Atmospheres & Oceans¶
Add oceans, clouds, and a custom atmosphere to your planets in-scene.
Oceans¶
Oceans are part of the planet's procedural output — coastlines, depth, and water surface are generated with the rest of the world, so they stay consistent with the terrain you design in the Terrain Graph.
Add a Planetary Ocean component and point it at the planet. The sea is one camera-centred mesh on the sea sphere, so there are no tile seams from the beach to orbit.
- Waves: three GPU FFT cascades (1,024 m, 193 m and 29 m) of a wind sea plus swell, with whitecaps where crests fold. Waves are deterministic (seed plus server time), and buoyancy reads the same sea on the CPU to within 1 cm of what is drawn, so boats float on the waves you see.
- Coasts: the sea floor comes from a bathymetry map with the exact distance to the shore. Shallow water fades from wet sand to turquoise, and waves break along the real coastline.
- Sky: with the Metaplanets atmosphere, the water reflects and is lit by the same sky, so sunsets and the night side match.
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sea Level Meters | 0 | Height of the sea. Terrain graphs treat 0 m as sea level. |
| Sea State → Wind Speed | 9 m/s | Calm seas at 3–5, storms at 15+. |
| Sea State → Fetch Km | 300 | Distance the wind has blown over open water; longer = bigger waves. |
| Sea State → Swell Height / Period | 0.6 m / 11 s | Long waves from distant storms. |
| Sea State → Choppiness | 0.75 | Sharper crests. |
| Sea State → Whitecaps | 1 | Amount of foam on breaking crests. |
| Clipmap Cells, Finest Cell Meters | 128, 0.25 | Mesh resolution near the camera. |
Rivers, lakes and wetlands come from the terrain graph's Water Output and render at their own height with calmer water and a current. See Realistic planets and Shading & Lighting.
Atmosphere¶
A custom atmosphere system wraps the planet. Configure its look to match the world's style — from clean sci-fi skies to thick, moody gas-giant haze.
Place a Metaplanets Atmosphere Actor at the planet's center. It contributes to the sky composite and aerial perspective, and can hold multiple per-altitude-band cloud-layer components:
Tune the Sun (illuminance, angular radius, color) in the Details panel to set the sky's character. Here's a finished planet — terrain, foliage, and atmosphere combined:
For the full atmosphere system — volumetric clouds, multiple atmospheres per scene, and the standalone Metaplanets Creator: Atmosphere plugin — see Creator: Atmosphere.
Clouds¶
Clouds are volumetric layers on the atmosphere actor: cumulus, stratocumulus, cumulonimbus storms, nimbostratus rain decks and cirrus, stacked in altitude bands. Design a whole sky as a node graph with the Atmosphere Graph, and see Clouds: shapes & layers for every setting and recipes.