Rendering the satellite image

Colour in Dayside is worked out from the ground itself. A render reads the section's heightmap and its Köppen climate map, works out where water flows, where snow survives the summer and what each patch of ground is made of, then paints the result at the section's full size. You start the render by hand, watch it sharpen in three steps, and adjust.

Starting a render#

Put the top bar in Render mode. Acquire is the primary button, both at the right of the top bar and pinned to the bottom of the Controls panel. Its label always states the state: Acquire on a section with no frame, Queued while it waits, Acquiring N% while it runs, and Re-render once the frame has gone stale or a pass failed.

A render never starts by itself. The one exception is terrain synthesis: when Generate finishes, the editor reloads the section and starts a colour render for you, because the old frame shows terrain that no longer exists.

Queue, priority and cancel#

One render runs per world at a time. While a render is queued the canvas shows QUEUED, POSITION n · <PRIORITY> PRIORITY and offers Prioritise and Cancel. While it runs you get ACQUIRING · N% with a PASS and RESOLUTION n px readout.

Cancelling keeps whatever the render had already finished. The canvas holds the last frame it showed and drops back to PREVIEW STALE.

It is CPU work#

The colour render runs on the processor, so it works on any machine that runs Dayside.

Two optional colour inputs run a simulation on the graphics card and keep the result, so repeated renders reuse it: Simulate water in the Sea group, and Wind streaks in the globe's world brush. Both are off by default. The terrain operations, Generate in the section editor and Enhance world terrain on the globe, are the other graphics-card work in Dayside.

On a very large section, turning Relief shading down to 0 % saves noticeable time and memory (see Relief and relief shading).

What the render computes, in order#

1. Heights. The heightmap is read in metres, with sea level at 0 m: land above, ocean below.
2. Drainage. Dayside works out where rain runs off and collects, across the whole section at full detail. A strip of the surrounding world is included, so rivers flowing in from outside the section are accounted for.
3. Water and land. Low ground below sea level that has no connection to the open ocean is treated as dry land, the way Death Valley sits below sea level without being sea. Its floor takes the temperature of sea-level ground.
4. Temperature. Temperature falls away from the equator, swings more far from the sea, and drops with altitude at 6.5 °C per km. This needs the section's position on the planet; a section with no recorded location gets one even temperature everywhere and no seasons.
5. Wetness. Slope, hollows and drainage combine into a wetness map. Where the land drains, the routed rainfall decides how wet the ground is; inside closed hollows the terrain shape decides.
6. Climate classes. The Köppen map is read class by class and grouped into seven broad biomes: tropical, arid, mediterranean, temperate, boreal, tundra and ice. Each brings a typical rainfall, which the snow model uses.
7. Blending. Neighbouring climates blend across Transition width. Inside a blend, wetter ground leans to the wetter climate, so a river crossing into a dry zone carries green downstream.
8. Snow. Snow forms where summers are too cool to melt the winter's fall, so it reaches lower in wet climates than in dry ones. Steep slopes shed it, glaciers push down valleys, and ground too cold for trees but free of snow shows as bare rock and scree.
9. Lakes. Lakes you placed in Draw mode with the Lake tool, drawn by hand or picked from Suggest lakes, are always drawn. Other hollows stay dry ground.
10. Overlays. Valleys darken a little, and ocean coasts get a beach. Inland lakes get no beach ring, because a ring around a lake reads as a halo.
11. Final image. Land, sea, relief shading, lake surfaces and river channels are painted at the section's full size.

Two grids, one image#

The broad colour (climate, wetness, snow, materials) is worked out at the resolution set by Texture detail, because it is shaped by features kilometres across. The coastline, relief shading, sea and river channels are drawn at the section's full size, so they stay pixel-sharp.

Every distance in the colour controls is in kilometres or metres on the ground, so a setting looks the same at any resolution. Texture detail trades speed against quality and does not change river width or any other look.

