Fractalization. This set of parameters control the basic fractalization of the landscape.

Depth: Fractalization level applied. Increasing this parameter increases the surface detail but also increases rendering times. A fractal depth of 1 or 2 is usually sufficient to explore a landscape, with a setting of 3 or greater being used for final images. The Fractal Depth parameter may also be set directly from the renderer window's toolbar.

Edge fuzzyness: Controls the fuzzyness of the tree line and snow line boundaries, plus graduation within these.

Snow Line: Position of snow line as a percentage of minimum to maximum height value.

Tree Line: Position of tree line as a percentage of minimum to maximum height value.

Bias: Biases color distribution for a surface between it's two defined colors. Usually left at 50%.

Seed Values: Used to control fractalization. Each set of four values gives a unique, reproducable, surface. Changing these will subtly affect surface color and texture distribution.

Unless terrains layers are used, GenesisIV renders the landscape surface using colors and textures controlled by these parameters.
GenesisIV uses the concept of a surface to define how different areas of the landscape will be rendered. Areas on the landscape are assigned as belonging to different surfaces on the basis of altitude, slope parameters, and the structure of the surface tree. Surfaces differ from terrains in that it is not possible to explicitly assign a particular area of the landscape to a particular surface, rather the assignment is made by GenesisIV on the basis of the surface information provided. The tree list box shows the surface tree. Landscapes always have a minimum of three surfaces - Below Treeline, Intermediate, and Above Snowline. New child surfaces can be assigned to any of these primary surfaces using the new button. These can be split further if necessary. All surfaces can be renamed using the edit box above the surface color controls. All surfaces require two colors to be assigned. GenesisIV will apply these two colors to the surface by considering local conditions and the Bias setting. If a single color is required simply set both color controls to the same value.

These parameters are used to generate the surface texture.

Colours: The surface texture is created by mixing these two colours. The proportion is controled by the Bias parameter. For single colour surfaces set both to the same colour.

Roughness: Large surface roughness. This setting effects the physical roughness of the surface - i.e. the polygon vertexes comprising the surface are displaced.

Bumpiness: Small scal roughness. This parameter effects the surface texture mapping only - i.e. the actual shape of the surface is not changed.

Shininess: Shininess of the surface. The degree to which light is reflected.

Specularity: Highlight reflections. How gloss or matt the surface appears.

Emission: Emission characteristics. The degree to which the surface appears to emit light. Only used for special effects.

These distribution parameters contol the distribution of the texture on the landscape surface.

Coverage weighting: A weighting value for this surface. Weighting for all surfaces of the same parent surface at the same level are added and the relative weighting for each surface calculated as a proportion of this. Child surfaces inherit the parents proportions.

Altitude control: The altitude that the surface will appear at. Minimum and maximum altitudes can be specified and the fuzzyness of the bands edge.

Slope Control: Similar to altitude, this set of controls determine the preferred slope range for a surface.