Creating large outdoor environments in Unreal Engine often involves balancing scale, visual fidelity, and iteration speed. Manually placing foliage, blending landscape materials, and setting up roads, props, and ecosystem variation can quickly become time-consuming, especially when aiming for realistic results.
Procedural World Generator, developed by ScansLibrary, approaches this through a layer-based PCG system built on Unreal Engine 5’s Procedural Content Generation framework. The package combines scanned assets, ecosystem presets, landscape materials, and spline systems into a unified environment generation setup.
The result is a toolkit designed to generate forests, tropical islands, arid biomes, and more, directly inside UE5 using procedural volumes and Landscape Layers.
Procedural World Generator v1.3 has been released. You can download it from @fab .#scanslibrary #unrealengine #ue5 #gamedev #photogrammetry pic.twitter.com/NvaMlcwwUO
— Gökhan Karadayı (@_gkaradayi) February 12, 2026
Core System: Layer-Based PCG Workflow
Procedural World Generator is structured around Unreal’s Landscape Layer system and PCG framework. Instead of scattering assets manually, ecosystems are driven through procedural volumes and landscape masks.
Key system components include:
- Full procedural environment generation
- Layer-based PCG workflow
- 7 Landscape Layers
- Procedural slope rocks
- Dynamic moss and dirt material
- Optimized, Nanite-ready meshes
- Up to 8K textures
World Partition is recommended for efficient PCG usage, particularly in larger maps.
The generator is volume-driven. You place and align a PCG Ecosystem Generator volume in your level, configure its procedural settings, and allow the system to populate the landscape according to ecosystem rules.
Five Ecosystems with Scanned Assets
The package includes five primary ecosystems, more than 250 scanned plants, surfaces, and 3D assets were used to build the environment library:
Pine Forest
Pine Forest
- 7 Pine Trees
- 11 Bushes
- 9 Ferns
- 12 Rocks
- 29 Scatter assets
- 8 Stumps & Logs
Aspen Forest
- 9 Aspen Trees
- 8 Bushes
- 4 Rocks
- 15 Scatter assets
Fir Forest
- 10 Fir Trees
- 10 Ferns
- 14 Rocks
- 4 Scatter assets
Tropical Island
- 223 unique tropical plant meshes
- New tessellated landscape material
- Island map included
- Voxelized Nanite foliage (UE 5.7 only)
Arid Landscape (Latest v1.3)
- 217 unique arid plants, rocks, and cliffs
- New tessellated landscape material
- Arid landscape map included
- Voxelized Nanite foliage (UE 5.7 only)
Seasonal variations (Fall and Spring) are included, along with a snow layer for additional environmental variation.
Landscape Patches and Templates
The package includes:
- 12 scanned mountain landscape patches
- 5 ready-to-design landscape templates
These patches allow users to build terrain using scanned elevation data, then layer ecosystems procedurally on top.
Road, Rail, and Infrastructure Systems
Beyond foliage, Procedural World Generator includes infrastructure tools:
- Road Network System
- Road tunnels
- Railways and railway parts (43 assets)
- Spline blueprints for fences, barriers, rope bridges
- Cable system (poles and houses)
- Traffic signs and barriers
These systems integrate with spline-based placement workflows in Unreal, allowing structured environment construction alongside procedural vegetation.
Nanite and Tessellation Support
The package supports Nanite meshes and includes tessellated landscape materials for detailed terrain surfaces. Some voxelized Nanite foliage features are available specifically for Unreal Engine 5.7. All assets are based on scanned PBR-calibrated materials.
Update Timeline
v1.1
- Spring season
- Road Network System
- Road tunnels
- PCG Remove Volumes
- Snow layer
v1.2
- Tropical Island ecosystem
- 223 tropical meshes
- New tessellated landscape material
- Island map
- Voxelized Nanite foliage
v1.3
- Arid ecosystem
- 217 arid meshes
- New tessellated landscape material
- Arid landscape map
- Voxelized Nanite foliage
The package continues to expand with additional ecosystems and materials.
Setup Requirements and Dependencies
Procedural World Generator relies on several Unreal Engine plugins and configuration steps. Required plugins are:
- Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG)
- PCG External Data Interop
- PCG Geometry Script Interop
- Cable Component
- Landscape Patch
- Water System
Config.ini files are provided and must be applied in new projects to ensure lighting and system behavior function correctly.
Important setup steps include:
- Enabling World Partition
- Assigning the required Landscape Material instance
- Aligning the PCG Generator volume to the map
- Avoiding relocation of the main folder to prevent update issues
Lighting settings are calibrated for scanned PBR assets and should match the recommended configuration for accurate results.
Where Procedural World Generator Fits Best
This toolkit is particularly relevant for:
- Unreal Engine 5 developers building large outdoor maps
- Teams leveraging PCG for scalable environments
- Projects targeting realistic scanned environments
- Developers needing integrated road and infrastructure systems
It assumes familiarity with UE5 systems such as Landscape Layers, PCG volumes, World Partition, and plugin management.
Similar & Useful Tools
- Procedural Terrain Generator v2: A procedural terrain creation plugin that builds terrains from basic shapes (plane, sphere, cube) and populates them with vegetation and actors using your own assets. It includes modifiers and rules to control placement exceptions, letting you avoid placing certain assets above/below specific heights.
Differences: While not as full-world focused as Procedural World Generator, PTG v2 specializes in terrain creation and asset population, making it great for terrain prototyping and landscapes
- Unreal Procedural Terrain (Free): This open-source plugin generates procedural terrain tiles in Unreal Engine (initially for UE4 but usable/upgradable for UE5). It creates heightmap-based terrain at runtime with noise algorithms, allowing you to build landscape meshes dynamically rather than manually sculpting each terrain.
Differences: Unlike Procedural World Generator (which is a more complete out-of-the-box world system), this project focuses on terrain mesh generation only (no foliage/biomes/actors). It’s a good foundation if you want terrain height generation and plan to build your own PCG systems around it.
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