Welcome to the Documentation for Procedural Planet Generation

Procedural Planet Generation is a Unity framework for creating procedural celestial bodies through shaders with editor tools for texture baking and scripts for in-editor and runtime procedural generation.

Built with Shader Graph, VFX Graph, and Render Graph, this framework creates beautiful and detailed, lightweight, non-landable planets optimized for viewing from space. This is NOT a terrain generation tool - it focuses on procedural surface textures and visual effects rather than geometric terrain or heightmaps. It's perfect for space strategy games, solar system maps, background environments, and skyboxes.

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Celestial Bodies

Moons

Rocky planets with procedurally generated surface color and heightmap detail. Two crater layers and a masked ridge network modify color contrast and procedural normals for visual height variance.

Customizable Features

Feature	Options
Surface Color	Procedural pattern scale, color gradient, saturation
Heightmap & Contrast	Height-based color contrast strength
Craters	Density, size and depth ranges
Ridges	Scale, density, width, mask noise scale, gain determines if crevices or ridges
Normal Map Generation	Global strength, granular multiplier for surface, ridge, craters

Earth-likes

Procedurally generated terrestrial planets with landmasses, coastlines, and ice caps formed through layered noise fields. Heightmap-driven surface normals simulate relief. The heightmap also samples color gradients to create natural-looking terrain patterns. Oceans feature shallow and deep water regions with depth-based coloration.

Procedural animated clouds.

Toggleable city lights on dark side of planet.

Fresnel edge effect and post-processing glow for atmospheric effects.

Feature	Options
Continents	Continent scale and overall land–ocean coverage ratio
Ice Caps	Maximum ice cap extent based on elevation and ice edge falloff shaping
Surface Heightmap	Mountain scale, surface roughness, and coastline definition sharpness
Surface Color	Noise pattern scale, land color gradient, saturation, ocean deep/shallow coloration, height-based color contrast
Oceans	Depth thresholds for shallow/deep regions and water surface smoothness (specular)
Normals	Global normal strength and per-layer contributions for mountains, ridges, and base noise
Atmospheric Effects	Fresnel edge tint and atmospheric glow color, size, and falloff
Clouds	Size, density, normals, color, wave-like animation frequency and amplitude
City lights	Density for coastal vs inner cities, color, light power

Gas Giants and Asteroid Rings

Procedurally generated gas giants feature dynamic, swirling cloud bands with animated storms and flowing patterns. Atmospheric effects with Fresnel edge glow and post-processing glow.

Feature	Options
Color	Color gradient applied to cloud bands, saturation
Cloud Bands Pattern	Scale (number of bands), vertical band flow shape and scaling
Storms	Density, size, twistiness, ovality, movement speed, appearance rate
Animation	Whorl movement speed and overall pattern flow rate
Atmospheric Effects	Fresnel edge tint and atmospheric glow color, size, and falloff

Asteroid rings are procedurally generated spherically banded discs that rotate around a planet. Density and transparency vary across the bands, creating natural gaps and flowing patterns. Lighting overrides allow you to control visibility at acute viewing angles.

Feature	Options
Ring Shape	Inner and outer radius, edge fade strength, banding pattern defined by noise texture
Color	Gradient sampled along the ring pattern, overall saturation
Ring Transparency	Alpha threshold controlling which regions of the ring are transparent
Animation / Flow	Rotation speed of the ring pattern
Lighting Overrides	Two-sided lighting for transparency, minimum brightness level to avoid overly dark areas, light falloff sharpness to smooth shading at glancing angles

Stars

Stars are always lit with a flowing, molten surface with HDR color variation and corona glow and VFX.

Feature	Options
Molten Pattern	Domain warp scale and intensity, pattern scale, and flow speed driving the animated molten surface
Color Sampling	Primary color gradient plus Q/R domain-warp modulation channels blended with HDR colors for complex multi-band color variation
Corona Effects	Fresnel edge glow (color and power), unlit spherical glow density and falloff, VFX particle color, spawn rate (corona thickness), particle size, and turbulence intensity