Biomes

Voxel Weaver's Biome System allows you to split your world into biomes with different terrain generation, materials, and foliage.

Adding Biomes

You can add biomes in the "Biomes" section of the Voxel Weaver app. The biome will then be added to the list on the left, where you can set the name and other properties of the biome.

In addition to the biome's name, you will see the biome's index in parantheses in the biome list. This index is important for customizing the terrain's material in Unreal.

Biome Distribution

You can customize how biomes are distributed in your world by adjusting the global biome size and biome blending and the frequency and depth range for each biome.

The biome size determines the size of the biomes. This setting affects all biomes, and effectively scales the biome distribution in the world. The biome blending parameter determines how much the boundary between biomes is smoothed out. You can also set each biome's frequency individually, which controls how often it appears relative to other biomes.

Voxel Weaver supports limiting biomes to a specific depth range, allowing for underground cave biomes, floating islands high in the world, and much more. To limit a biome to a specific depth range, you can adjust the depth range of each individual biome.

To preview how the biomes will be distributed, you can switch to the Biomes tab in the viewport on the right.

The biome preview shows a map where each biome is colored with its Debug Color, which can be set in the biome's properties.

Biome Parameters

To make every biome in your world feel unique, it is often desirable to change the way the terrain is generated at a per-biome level. For example, a mountains biome needs to have a higher maximum height for its noise-based heightmap than a desert. With Voxel Weaver, this can be accomplished via biome parameters.

A biome parameter is a number whose value can be set per biome and which interpolates smoothly between biomes. To create the different terrain generation for a mountain and desert biome as described above, you could create a max_height parameter, and set its value to be 100.0 for the mountains biome and 3.0 for the desert biome. Then, with a Biome Parameter Node, you would use the biome parameter to drive the maximum height of the heightmap, like so:

You can add a new biome parameter by pressing the + Parameter button in a biome's settings. Here, you can also set the values of biome parameters and delete them by right clicking and clicking Delete.

Biome parameters are calculated at each point in the world by interpolating between the per-biome values of the parameters with the biome weights.

Biome Weights

At every point in the world, each biome is given a weight between 0.0 and 1.0. Inside a biome, the biome's weight is one, and it decreases to zero as you transition to another biome. These biome weights are used for blending between textures, and can be used to modify a biome's terrain generation based via the Biome Weight Node. In most cases, however, we recommend using Biome Parameters for their greater flexibility.