Grome

Developer(s)	Quad Software
Stable release	Version 3.11.09 / January 29, 2014
Operating system	Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8
Type	3D Modeling Application / Terrain Editor / Game Editor
Website	http://www.quadsoftware.com/

Grome is an environmental modeling package developed by Quad Software dedicated for procedural and manual generation of large virtual outdoor worlds suitable for games and other 3D real-time simulation applications.

After more than two years of internal developing, the program was first launched on March 28, 2007 as version 1.0. It immediately started to be used by various professional game studios and independent developers. Version 1.1 was launched on August 22, 2007 adding various optimizations, pen tablet support and more flexibility by introducing user defined data sets. Following this was version 1.2 on March 12, 2008 which optimized existing fractal tools and added new ones, extended import and export with new data formats and introduced the Grome scripting language for automated tasks.

Major release, 2.0, was introduced on June 18, 2009 with many new additions. With this new version, Grome becomes a more complete outdoor editing platform by introducing editing of water surfaces, vegetation and other decoration layers. 64bit processing was introduced to take advantage of large amounts of RAM and 64bit CPUs. With this version, Quad Software announced the availability for customization work for professional studios that need a specific Grome version for their projects.

The Grome 3.0 version was launched on April 4, 2011 bringing road networks editing, support for per-pixel materials, optimization tools for mobiles and low-end hardware and other new tools. A new updated, version 3.1, was launched on October 12, 2011 with focus on optimization. A further update, version 3.11, was made on September 12, 2012, fixing various issues and improving the SDK.

Easy to use user interface, with shortcuts available for every operation. Real-time preview on multiple customizable hardware accelerated viewports. Presets system for tool parameters.

Supports unlimited terrain size using custom data swapping mechanism to hard disk space. Terrain made of multiple terrain zones supporting variable resolution and automatic border stitching.

Procedural heightmap generation using fractal, terracing and erosion tools. Possibility to create and assign multiple layers of heightmaps for each zone.

Manual editing of heightmap layers using selection layers and brushes. Flexible brush system that allows custom orientation, mask, strength, directions and pen tablet pressure. Elevation, terracing and fractals brushes.

Novel texture layering system that allows different shading methods, variable resolutions and images per terrain zones. Creation of images based on brushes or procedural generation based on slope, direction, altitude, external shape files and erosion flowmaps.