When the render degrades#

A render that cannot do every step still finishes, and says what it skipped in a warning on the finished frame:

• No ground scale recorded for the section: the frame comes out as a plain elevation colour ramp, with no climate colours, sea, snow, rivers or lakes.
• Drainage could not be worked out: rivers and lakes are left out, and ground wetness comes from terrain shape alone.
• No Köppen climate map: climates are guessed from temperature alone. That guess cannot place deserts or mediterranean climates, and it reads any ground warm enough for the tropics as tropical rainforest, which also makes snow sit low and basins fill.

Troubleshooting covers the fix for each.

The progressive preview#

Every render runs three times, at 512, 1024 and 2048 px on the long edge. Each pass shows its frame the moment it completes, so the canvas sharpens in three steps instead of sitting dark. The first pass is quick and arrives early in the progress bar; the last one takes most of the time.

The steps stop at the section's own size, so a section under 2048 px reaches full size on its last step.

The small passes are a fair preview of the final image. The river network you see at 512 px is the one the final render draws, relief contrast moves toward the final look, and more resolution reveals more small tributaries without widening the rivers already drawn.

Where the preview stops#

The interactive preview stops at 2048 px. The Output select in the top bar (Native, 2K, 4K, 8K, 16K, 32K) sets the export resolution. It does not change the preview, and changing it does not make the frame stale.

Full-resolution colour comes from an export, which runs its own render at the output size.

The adjust loop#

Render, look, adjust, re-render. Dayside has no after-the-fact grade that re-tints a finished frame. The colour controls that do exist, such as the Palette colour saturation and contrast dials and the hue and chroma wheels of the Alien world band, change a Look's material colours inside the render. Every colour change therefore means another render.

What marks the preview stale#

Every slider, toggle, colour swatch and palette choice in the render groups marks the current frame stale as soon as you release it. The canvas shows PREVIEW STALE · N CHANGED, where N counts the distinct settings you have moved since the last render, and Acquire becomes Re-render.

In Render mode the panel groups run in this order: Colour, Land coverage, Biome blending, Water colour, Sea, Sea ice (only on a world that offers sea ice), Snow & ice, Global look. Sea and Snow & ice each carry a Reset button in the group header that returns that group to its defaults, marking stale only the values that actually moved.

Palette preferences behave slightly differently: they save with the world as you reorder them, and the save is what marks the frame stale.

Settings persist with the project#

A section's colour settings save with the project a moment after you stop changing them, and come back when you open the section again. The save covers the render settings, the sea settings, the Rivers toggle and Relief.

The paper-map controls are the exception. They are kept on this computer for each world and section, so they survive reopening the editor here but do not travel with the project folder.

What costs nothing#

• Compare, in the top bar and in the panel footer. It wipes the previous frame against the current one, tagged A · PREVIOUS and B · CURRENT. Drag the divider.
• Panning, zooming (0.6× to 3.0×) and Fit.
• The Output select.
• The guide overlay and its opacity.
• Switching to Draw mode and back.

What costs more than a re-render#

• Generate rebuilds the heightmap on the graphics card, then starts a colour render of its own.
• Export re-renders every requested layer at the export resolution. A satellite layer costs roughly eight times as much as a plain mask.

The Colour group#

The Colour group opens the panel and is open by default. It decides what kind of image the render makes before any other group refines it.

Map style#

Map style chooses Satellite, Parchment or Paper atlas. Satellite is the render this page describes. The two paper styles print contours, shaded relief and cartography onto textured paper, and swap the rest of the panel for their own ink controls. See Maps and projections for the paper controls.

Look#

Look picks how materials are coloured, and it applies to every section of the world.

Under the select the panel says Fast or Slower · builds ground cover first. The editor previews a reference look at the Preview colour setting in the top bar, and exports render it at full resolution. On the globe, a colour pass with Earth reference (map-driven) takes roughly 10 to 15 times longer than with Climate palettes, because it works out ground cover for every tile.

Reference sources, under a reference look, lists the reviewed samples behind each material and the gaps where none is assigned.

Several controls only work through a Look other than Climate palettes: Vegetation state, Land coverage colours, the Palette colour dials and the Alien world band. Each one says Choose a Look or greys out until you pick one.

