Creator FAQ

The questions people actually ask. If yours is not here, ask it: an unanswered question is a documentation bug.

Do I need Rust installed?

Yes. Creator renders your map with Rust’s own models, textures, shaders and monuments, read from your own Steam copy of Rust. It never redistributes Facepunch’s art and never modifies your Rust install. See Your Rust content.

Can Creator open maps made in other editors?

Yes. Creator opens any Rust .map, including maps made in RustEdit, and places monuments, roads, rivers, prefabs and spawn points itself.

Can Creator open RustEdit maps?

It opens any standard Rust .map, whatever wrote it, including the maps RustEdit writes. What RustEdit stores in its own blocks beside the standard data is a longer answer, and it gets its own page: Import a RustEdit map.

Does it generate maps?

Yes. Pick a size from 1000 to 6000 and a seed, and Creator generates a whole world: terrain, biomes, topology, ground textures, monuments, roads, rivers, rails, powerlines, rocks and foliage. Maps generate against Rust’s own worldgen, which is why a generated map looks like a Rust map rather than like a heightmap with monuments dropped on it. See Procedural generation.

Can I generate on my own heightmap?

Yes, in Creator Mode. Open TOOLS > Procedural Generation…, switch to CREATOR MODE, and tell it where the land comes from: the map that is open, a .raw heightmap you import there, or Rust’s own island. Creator checks your land first and offers a one-click fix, then generates the biomes, monuments, roads, rivers and rail on your shape. If your land is a group of islands, it can join them with bridges and run one road around them. See Generating on your own heightmap.

Can I choose which monuments spawn?

Yes, in the same place. Creator Mode lists every monument your Rust content carries. Unchecked means never placed; checked means Rust’s own rules may place it, so a checked monument can still be missing from a map that is too small or has the wrong biome for it. See Choosing which monuments generate.

Is a Creator Mode map still a vanilla map?

It runs on a vanilla server with no plugin: the land, the monuments and the bridges are all ordinary map data. What it is not is Rust’s own generation for that size and seed, which is why the panel says so in red and the confirm dialog says it in words. Standard Mode is the one that matches what a Rust server generates.

Why is generation slow?

Large maps take a while; generate smaller while learning.

Why did the same seed give me a different map?

A seed gives the same map only against the same Rust build, so a Rust update changes it. A private copy holds a seed still while Rust updates. See A seed follows your Rust build.

Will my map run on a server without the extension?

The map itself will. Creator writes standard Rust .map files, and a stock server reads one.

What needs the server extension is everything the stock format has no room for: trigger volumes, IO wiring, loot, vending and NPC profiles, and ziplines. Without the extension the server ignores them.

Which LLM clients can drive Creator?

Two, and both run on your own PC: Claude Desktop and Claude Code. You bring your own Claude account. Creator holds no key of its own, makes no call to any service and sends no telemetry.

What is the confirm card, and why do some things need a click?

Because nothing changes your map unless you say so. Claude can read the open map freely, but a tool that would change something never acts on its own: it returns a proposal, Creator shows a confirm card describing exactly what would happen, and nothing moves until you click it. Dismissing the card is a real refusal, and Claude is told so. There is no setting that turns that off.

Editing the recipe you are building together is different, and deliberately so. When you say “leave the airfield out” or “drop the rail”, Claude is changing a draft nobody has generated yet, so those edits apply as you talk, with no card. The click comes back the moment that draft would actually do something: generating a world, replaying a change onto the map you have, saving, and undoing all wait for you.

Is this made by Facepunch?

No. Creator is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Facepunch Studios. Rust is theirs.

Can I sell or share the maps I make?

Yes. The maps you make are yours, including for commercial use. See Legal.

How much is it, and how many PCs?

Pricing is shown in the launcher’s Shop tab, and your license and the number of PCs it covers live in the launcher: see Licenses and account.

Why will custom items with custom models never be built?

Because it requires modifying client files, which puts the people playing your map at risk of an EAC ban. We are not going to ship a feature that can get your players banned. The same reasoning applies to any request that implies client modification. If Facepunch ever ships official custom-content support, this changes.

What does “alpha” mean here?

The editing and the generation are real and are used to build real maps, and the release engineering around them is young. Expect rough edges in installing, in error messages and in recovery, and expect things to change between builds. See What is Creator?.

Can I undo?

Everything. One thing you did is one undo step, whole-map operations included. A live drag mutates as you drag and commits a single step when you release. A single click with a brush is one step too, so Ctrl+Z right after a click on a freshly generated map undoes the click, not the generation.

Does topology follow the terrain when I sculpt?

No, and this is a design fact rather than a missing feature. Rust’s topology is a flat 2-D bitmask with no height component, so there is no “height” for it to follow. If you raise a hill, repaint the topology you want on it.

Something is not working

Troubleshooting is organized by the message on your screen, so search it for the words you are looking at. If that does not cover it, report it with the diagnostic folder and the support bundle: at this stage, confusing counts as a bug.