Harness the most sophisticated hydraulic erosion simulation available in CG. This flexible erosion helps convert any shape into a realistic terrain.
Erosion_2 features an advanced deposition system to mimic real life.
Procedural. Non-destructive. Artist-friendly.
Gaea 2.0 breathes fresh air into the art of terrain design.
Empowered by a brand new engine and a completely renovated workflow that separates terrain shaping and surface/lookdev design, Gaea reaffirms why it is the most loved terrain design software in the world.
"Gaea has become our top choice for landscape creation. Whether we are creating an epic vista or detailing close terrain, Gaea has helped us to build, texture, and dress our natural environments."
Paul Jenness
Model Supervisor for Environments
Wētā FX
Simulations
Erosion_2
Thermal Erosion
Thermal Erosion occurs as heat causes particles to expand and contract, which loosens and moves them over time. This action over thousands of years smooths out and erodes the landscape.
Gaea's Thermal Erosion creates beautiful talus and gives you deep control over the entire process.
Gaea's Thermal Erosion creates beautiful talus and gives you deep control over the entire process.
Snow
Create complex snowfall scenarios with detailed control over every aspect - from sunlight's influence on melt to the amount of snow that adheres to the rock surface.
Water Systems
Create lakes, rivers, and even seas that follow physical rules, which not only produce a body of water, but also correspondingly affect the surrounding environment.
Rocks and Debris
Simulate mechanical erosion with thousands (even millions) of individual, physical rocks and other geological debris using our physics-engine powered Debris simulation.
You can keep them in the heightmap, or export a point-cloud for later use. You can even color each rock individually.
You can keep them in the heightmap, or export a point-cloud for later use. You can even color each rock individually.
Vegetation
Geology influences vegetation growth. In Gaea, you can craft complex ecosystems for your terrains and drive them with relevant data such as conflicting zones, snow, water, and more.
You can also set up biome-specific extras such as frozen lakes and drying rivers, and change growth patterns by directly linking them to biome drivers like snow melts and floodplains.
You can also set up biome-specific extras such as frozen lakes and drying rivers, and change growth patterns by directly linking them to biome drivers like snow melts and floodplains.
Gaea across VFX, Games, and beyond...
Courtesy of CBS Studios, Gnomon, Larian Studios, Lucasfilm Games, Microsoft, NASA, Nexodus/Netflix, Quixel/Epic Games, Remedy Games, Respawn Entertainment, ROTU Entertainment, SCAD, Scanline VFX, Sony PlayStation, Sony Santa Monica Studio, Ubisoft, Wētā FX.
Copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Images do not constitute an endorsement.
"I have been using Gaea since it first came out, in productions such as Star Trek: Picard, The Dark Crystal, Shadow and Bone, and many more at DNEG, Misc, Territory, and now Light VFX. It's a very important part of my workflow. Gaea is intuitive and fast with great Erosion nodes and a clean UI. And it's a lot of fun."
Robin Koniezcny
Head of Department, Environments
Light VFX
Construction
Primitives
Primitives changed how artists crafted terrains. Instead of massaging simple noises like Perlin into a terrain, Gaea's primitives provide geologically sound starting points for your terrains.
Gaea 2 uplevels primitives by providing even more powerful shapes that reduce production time.
Import Data
Import 2D data such as bitmaps and heightmaps or convert 3D models to heightfields1.
You can also bring in terrain bases developed elsewhere, such as a modeling application or a game engine's terrain sculpting tools. Regardless of how you plan your terrains, you can bring them into Gaea to make them realistic.
Transform and Merge
Create different parts of the landscape separately and merge them afterward. Use the Transform node to scale, rotate, and move the terrain elements.
Paint Landscapes
Add a Draw node to the beginning of your graph and you can paint landscapes using your predefined "recipe".
NASA
Exploring Uranus
Gaea was used to create close-up shots of Uranus and its literary moons to supplement limited data from Voyager 2's fly-by in 1986, the first and only spacecraft to visit this distant planet.
"For me, Gaea is essential! It's an amazing tool!
Being able to create a mock-up terrain and share that with a scientist before I import into UE has been very helpful."
