Triplanar Mapping

Triplanar projects a texture from three world axes (X, Y, Z), then blends the three samples by surface-normal weights. It is the standard solution for terrain, rocks, and any mesh where authoring clean UVs is not practical, and it pairs well with stochastic sampling for seamless tiling.

Video

The camera flying over procedural rocky terrain textured with triplanar mapping, showing consistent texel density on flat ground and steep cliff faces alike with no UV stretching.

features/triplanar/triplanar-terrain.mp4

Consistent texel density across flat and steep surfaces with no UVs.

When to use it

Terrain and rocks with no clean UVs.
Procedurally generated meshes such as Marching Cubes or voxel chunks.
Modular kits where UVs are inconsistent between pieces.
Snow and moss that should follow world-up regardless of mesh orientation.

Cost versus UV mapping

Triplanar samples each texture three times (one per axis) plus a normal reorientation — roughly 3x the cost of standard UV sampling. Use it on hero meshes and stick to UVs for fill geometry on mobile.

Modes

Standard — three samples per map at a single tiling, blended by the normal.
Stochastic — hash-perturbed UV offsets per pixel kill the visible tile repeat at the cost of extra samples.

A procedural rock with one UV channel — the texture stretches on steep sides.

The same rock projected from world XYZ, with consistent texel density everywhere.

UV-stretched

Triplanar

Triplanar fixing stretched UVs on a sculpted rock. Drag to compare.

How it works

For each pixel, Genesis computes three samples projected onto the YZ, XZ, and XY planes, then blends them by abs(normalWS) ^ _BlendSharpness. Normal maps are reoriented per axis using Reoriented Normal Mapping so seams between projections do not show.

Properties

Inspector label	Shader property	Type	Default	Description
Enable Triplanar	_TriplanarEnabled	Toggle	Off	Master toggle.
World Tiling	_TriplanarTiling	Float (0.1–10)	1.0	World-space scale. 1 unit = 1 tile.
Blend Sharpness	_BlendSharpness	Float (1–16)	4.0	Tightness of the axis blend region. 1 = wide, 16 = hard.
Stochastic	_TriplanarStochastic	Toggle	Off	Enable stochastic anti-tiling sampling.
Normal Mode	_TriplanarNormalMode	Enum	Reoriented	Reoriented or Whiteout normal blending.
Top Offset	_TriplanarTopOffset	Vector4	(0,0,0,0)	Optional offset for the Y-projection (snow caps).

Usage

Enable Triplanar on the material; UVs no longer matter.
Set World Tiling in world units — 0.5 for small detail, 4 for large boulders.
Tune Blend Sharpness to taste — softer for organic terrain, harder for blocky stylized rocks.
Turn on Stochastic if you can see the tile repeat at gameplay distance.


material.SetFloat("_TriplanarEnabled", 1f);
material.SetFloat("_TriplanarTiling", 0.5f);
material.SetFloat("_BlendSharpness", 8f);

Tips & gotchas

Three texture samples per map adds up; measure before shipping on mobile.
Stochastic sampling adds four extra samples, so use it only when the tiling is genuinely visible.
The projection is world-space, so moving the mesh slides it. Fine for static terrain; use UVs for animated props.
Tangent-space normal maps need reorientation, which Genesis does automatically. The Whiteout mode is faster but less accurate.

Layer Textures — combine with triplanar for UV-free splatting.
Height Gradient — world-space twin.
Normal Mapping — triplanar handles normals natively.
Vertex Colors — a masking source that does not need UVs.