Working with SatMaps

Our library of over 1400 color maps, derived from real satellite data, helps you colorize your terrains quickly without sacrificing realism.

This tech was originally pioneered by QuadSpinner for GeoGlyph in 2014, Gaea's latest iteration provides an extensive library covering all natural locations, giving you a vast playground for colorizing your terrains.

This TextureMap node is attached to a SatMap node. The SatMap is adapted to the mask as described in Crafting Masks.

Editing SatMaps

There a few ways to quickly tweak the SatMaps to better fit your needs.

Map Bias

By moving the Bias slider, you can have the SatMap apply more towards the left (negative values) or right (positive values) of the selected Color Map.

Map Clipping

You can use the Clip slider to tell SatMaps to only use the selected segment of the entire color map.

Here, we clip out most of the left half of the color map, and you can see how that changes the influence of the color map on the terrain.

Roughness

The Roughness setting scatters the pixels of the color map to add the desired level of chaos and distortion.

HSL

The final tweaks come from Hue/Saturation/Luminosity editing.

SatMaps are one of the crucial aspects of colorizing your terrains. You can elevate your SatMaps by combining them with a Mixer as explained in Layering Textures.

And finally, add ColorErosion to add a new level of realism to your texture maps.