Texture#

Texture sets how the palettes are sampled. Smooth blends each palette continuously. Crisp · more contrast and Crisp · strong contrast use distinct canopy, low-vegetation and rock colours with repeatable terrain variation. Choosing a Crisp texture turns Palette smoothing off. The setting is shared with the globe colour pass.

Vegetation state#

With a Look selected, Vegetation state chooses Growing or Dormant. Where a reference site was photographed twice, both dates render together and the ground decides which a pixel draws from: cured colours on dry shoulders, the green date in hollows and along the flow. This control leans the world toward one end of that range. It is not a season, since the reference sites span both hemispheres and the tropics. It greys out while a Climate month is selected.

Climate month#

Climate month picks Annual or one of twelve orbital months on a world with monthly climate data. Play seasonal previews renders the months in order. See Seasons and sea ice.

Land coverage colours#

Land coverage colours chooses Farmland and urban colours (the default) or Natural colours for a baked Earth-like settlement scenario. It needs the map-driven Look. The Land coverage group below the Colour group carries the Landscape choice, Natural or Earth-like, which applies to the whole world. See Settlement and night lights.

Climate palettes#

The Climate palettes band lists one card per climate in the section, with Automatic Earth mix as the default for each. Add palettes to rank your own, top first. How palettes are chosen and mixed is in Colour and climate reference.

Getting a result you like#

Most of the image is decided by a handful of controls. Reach for these first. Every remaining control is in Colour and climate reference.

Relief and relief shading#

These two are separate and they are not interchangeable. Relief changes the pattern of the shading; Relief shading changes how much it darkens.

The trap is treating Relief as an on and off switch. Low exaggeration does not remove shading. It flattens it into an even brightening of the whole frame, and pale ground (snow, ice, sand, pale sediment) blows out to flat white.

To take the shading off, put Relief shading at 0 %. That skips the shading step entirely, which also saves real time and memory on large sections.

Water colour#

The Water colour group styles water and flow colouring only. It does not place water: rivers and lakes are drawn in Draw mode, under Height brush, with the River and Lake tools. Rivers drawn there join the drainage the colour reads, so the dials below act on them as well as on the rivers Dayside finds at render time: green banks, flow widening and the water mask follow both. Lakes come from the Lake tool, drawn by hand or picked from Suggest lakes; the group has no lake dials.

Density sets the smallest drainage area that draws as a river, from 1 to 400 km². The slider is inverted, so dragging right gives a busier network. The 25 km² default is a well-drained landscape; push toward 400 km² for trunk rivers only.

Width runs from 20 to 600 m, default 150 m, and sets how wide a river draining 10,000 km² is drawn. Smaller rivers are narrower and larger ones wider, in proportion. 150 m looks true to a satellite photo, Thames-class. 300 to 500 m is cartographic emphasis, legible when you pull back to a globe view.

Under Banks and tint, Green banks and River strength style the channel. If your rivers read as pale threads at a distance, raise Green banks (default 0.15) before you raise Width. River strength (default 0.55) sets how strongly a channel tints the land toward the climate's river colour. The green ribbon of vegetation along a watercourse is what makes it legible when the thread itself is pale, and river colour follows climate: dry climates get a river lighter than the land around it, wet and cold climates get a darker one.

The Rivers toggle does more than show the rivers. Off, it also drops drainage out of the colour, so the section keeps plain terrain and climate colouring, and it greys out Flow widening, Density, Width, Green banks and River strength, which have nothing to act on without drainage. With Rivers on, ground can green where no river is drawn: a channel needs a drainage area of at least Density, while greening fades in gradually wherever water gathers.

Density and Width shape the picture, and on an ordinary section render the Water mask export layer follows the drawn rivers too. See Colour and climate reference for the cases that take their water from separate settings.

Climate transitions#

Transition width is the strongest single control over how the image reads from a distance. The 25 km default gives a boundary that is soft but still defined. Wide values with Patchiness at 0 airbrush a border into a wash.

It is capped at about 10 % of the section's width. When your value exceeds the cap the slider shows an amber CAPPED AT n KM ON THIS MAP note, and anything above it does nothing. A focus area cut from a coarse world climate map can also blend wider than you asked, so the blocky steps of the coarse map melt away.

