Terrain Diffusion Fabric Mod [Modrinth]

UPDATE: The research behind this mod has been accepted to SIGGRAPH 2026, the world's premier graphics conference! That means the research was officially peer reviewed and recognized as a significant contribution to the field. Enjoy the mod!

This is a Minecraft Fabric mod integrating Terrain Diffusion.

Which version should I use?

Three builds are available on the Releases page:

The CPU build is slow unless you are on MacOS.

Mac users: the CPU build automatically uses CoreML for hardware acceleration on Apple Silicon. No extra setup is needed.

Use the -cuda build only if you are on Linux, or have an NVIDIA GPU and prefer CUDA (may improve performance).

Requirements

• Minecraft with Fabric and the Fabric API Mod installed
• Windows with a GPU OR Linux with an NVIDIA GPU is strongly recommended. CPU inference works but is very slow.
• VRAM (GPU RAM) needed: 1.5GB
• RAM needed: 2.5GB (May need to increase Minecraft's RAM allocation)

Usage

If using CUDA build: First see CUDA_INSTALL.md.

1. Download the mod jar from Releases for your Minecraft version and place it in your Minecraft mods/ folder. Make sure the Minecraft version matches.
2. Launch Minecraft, at least once online to download the models (~2.5GB).
3. Create a world, and select the Terrain Diffusion world type. Click Customize to set the World Scale (see Per-world settings below).
4. The mod will search for a land spawn point near the world origin automatically. If the area around (0, 0) is entirely ocean, it may take a moment to find land. Use /td-explore (see below) to scout the world further.

Exploring the World

The mod includes a built-in terrain explorer web UI. Run the /td-explore command in-game; it will print a clickable link (e.g. http://localhost:19801) that opens an interactive map in your browser. Click the map on the left to open a "detailed view". Click the detailed view to get coordinates in the bottom left. You can also filter for certain climates.

Use the explorer to scout continents, mountains, islands, and other interesting terrain before venturing out in Minecraft.

Configuration

Edit config/terrain-diffusion-mc.properties (created automatically on first launch):

# Terrain Diffusion MC configuration

# Inference device: "cpu", "gpu", or "auto" (try GPU first then fall back to CPU).
# "gpu" uses DirectML on the -windows build, or CUDA on the -cuda build.
# GPU builds default to "gpu" so startup fails loudly if no GPU is detected.
# CPU build defaults to "auto": uses CoreML on macOS, otherwise CPU.
inference.device=gpu

# Offload inactive models from VRAM between pipeline stages.
# Keeps peak VRAM to ~1.5-2 GB. Set to false if you have ~2.5+ GB free for slightly
# faster generation.
inference.offload_models=true

# Validate SHA-256 for pre-existing files in .minecraft/terrain-diffusion-models.
# Set to false if you want to provide custom models/config files without hash checks.
validate_model=true

# Port for the local terrain explorer web UI (/td-explore).
explorer.port=19801

# Spawn search: coarse-pixel region sizes for finding a land spawn near (0, 0).
# Starts at initial_size x initial_size and expands by 8 each step up to max_size x max_size.
# Each coarse pixel covers a large area (hundreds of blocks), so 16–128 is typically sufficient.
spawn_search.initial_size=16
spawn_search.max_size=128

Per-world settings

For Terrain Diffusion worlds, click Customize in world creation and set:

• World Scale (integer 1..6)

This value is saved with the world save and affects:

• how many real-world meters each block represents (scale=1 => 30m/block, scale=2 => 15m/block, etc.)
• world max height for newly created worlds (assumes tallest point is 10000 real-world meters)
• 2 is recommended for a good balance of scale and playability. Use 1 for smaller, more compressed worlds.
• Lower values put more stress on the GPU (Terrain Diffusion runs more often), while higher values put more stress on the CPU (larger world height). Most modern GPUs will be bottlenecked by the CPU around scale 2 or 3.

Common Issues

A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed

This can happen for some older Java versions. Please update to the most recent version of Java 21 or higher. The latest Microsoft OpenJDK 21 version is known to work.

LoadLibrary failed with error 126 (CUDA build only)

This is typically due to an improper CUDA or cuDNN installation. See CUDA_INSTALL.md for troubleshooting steps.

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to load terrain-diffusion models

This typically indicates an "out of memory" error (the logs should show this as well). Terrain Diffusion's models take up about 2.5GB of RAM, so make sure to allocate enough RAM to account for this.

If your issue is still not resolved, please raise it here.

Building from Source

An internet connection is required during the build to fetch the pinned model manifest metadata from Hugging Face.

The -windows build requires libs/onnxruntime-dml.jar, which is provided as part of the repo. See Building onnxruntime with DirectML to build from source.

Build for Windows (DirectML):

./gradlew build -PuseDml=true

Build for CUDA:

./gradlew build -PuseCuda=true

Build for CPU (also handles macOS/CoreML automatically):

./gradlew build -PuseCpu=true

Build all:

./gradlew buildAll

Building onnxruntime with DirectML

Requirements

• Windows 10 SDK (10.0.17134.0) — for Windows 10 version 1803 or newer
• Visual Studio 2017 toolchain — install Desktop development with C++ from the VS Installer
• Visual Studio 2022 toolchain — same as above
• Python 3.10+: https://python.org/
• CMake 3.28 or higher

Keep both VS toolchains up to date. Full details at the ONNX Runtime build docs and the DirectML EP requirements.

Steps

Run all commands from the Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Microsoft/onnxruntime.git
cd onnxruntime
.\build.bat --config RelWithDebInfo --build_shared_lib --parallel --compile_no_warning_as_error --skip_submodule_sync --use_dml --build_java --build

The built jar appears in java/build/. Rename it to onnxruntime-dml.jar and place it in libs/ in this repository.

Note For Mod Developers

While modifying the AI terrain itself is quite complex, the integration with Minecraft biomes is extremely simple. The model outputs elevation + 4 climate variables, and this is converted to Minecraft biomes with hand-written rules. This is the most immediate way to improve the quality of the terrain and is relatively easy, but takes time to get realistic. The entire biome classifier is only 250 lines.

The terrain diversity far outpaces the biome diversity and there's a real opportunity to close that gap. I'm hoping someone goes crazy with it.