Isometric 2D Tilemaps - Generation with Chunks instead of Tiles?

Unity Engine
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1

Hello,

I am having trouble figuring out how to autogenerate a 2D Isometric tilemap with prefab chunks (of X by X size, created by myself). I am using Unity 2020.3 and haven’t been able to find a solution or existing built-in command.

What I’ve got working right now is a tilemap that’s generated with Vector3 (z is always 0) RNG using mathf.perlin but I realized that this tilemap is not what I’m going for. Instead I want something like a 20x20 tile sized map but using prefab chunks (created by myself) of 4x4 or 5x5 tile sized chunks. I still want the tilemap size to be of 20x20 tiles but am unsure how to incorporate it to autogenerate with prefab chunks instead of the individual tiles and complete RNG with a ton of predefined conditions.

Sorry if confusing, I guess simpler terms is: I am unsure how to go about generating a 20x20 tile sized map using prefab chunks of 5x5 tile sizes. Therefore the map would be split into a 4x4 grid with each grid spot being 5x5 tile sized chunks, with each chunk being assigned a number and each grid given a random number for the autogeneration.

Is there a way to specifically call prefab chunks? (rather than just Tiles)

2

If I understand you right, what I would try is have prefabs tilemaps of each hand-crafted chunk, then during map generation I would instantiate the prefabs, copy the tiles from each prefab onto the main tilemap, then destroy the instantiated prefabs.

For the prefabs, it’ll be easier if you always create them with the same origin/bounds, i.e. centered around (0,0,0). This simplifies copying them.

To copy, use the tilemap scripting API: Unity - Scripting API: Tilemap
tilemap.SetTile / tilemap.SetTilesBlock