Patchiness defaults to 0 and tops out at 0.15. The ceiling is low on purpose: more than that breaks the crossfade into a green and tan camouflage mosaic. Use 0.05 or less for a whisper of grain.

Snow line and warmth#

Snow forms where summers are too cool to melt the winter's fall, so it responds to precipitation as much as to temperature. A wet maritime range carries perennial snow far lower than a dry continental plateau at the same temperature. That is realistic, and it is also why the controls do not behave like a simple height cut-off.

Snow line shifts the temperature at which snow survives. Higher means more snow reaching lower ground. The panel prints an approximate height in km underneath, along with a reminder that an authored Köppen climate takes precedence over the estimate from latitude. Coverage (default 3.0 °C) softens the edge of the snow. Snow shedding (default 50°, under Advanced) sets how steep a slope must be before snow slides off: nothing lasting stays above about 55°, and everything stays below about 35°.

Warmth shifts the whole climate by up to ±15 °C, which moves vegetation, snow line and lake evaporation at once. It is the biggest lever in the group, so move it in small steps.

One thing to watch for: a brighter frame does not mean more snow. Ground too cold for trees but not under snow renders as bare rock, so widening the snow band can make the frame darker.

The sea#

The Sea group opens with a Water model switch. Physical is the default: one ocean colour from shore to deep water, with local colour from the seabed and river silt. Classic is a simpler look that shades the sea by depth, with its own controls (Tint shallows by biome, Deep cutoff, Shallow tint and the seabed visibility sliders).

In Physical the group shows Clarity, River sediment, Coral sand, Deep water colour and Coast blend, with five more under Advanced:

Without a rock (lithology) layer the group shows NO LITHOLOGY LAYER: COAST COLOURS USE CLIMATE DEFAULTS, and every coast gets one neutral sand.

Sediment & algae sits at the bottom of the group. Simulate water is off by default. Turned on, it simulates currents, river sediment and algae blooms for this section on the graphics card, with land blocking the flow and the section edges closed. Its own Turbidity and Algae visibility dials replace River sediment while it is on, and Resolution (128, 256, 512 or 1024, default 512), Duration (1 to 120 days, default 30) and Current speed (default 0.20 m/s) set up the simulation. Repeated renders reuse an unchanged simulation. It works on sections only.

Every dial is described in Colour and climate reference.

Sea ice#

On a world with sea ice the Sea ice group follows Sea: Show sea ice, Breakage and Floe size, with Flow deformation, Climate, Ice-edge effect, Refrozen leads and Melt under Advanced. Where the ice comes from, and what each dial does, is in Seasons and sea ice.

Snow and ice appearance#

The Snow & ice group opens with the look of the snow, then the snow controls described above.

Snow palette chooses Natural snow, the default, Aged / thawing, Alpine / glacial, Winter woodland or Classic. The palette changes snow colour and visible woodland and leaves where the snow lies unchanged. With any palette other than Classic, Snow brightness (65 to 115%, default 100%) and Visible woodland (0 to 100%, default 65%) come alive. Visible woodland keeps some canopy colour showing above snow-covered ground where woodland grows.

Temperature falls by a fixed 6.5 °C per km of height. The approximate km figure under Snow line comes from that, and there is no separate control for it.

Texture detail and seed#

Texture detail labels itself Draft at or below 2048, Balanced at or below 4096, Fine at or below 6144 and Maximum above that. Drop to Draft while you are dialling in climate, snow and water, then put it back to Balanced or higher for the version you keep.

Seed (default 7) re-rolls the random variation: the mottling, the rock provinces and the Patchiness grain. Terrain and climate stay as they are.

One limit to know about: a small section cannot show a climate's full range of rock and soil colours. Rock provinces are around 160 km across, so a 200 km section shows one variant per climate, your top palette preference, no matter how many palettes you rank. Work on a larger section if you want the spread.

After the render#

A finished frame is a preview. To get files, use Export for this section, or fold the section back into the planet and export the globe. Exports queue like renders and land in the Acquisitions drawer with a receipt listing every file and its size. Both a section export and a world export cap at 32768 px on the long edge.