I have a procedurally generated map (no unity terrain or other plugins, just custom meshes). I am looking for the best way to implement forest/trees. The look I am going for is civ 6, or EU4 ish. The map is more like a game board and not something to travel within. Essentially from a higher up top down perspective. Specifically the drawing/modeling/shading. There seems to be a variety of ways to go about this but I thought I would ask for people’s thoughts or anything that helped them out in the same situation.
You need an algorithm that generates spawning points for your tree prefabs. So random 3Vectors are created. Of course each point need a check if no other tree is intersection within the spawn range. And you need a distance check for mesh origin in relation to the terrain ground. Also random angles could be accounted. You may also consider that trees only spawn on specific splat map layers.
Once you have a pool of valid spawn points, the actual rendering system would use it. You could stream tree prefabs or create multiple chunks of batched tree group.