Meet Gaea by QuadSpinner!

The new dawn of landscape design is here!

After years of development, QuadSpinner has finally officially released Gaea, a promising new stand-alone landscape modeling tool that combines procedural heightmap techniques with artist-driven erosion, akin to sculpture using natural elements. If you are looking for the most feature-rich landscape design software available today, then let's take a closer look at this incredibly flexible application.

Gaea's advanced tools provide an incredible advantage in creating landscapes with unprecedented realism. An amazing package of features allows you to expose the simulated terrain to erosion, snowfall, thermal erosion and all kinds of natural phenomena with minimal effort.

You have absolute access to various elements of erosion and can adjust the level of their interaction with each other. Procedurally, erosion is so precise that it makes it possible to get predictably good results regardless of resolution. Based on the same technology, the simulation of snow behavior manifests itself in the same way as in real life, giving the opportunity to obtain an unrivaled level of realism. And if you need to create realistic debris and runoff caused by melting glaciers, then you will definitely like the Thermal Erosion tool, it can simulate this and even more, for example, add some surface debris to the slopes. Also, thanks to Gaea, you can easily generate natural phenomena that form the folding of the landscape, coastal shelves and other meticulously recreated unique features that we meet in the real world.

One of the most important elements of the workflow is the ability to use so-called primitives, each of which is ready for erosion and complete transformation for the most harmonious integration into any project. Procedural landscapes allow you to change the shape at random while maintaining the view you create. Also available to you is the Mutate function that allows you to randomize entire landscapes.

The Gaea software gives you the space to draw islands, mountains and even entire continents from scratch, without any shape or size constraints whatsoever. Gaea strives to make your experience with this app as comfortable and simple as possible, so even while sculpting by hand, it never ceases to be procedural.

The color creation processes are based on an advanced method of data maps and color nodes. The sophisticated textures created in Gaea are able to compete in realism with real images made by satellite. You are also provided with a Synth node for creating textures based on any image with the possibility of further post-processing. The Vegetation node opens up a wide range of possibilities for you to make your landscape even more realistic, namely the use of foliage, which the Gaea team painstakingly created from scans of real forests. Of course, despite this, you still have the opportunity to create your own forest on your own. Also, in Gaea, it is possible to build a biome map of the entire landscape as a whole, using the available data, such as precipitation, height, and more. The workflow at Gaea offers flexibility in use depending on the task or your mood, but one way or another you will enjoy it thanks to the highest level of optimization of the environment, which will result in significant time savings.

The presented "Graph" mode reveals all the charm and simplicity of procedural design. You can easily and quickly build any terrain just by combining the existing elements. If at some point it becomes necessary to change the shape of the landscape, just change the beginning of the graph, and the whole scene will automatically adapt to the new changes you have made. Also, at your disposal is the Layers mode familiar to all artists, which, moreover, can be converted into a graph if necessary, and Erosion Studio provides the ability to simulate erosion.

You are armed with a number of special features designed to make interacting with the Gaea software intuitive and able to simplify your tasks.

Automatic layout

Allows you to automatically organize even amazingly complex graphics. Press F4 on the graph and enjoy the result.

MultiMix

Once you select the required number of nodes, you can instantly create a sequence for further combining, for this you just need to use the MultiMix key.

Interject node

Move the knot aside and it will slide between the other two. By dragging this node to another, you will make it the parent of this node. In the case when another sibling node already exists, the organization of a new node does not require any action from you and will happen automatically.

Drop Create

Gaea is committed to making your life easier, which is why it comes with such cool automation features, one of which is automatic organization. You can see this by simply dragging one node onto another and voila - it's done!

Quick create

You can simply drag the connection to a completely empty space and use the quick creation menu created for your convenience.

Graph styles

For those who value the aesthetics of the software as much as the functional, the Gaea team gives you the opportunity to choose styles for nodes and also styles for routing connections, so that you feel comfortable and cozy in the space where you create such incredible projects!

Portals

To make complex graphs easy to use, you are provided with Portals are the cutting-edge development of the QuadSpinner team. They make using charts incredibly easy and convenient so that you have time to get creative, rather than parsing endless chaotically heaped charts.

The QuadSpinner team considers user feedback very important and strives to release updates as soon as possible, introducing new features into them based on the comments and desires of their audience.

Gaea supports Windows 7 and higher operating systems and is available in all license options: Community, Indie, Professional and Enterprise.

Gaea perpetual licenses are $ 99 for Indie with 4K rendering limit, $ 199 for Professional license without rendering limit, and $ 299 for Enterprise license without rendering limit, access to scripts, automation, distributed builds, etc. Community edition with 1024 x 1024 rendering resolution and limited tools by Erosion Studio is completely free to download.