Jenny McElligott
Environment Artist and Animator
Conceptual Image Lab
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Surfaces
Volume Preservation
Gaea's Surface tools separate the process of designing the overall terrain shape (or volume) and designing the superficial shapes on the surface.This allows you to modify the surface without altering the overall shape, volume, or silhouette of the terrain - which is crucial when you already have the asset in your scene yet need to modify it.
Transpose Surfaces
The Transpose node can take the surface shapes of one terrain and transpose them onto another, while preserving the volume of the target terrain.You can create an terrain surface that you like, regardless of the shape it is built upon. Then create or bring in a terrain shape you like - an Unreal Engine drawn terrain, a ZBrush sculpted landscape, or even a full 3D model1. Then simply Tranpose the surface.
Modifiers
Modifiers let you add common adjustments to nodes without littering your graph with extra nodes. You can also add quick masking with Height or Slope. These masks are post-processed so they're always instant.Paintable Effects
By attaching a Draw node to the Mask node, you can paint any effect.Want to see the new Surface nodes in action?
Drag to rotate. Mouse-wheel to zoom.
Nexodus / Netflix
Avatar
The Last Airbender
Concept & Environment Artist Matt Conway used Gaea to create the terrains for the burnt forest sequences in the series. These terrains were then brought into Unreal Engine to create 360 environments.
"Gaea provides the opportunity to create any terrain I can imagine to serve whatever shot or sequence I'm working on. It's procedural, yet very intuitive - and most importantly - so much fun to use!"
Matt Conway
Concept Artist | Matte Painter | Environment Artist @ Nexodus
Colorization
Erosion-driven
ColorErosion deploys Gaea's advanced deposition detection system to flow colors in the same way minerals move with erosion in nature.You can use SatMaps or even full 2D bitmaps!
Layer Mixer
To combat "Combine fatigue", we created the Mixer node, a layer-based approach to blending multiple color maps. You can use built-in Height and Slope masks or connect a custom mask.Data-driven
Gaea specializes in extracting data from various aspects of a terrain and using that data to further drive terrain modifications and colorization. It can be as simple as height and slope, or as complex as flow maps, rock occlusion, soil distribution, and more.Masking
Simulation and other complex nodes also provide secondary output such as layer masks, debris masks, velocity, water direction, and more. These can be used to drive colorization or other effects.
Respawn Entertainment
Star Wars: Jedi
Respawn Entertainment brought back visceral lightsaber combat in an exciting new chapter to the Star Wars saga with the Jedi game series.
Both Star Wars Jedi: Survivor™ and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order™ garnered rave reviews. We are proud that Gaea was part of their workflow.
Read more"I love Gaea. It is such a fun program to work with as an artist."
Marcos Shih
Lead Skybox Artist
Respawn Entertainment
"Gaea is my go-to when it comes to creating anything with erosion."
Eric Yi Lin
Senior Skybox Artist
Respawn Entertainment
Build and Export
256K sized builds
That's 65-billion polygons. Build worlds so large you can get a density of 1 centimeter per pixel.Gaea leverages GPU processing, fast asynchronous SSD read/write, and cutting-edge processing to create huge worlds within finite resources.
Hybrid Builds
Gaea 2 uses intelligent subdivision-based building to stream your terrain to both CPU and GPU, and build the world in portions based on memory limitations instead of pixel size. This results in faster builds with less edge-blending required by tiled builds.Terrain Regions
Regions can block out specific locations you may want to preserve during a tiled build. You can also work on individual regions in the Gaea interface by zooming in.You can build the entire world (even as tiles) at one resolution, and specific regions at a higher resolution. Regions retain the exact original structure of the terrain in both tiled and region builds.
God Mode
Coming soon in Gaea 2.2 (a free upgrade!) - God Mode delivers the ability to build large worlds where layout and core construction can be separated from look dev and finishing.It allows large teams to work on different portions of the terrain simultaneously.
Mesh Optimization
If you prefer meshes, you can export your terrains as OBJ, FBX1, or even point-clouds.Gaea's adaptive triangle system can create meshes, including automatic LODs, within fixed polygon budgets while retaining a clean, structured topology.
