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Core Concepts

Hesiod builds terrain by connecting nodes into a graph. Before diving into the node reference or the user manual, it helps to know a handful of ideas that everything else is built on. Each page below is short and links down to the deeper documentation when you want detail.

The Hesiod interface: a node graph on the left produces the rendered terrain on the right.

The node graph on the left is where you work; the terrain on the right is what it produces. Everything in these pages is about what flows through that graph.

The vocabulary

  • Heightmaps & virtual arrays — the data every node reads and writes: a grid of elevation values.
  • Masks & selectors — how you restrict an operation to part of the terrain (steep slopes, low ground, river beds…).
  • Broadcast & Receive — how terrain moves between separate graphs without a wire.
  • Tiling & overlap — how Hesiod computes large maps in pieces, and why the pieces line up.
  • Glossary — quick definitions for every term above.

Two ways to use Hesiod

The documentation's main path is a single-terrain workflow: build one graph, noise → erosion → colorize → export. The advanced track is worldbuilding — stitching several graphs into one large world (see Building a "patch of graphs"). The concepts here underpin both.