Apply high-resolution satellite texture to large terrain

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

I have a large terrain, which represents a whole country. It is made up of 100’000 vertices for the moment. I’d like to apply a high-resolution texture to it. This texture is not a small pattern I can repeat and make appear at some places. It is a satellite high-resolution images of the country.

How am I supposed to do that under Unity? Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I’ll have to cut the terrain and the texture into small pieces, treat them independently, and place them next to each other. Is that true?

Thanks!

Philippe

2

The limit for you is the maximum size of Textures in unity that is 4096X4096.
If that is enough for your Terrain You can use one mesh.
If not cutting the terrain and using multiple textures sound like the best way.

3

Hi,

Thanks for confirming me that cutting the terrain into pieces is the best option for you too.

One little thing: I wonder if the maximum texture resolution for a terrain is not 2048 instead of 4096. In the Terrain → Set Resolution… I was not able to go beyond 2048 with Control Base Texture Resolution. Detail Resolution value can be set to a higher value, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the texture resolution, according to Unity - Manual: Creating and editing Terrains.

4

My understanding of the unity terrain is that its designed for the use of small tillable textures mixd via a spalt map and not one big texture for the whole terrain.
Maybe you are better with external generated meshes and using 4k or 2k textures for them.

5

I didn’t know this, but it is apparently quite difficult to split a big terrain mesh into a grid a small tiles. Does anyone know a tool doing this maybe?

6

With TerrainComposer you can apply satellite images to multi terrains: → www.terraincomposer.com