NixFX Procedural Planet Shader

Generate high-quality procedural planets in GameMaker with real-time controls, static baking, and PNG export.

NixFX Procedural Planet Shader is a production-ready planet rendering package for GameMaker. It is designed for both rapid iteration and shipping performance.

Out of the box, you can place a live planet object and get a stylized high-def procedural planet with lighting, atmosphere, water/land transitions, cloud layers, and city light accents. For optimization-focused use cases, you can switch to the static object, which bakes a randomized planet to a sprite and only draws that sprite at runtime.

The package also includes a full in-game control panel so artists and designers can tweak every important value in real time, including terrain shape, mountain range distribution, cloud behavior, and palette ramps. Once you land on a look, export your result to PNG for content pipelines, thumbnails, UI, or promotional shots.

All core resources are included with source and use a `__nixfx_` prefix for cleaner integration into existing projects.

NO SHADER KNOWLEDGE IS NECESSARY. The planet object can be dropped into any project.

What You Get

• High-definition procedural planet shader with atmosphere, water, terrain, clouds, specular highlights, and city lights.
• Mountain range generation controls (including threshold and softness) for clustered ranges instead of uniform mountain noise.
• Cloud self-shading plus optional cloud-cast shadows with tunable performance/quality.
• Real-time planet object for animated/live procedural rendering.
• Static planet object that bakes one randomized planet to a sprite and draws only the sprite.
• Full source access to shader, objects, and helper scripts for customization.
• In-game control panel with sliders for all major parameters.
• PNG export from the current planet view.
• Setup and usage documentation.

Included Package Contents

• Shader: `__nixfx_sh_planet_highdef`
• Live object: `__nixfx_planet_highdef`
• Static baked object: `__nixfx_planet_static`
• Control panel object: `__nixfx_planet_highdef_controls`
• Shared helper script: `__nixfx_planet_functions`
• Slider/UI script: `__nixfx_slider_scripts`
• Required white quad sprite: `__nix_fx_spr_white`
• Docs: `README.md`, `QUICK_SETUP.md`

Feature Highlights

• Procedural generation with controllable seed/randomization.
• Parameterized terrain, water level, atmosphere, cloud cover, and lighting.
• Custom color ramps for water, land, snow, clouds, and atmosphere.
• One-key randomize and debug parameter dump.
• One-key PNG export.
• Prefixed resources (`__nixfx_`) to reduce naming conflicts when importing into existing projects.

Performance Options

• Use the live object for dynamic/animated planets.
• Use the static object for baked planets with lower runtime cost.
• Disable cast cloud shadows when needed for lower-end targets.
• Tune resolution and scale for your target platform.

Requirements

• GameMaker (2024.14.1 or compatible modern runtime).
• No third-party extensions required.

Ideal Use Cases

• Space games and galactic maps.
• Strategy game planet views.
• Main menu backgrounds.
• Sci-fi UI panels and codex screens.
• Procedural world generation pipelines.