Candle-based Procedural Terrain Generation

There’s a local tradition in Colombia where, in December, people burn colored candles. While its background is the Catholic Feast of Immaculate Conception, with believers asking for favors to Virgin Mary, for most people it’s a day that marks the beginning of the Christmas festivities.

Here is a simple procedural generator for terrain, using colored candles:

• The melted wax is used for terrain, with the general shape being the coastline and accumulations of wax representing mountains.
• Wicks are used to placing cities (ignited) and ruins (burned out).
• I used the colors of the candles to represent terrain types (forests in this case for green and blue candles), however, I think they could also work well for political boundaries since they stem from the wicks.

Here’s a GIF of the overall process

Credits for the stamps I used:

• Mountains
• Towns