MarchingBlocks

Sculpt one block. Paint a world.

MarchingBlocks is a 3D tile tool for level design. You don't model hundreds of tiles and place them by hand: you shape one block — the witness — and the software cuts from it the 52 tiles a world needs. Then you paint cells, or let the generator build a whole world, and the right tile appears in each place, turned the right way, joints included.

Try it first — free

The free demo below is the whole software: everything works and saves, only exporting is locked. Your projects open as they are in the full version: what you start in the demo, you keep. Three example worlds are free to download too.

One block, every tile

• Sculpt the witness in the built-in modeller, with Blender's gestures and shortcuts: extrude, inset, bevel, loop cut, knife, and sculpt brushes (draw, inflate, smooth, flatten, grab).
• Every copy of a tile is a linked copy: sculpt one, all follow.
• Borders are shared between tiles and between layers, so your world never cracks.
• Smooth shading: curved tiles look round, sharp edges stay sharp, and there is no shadow line at the joints.
• Variants: give the tiles that repeat a lot other sculptures, mixed by weight or placed by hand.
• Paint it: materials, box or UV projection, a 3D brush with paint layers, PBR maps derived from your image, glass and ice, emission, animated textures.

Generate a world

Islands, archipelagos, continents, valleys or plateaus — or the shape of a sketch you draw. Set the size, the relief, the cliffs, the paths between places, the caves and their galleries, lakes, springs and lava, and how much sand, rock, snow and foliage, with sliders and a seed. No AI: the same seed gives the same world, and one Ctrl+Z takes it back. Then keep painting by hand.

Paint a world

• Layers — rock, grass, sand, snow, glass — that meet without a seam, with soft transitions between them.
• Add, dig, select, boxes and brushes, copy and paste, extrude, one Ctrl+Z per stroke.
• Tunnels, wells, bridges, balconies, stairs and rooms in one click.
• Water that finds its own way: a hollow becomes a lake, a slope a river that falls as a waterfall, the open air a sea. Dig a channel and it flows again. Lava, swamp and glowing acid too.
• Plant your own trees and plants with a brush; they sway in the wind.

Walk it

Drop a character in your world and walk, fly or swim through it in the Play test — under rain, snow, fog or a hurricane.

Your engine — free plugins

Export your tile set or your painted world, and the free MarchingBlocks Paint plugins for Godot, Unity and Unreal read it: layers, tiles and variants, PBR materials, water, transitions, animated textures and foliage. Paint cells in your engine and the tiles follow, exactly as in the app. The plugins are free and MIT-licensed — download them below. The tool that makes the tiles is what you buy.

The witness goes to Blender as one .glb and comes back.

What you get

• MarchingBlocks 1.0.0 for Windows, DRM-free, no key, no account.
• Every update of the 1.x line. The Props and Houses workshops are planned next, free for owners.
• The tiles and worlds you make are yours, commercial use included, with no royalty.

System requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• A graphics card with Vulkan support (2016 or newer)
• 8 GB of RAM — 16 GB for large worlds

Install

Unzip anywhere (or use the itch app) and run MarchingBlocks.exe. Keep the .dll next to it.

Windows may say "Windows protected your PC": MarchingBlocks is not code-signed yet. Click "More info", then "Run anyway".

Made by SpannerGames, a one-person studio in France.