Land for Three.js & React Three Fiber

Land objects are patches of terrain you place like any other object: Mountains, Hills, Dunes and Canyon. Each is a square of land that eases down to its base at the edges, so it can sit on a table as a diorama, float as an island, or fill the middle distance of a scene. The object's scale is its footprint, and you can add as many patches as you like. For the one endless ground under the whole scene, use the terrain environment element instead; land patches are built from the same landforms, cut down to an object.

What's in the family

• Mountains: ridged, eroded peaks with bare rock on the steep slopes and a snow line on top. Alpine backdrops, islands of peaks, outdoor and ski brands.
• Hills: soft, rolling downland under grass and meadow. Countryside, parks and gentle dioramas.
• Dunes: wind-driven ridges with a gentle windward side and a steep slip face. Desert spots, beaches and Mars.
• Canyon: flat-topped mesas in layered rock, cut by a branching network of channels. Red-rock deserts, westerns and Mars.

Settings

A patch has three settings of its own. Edge fade sets how far in from the border the land eases down to its base; at 0 it ends in a cliff, which is right for a cut-away block of earth. Seed picks which piece of the endless land the patch shows: same settings, different seed, different land. Quality sets the resolution to Low, Medium or High.

Below those are the landform controls it shares with the environment terrain:

• Shape: Elevation, Feature size, Erosion, Ridge sharpness and Domain warp.
• Canyon walls: Strata and Strata hardness for stepped layers, Plateau for flat tops, Incision depth and Incision width for the channels.
• Dunes: Wind bearing, Dune wavelength and Slip face.
• Where rock and snow go: Rock from slope, Bare rock at slope, Peak line and Peak blend.

Four colours, Low colour, Mid colour, Rock colour and Peak colour, paint the ground by height, while rock is placed by slope so cliffs read as cliffs at any altitude.

Using land

Put a product on a single patch for a diorama, ring a scene with mountains to frame it, or use several dunes with different seeds to build a desert that doesn't repeat. Add weather on top: snow over the mountains, a sandstorm over the dunes, a thunderstorm over the canyon. A sand material on a nearby mesh, or water around an island of peaks, ties the patch into the rest of the scene.