints the ground colour. Quick swatches: Grass, Path, Sand, Stone
Paint foliage / Erase foliage	Paints one foliage layer in or out. Layers set to Painted only grow where you paint them in
More grass / Less grass	Raises the built-in grass density up to double, or thins it to none
Taller grass / Shorter grass	Changes the built-in grass height
Grass colour	Tints the grass. Quick swatches: Lush, Dry, Autumn, Frost
Reset grass	Clears grass painting under the brush

Brush settings

Setting	Range	Default
Brush size	2–64 m	8 m
Strength	0.01–2 when sculpting, 0.01–1 when painting	0.2
Target height (Flatten)	−1,000 to 1,000 m	2 m
Hardness	0 (fades from the centre) – 1 (full strength to the rim)	0
Edge noise	0 (round) – 1 (ragged)	0

Edge noise breaks the round rim into a natural edge. The noise is fixed to the ground, not the brush, so the edge of a stroke stays coherent as you drag.

Open Masks to limit any tool to part of the ground. The heading reads Masks · on while a mask is active.

Mask	Settings	Description
Only on slopes	Steeper than, Flatter than: 0 (flat) – 1 (vertical); starts at 0.35–1	Touches only ground whose steepness is in the range, for example rock on cliffs
Only between heights	Above · m, Below · m: −500 to 2,000 m in the panel, ±5,000 by command	Touches only ground between the two heights, for example snow above the tree line. It starts from 5 m below to 50 m above the ground under the cursor; Above cursor and Below cursor set one bound from it

Choose a base surface

The Base surface section of the Landscape workspace sets the ground under all your edits. Changes stay pending until you press Apply surface; Discard settings drops them. Base settings never remove sculpt and paint edits.

Base	Description
Meadow	Gently rolling default ground. This is the default
Flat	Level ground
Procedural	Endless generated hills and mountains from a seed

Setting	Range	Default	Description
Relief	0–20	1	Scales the height of the base surface
Base height	−1,000 to 1,000 m	0	Moves the whole surface up or down
Procedural trees, rocks and flowers	On/off	On	Scatters built-in decorations on the ground

Procedural terrain

With Procedural selected, the workspace shows the generator. Pick a preset to start from, then adjust the sliders. The same seed always produces the same land, so it streams, saves and reaches the horizon like any other landscape. New land picks a random seed.

Preset	Shape
hills	Rolling green hills with gentle valleys
mountains	High ridged mountain ranges with deep valleys
plains	Wide flat lowlands with a few low hills
highlands	Rough rocky uplands, twisted ridges
mesas	Stepped terraces and flat-topped buttes
islands	Low land broken by hollows; add an ocean for islands

Slider	Field	Range	Default
Height m	height	0–600 m	45
Hill spacing m	scale	20–8,000 m	420
Mountains	mountains	0–1	0.35
Plains	plains	0–1	0.45
Roughness	roughness	0–1	0.5
Twist	warp	0–1	0.4
Terraces	terraces	0–1	0
Erosion	erosion	0–1	0
Soft ridges	ridge_softness	0–1	0
Flat start area m	clearing	0–1,000 m	40

Erosion weathers branching gullies and sharp spurs down every slope. Soft ridges rounds off knife-edged ridge crests; 0 keeps the original land. Every preset sets both: mountains has the most erosion (0.75), plains the least (0.1).

Choosing a preset keeps your current seed and replaces the other values.

Texture layers

A landscape blends up to four tiling texture layers. Layer 0 is the base and covers everything; layers 1–3 appear on steep ground, in noise patches, along riverbanks, or where you paint them. Without layers the ground uses plain vertex colours.

1. Open Window → World & terrain and select the Terrain layers tab.
2. Click a Stylized look to dress the whole terrain in one step, or + Add layer to build layers yourself.
3. For each layer, pick a texture From library or Import PNG texture…, then tune it.
4. Paint layers 1–3 by hand with the Texture tool in the Landscape workspace.

Each stylized look sets all four layers (base, rock on slopes, ground patches, riverbanks), the grass look, and a Trees foliage layer with matching tree designs. Hold Shift when you click to skip the forest.

Look	Contents
Meadow	Green grass, grey mossy rock on slopes, dirt patches, sandy riverbanks; oaks and birches
Forest	Mossy forest floor with roots, dark rock, earthy banks; oaks, pines and birches
Autumn	Golden grass, warm rock, leafy dirt; autumn trees and birches
Desert	Rippled sand, sandstone cliffs, rocky ground; a few palms and dead trees
Snow	Snowfields, pale rock, stony patches; pines, no grass
Alpine	Mountain grass, blue-grey rock faces, stony ground; pines and birches
Flat	Plain painted colours, no textures

Layer setting	Field	Range	Default
Metres per repeat	tiling	0.5–50 m in the panel	6
Roughness (low = wet)	roughness	0–1	0.95
Relief strength	normal_strength	0–2	1
Height map	height_texture_id	A texture, or none	None
Height blend	height_blend	0 (plain fade) – 1 (sharp)	0.6
Large-scale variation	variation	0–1	0
Patches over flat ground	patches	0–1	0
Riverbanks and shores	banks	0–1	0
Cover steep ground → Steeper than	slope	0 (flat) – 1 (vertical), or off	Off

With a Height map (a greyscale map, white high, tiled like the texture), the layer blends by height instead of a plain fade: stones poke through first and grass fills the cracks last. Height blend sets how crisp that edge is. landscape.texture_layer imports a library texture’s height map with its colour and normal maps.

Normal maps use the OpenGL convention. Add my texture folder… and Add my texture PNG… add your own maps to the texture library; name them *_color, *_normal, *_roughness, *_ao or *_height.