Universal Compatibility
Export data in all major formats including 32-bit OpenEXR, RAW/R32, TIFF, OBJ, FBX1, and many others.USD support coming soon1.
Ingest data such as TIFF/GeoTIFF, OpenEXR, PNG, RAW, R32, SVG, WEBP, DEM1, SRTM1, OBJ1, and many others.
Larian Studios
Baldur's Gate III
The critically acclaimed Baldur's Gate III by Larian Studios uses Gaea for creating vast, detailed terrains.
See more"Having used Gaea since 2019, it has been my go-to tool for anything landscape based. The sheer simplicity and speed of its tools, combined with how advanced it can be, makes this a solid package for both beginners and advanced users alike."
William Faucher
CG Spectrum Real-time Mentor
Non-Destructive Workflow
Intuitive Graph
We rebuilt the Graph to be more responsive, elegant, and easier to use. The new Graph 2.0 is more than just a visual overhaul. It's rethinking how you interact with your terrain.
As tools get more complex, we aim to give you a minimal, intuitive workspace that lets you focus on your terrain.
Non-Destructive
You can change various aspects of the terrain - from the basic starting shape to the most minute lookdev detail - and the rest of the terrain will update accordingly.
By branching the Graph, you can create elaborate setups that are not possible in layers or hand-sculpted terrains. With Gaea’s new graph routing tools, utility nodes, and variables, you can craft wonderfully complex terrains.
Procedural
Gaea is fully procedural, based on pure mathematics. It does not use AI.
Gaea 2 has some of the most advanced natural geology shapes ever seen in CG, which are powered by algorithms developed over more than 10 years of R&D.
Our tools are designed to be artist-friendly and predictable. They create intricate, realistic shapes that would be extremely difficult to create by hand.
Artist-Friendly
Graphs and procedural tools can seem daunting. Gaea’s UI and features are intuitive and easy to use, helping you stay focused on the art, not the tooling.
We pride ourselves on making every third feature a convenience feature.
Sony Santa Monica
God of War: Ragnarok
Gaea was the software of choice to make terrain assets for the Alfheim desert including the Barrens, the Forbidden Sands, and the Canyons.
See more"I've been making 3D terrains since the 90's. In my experience, Gaea represents the current next-gen tool that is ahead of its time."
Alex Alvarez
Founder/President - Gnomon
Bridges
Gaea2Unreal
The Gaea2Unreal plugin for Unreal Engine 5.3 and higher lets you import terrains in a single click with precise settings and even color/weight maps.
If you make a change to your terrain in Gaea, the plugin will re-import it while preserving your options.
In the near future, we will add texture layer management, micro-adjustments, and more for Professional and Enterprise editions of Gaea.
Gaea2Houdini
The Gaea2Houdini plugin enables you to access select Gaea simulations and tools natively inside Houdini as standard Houdini nodes. You can use our cutting-edge Erosion algorithms and Surface nodes directly in your Houdini project.
In Gaea 2.1 we will add the new analog of the classic Gaea TOR Processor for advanced uses.
Gaea2Unreal will be available soon for all Professional and Enterprise users.
Other applications
Support for other applications such as 3dsmax, Blender, Cinema4D, Unity, and others are planned.Custom Bridges
Gaea's Command-Line Builder allows you to build your own Bridge to other applications, or even as part of your custom VFX or game development pipeline.Subscribe to our blog to stay updated.
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Gaea in Education
"Gaea is a great application to create excellent results relatively quickly and it's fun to play around with. It definitely helps students to very quickly elevate their Unreal builds."
Joerg Schodl
Professor of Cinematography and Virtual Production
School of Film and Acting
SCAD/Savannah College of Art and Design (edited)
Terrain design is an integral part of CG studies across visual effects, games, and virtual production.
Leading universities and academies are incorporating Gaea into their curricula - CG Spectrum, Gnomon, SAE Institute, SCAD/Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Quebec, Westerdals Film and Media Oslo, and many more.
The first educational presentation of Gaea was at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Student and Teacher Discount
We offer discounted licensing to academic institutions and to individual teachers and students.
"9 out of 10. Gaea has gone from strength to strength."
3D World Magazine
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