How to create explorable planetary terrain using height map for unity?

[Mandalore_the_Creator]

Hi, I had a hard time create planet for my projects I want it to be hand crafted based. But I want to use height map to create the base terrain, is there method do it?

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

in a 3d program UV unwrap a sphere so that you get one square UV island.

Apply a heightmap as displacement. subdivide the sphere as much as needed. sculpt your own details as desired.

you can do this all in blender.

[Ryiah]

Is it important that the world truly be round?

Curved World | VFX Shaders | Unity Asset Store

[Mandalore_the_Creator]

@Ryiah

Is it important that the world truly be round?

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/curved-world-173251

Yes

[Antypodish]

@Mandalore_the_Creator

Hi, I had a hard time create planet for my projects I want it to be hand crafted based. But I want to use height map to create the base terrain, is there method do it?

I suggest you are search for git ripos. There are plenty solutions there. Oter options are 3rd party assets from asset store. Either way, you need solid c# and Unity knowledge, to tailor such assets to your needs.

[neginfinity]

Software like terragen can generate maps, but those are flat. Spherical worlds are a pain. See:

(Experiments) Spherical Worlds in Unity tests.

I’ve run a few experiments in a past few days looking for the better ways to create spherical subdivision that can used for spherical worlds in unity. I’ve put it into a gist which is here: All information is in the gist, but I’ve copied some of it here: What is it?: It is a quick test made while investigating possibility of making sperical worlds in unity. How do I use it?: Add an empty into the scene, add GlobeVisualizer to it. You’ll see a wireframe, if you want a mesh, hit “Play” …

The simplest approach would be using cubemap to store heightmap, like it was done in spore, but you may need to look for tools that can do that.