Terrain shapes

The Shapes tab of the World & terrain window holds non-destructive features applied in order on top of the base surface:

Shape	Effect
Flatten	Levels a disc to an absolute height, with a blend distance
Hill	Adds a hill, or digs a hollow with a negative height
Path	A polyline road that paints layer 1–3 and can level the ground
Paint	Paints a disc with layer 1–3
Clear	Keeps foliage out of a disc

The same tab can add a Mountain rim around the valley: slopes that rise beyond a radius to bound the playable area.

Streaming and distance

The landscape loads in 32 m chunks around the camera. Chunks near the camera render at full detail with collision; chunks further out render at lower resolution without collision.

Open Project settings → General to control the range:

Setting	Range	Default	Description
View range (terrain chunks)	0–8	3	Chunks streamed in each direction. Players can lower it with their graphics quality
Distant land	On/off	On	Draws the land beyond the streamed chunks, without foliage or collision
View distance	300–12,000 m	3,000 m	How far the distant land reaches. The camera sees this far
Detail	32–320	160	Cells across each ring of the distant land; rings double their spacing outward. More keeps finer ridges and gullies far away
Cast shadows	On/off	Off	Distant hills cast shadows, at a shadow-map cost
Fog clears to the horizon	On/off	On	Pushes clear-weather fog out to the horizon. Weather fog still closes in

The graphics quality setting caps the view range at 5 chunks on Low and 7 on Medium.

Example: a level building plot on a hilltop

You’ll raise a hill, cut a flat plot into its top and keep foliage off the plot, starting from a new project (File → New project…). Shapes stay editable, so you can move the whole thing later.

1. Open Window → World & terrain and select the Shapes tab.
2. Click + Hill. Open 1 · Hill and set Centre X to 30, Z to 0, Radius m to 40 and Height m to 12.
3. Click + Flatten. Open 2 · Flatten and set Centre X 30, Z 0, Radius m 8, Blend m 6 and Height m 16. Height m is an absolute height, not an offset; 16 m is about the top of this hill on the default meadow.
4. Click + Clear. Open 3 · Clear and set Centre X 30, Z 0 and Radius m 12 so no trees, bushes or grass grow on the plot.

Shapes apply in list order, so the Flatten must come after the Hill. Use Move up to reorder.

Do the same from the command line. landscape.layout replaces the whole shape list:

feather-cli --workspace ./hill-plot command project.create \
  --json '{"name":"Hill Plot"}' --save project.feather.json

feather-cli --workspace ./hill-plot --project project.feather.json command landscape.layout --json '{
  "shapes": [
    {"type": "Hill", "center": [30, 0], "radius": 40, "height": 12},
    {"type": "Flatten", "center": [30, 0], "radius": 8, "blend": 6, "height": 16},
    {"type": "Clear", "center": [30, 0], "radius": 12}
  ]
}' --save project.feather.json

Check it worked by reading ground heights across the plot and on the slope beyond it:

feather-cli --workspace ./hill-plot --project project.feather.json command landscape.inspect \
  --json '{"points":[[30,0],[36,0],[30,-7],[42,0]]}'

The first three heights are 16.0; the last, on the hillside outside the plot and its blend, is lower. In the viewport the hill has a flat, grass-free top.

Limits

• Brush edits are stored on a 2 m grid, up to 16,384 edited samples per landscape. The workspace shows the current count.
• Up to 4 texture layers, 32 foliage layers and 512 shapes. A path has at most 256 points.
• Texture layers are resampled to 1024 × 1024 when packed.
• The landscape cannot be edited during Play.

Automate it

Agents edit the landscape through the same commands the editor uses. This switches to a procedural mountain base, dresses the terrain in the alpine look, and raises a hill with a single-dab stroke:

feather-cli --connect .feather-session.json command landscape.configure \
  --json '{"generator":{"preset":"mountains","seed":7,"erosion":0.9}}'

feather-cli --connect .feather-session.json command landscape.style \
  --json '{"style":"alpine"}'

feather-cli --connect .feather-session.json command landscape.stroke \
  --json '{"brushes":[{"mode":"Raise","center":[20,0],"radius":12,"strength":2}]}'

A brush takes an optional filter with hardness, noise, slope and height (each range is [min, max]). On the mountains above, this paints texture layer 1 (rock, in the alpine look) onto steep ground only, with a ragged edge, then weathers the slope beside it. Erode changes nothing on flat ground, such as the generator’s flat start area around the origin:

feather-cli --connect .feather-session.json command landscape.stroke --json '{"brushes":[
  {"mode":"Layer","layer":1,"center":[300,200],"radius":24,"strength":1,"filter":{"slope":[0.4,1],"noise":0.6}},
  {"mode":"Erode","center":[300,210],"radius":30,"strength":1}
]}'

Command	Purpose
landscape.inspect	Reads base settings and edits; with points, returns ground heights at up to 1,024 positions
landscape.configure	Sets the base, relief, height offset, decorations and procedural generator, including erosion and ridge_softness
landscape.brush / landscape.stroke	Applies one brush dab, or up to 256 dabs as one undo step; each dab takes an optional filter
landscape.layout	Replaces shapes, the valley rim, texture layers and foliage layers
landscape.texture_layer	Puts a library texture (colour, normal and height maps) on one layer; optional height_blend
landscape.style	Applies a stylized look
landscape.reset	Clears all sculpt and paint edits
horizon.get / horizon.set	Reads and patches the distant land settings
project.settings	Sets stream_radius, among other project settings

See Agents & automation for connecting a live session, and Caves and cutters for carving into the ground.