Hi all - I’m somewhat new to Unity (been developing AAA games for about 20 years but new to Unity) and am building a space sim. I want to procedurally build planets that can be populated with buildings, lakes, roads, etc. that my characters can visit. I’ve read reviews of both these planet-building assets but would like to know your experiences as to which one you thought better. Neither are cheap and I don’t want to end up buying both if I can help it. Or, is there a better planet-building tool available?
i own both products and if you have followed the etherea thread you may have noticed that the author (immerso) has basically given up the project and works on a galactic scale project he wants to charge even more for. unfortunately planetary terrain author (HenryV) has also been very quiet lately and states that he has little time to work on improvements and “promised” features. so the future of both products is very uncertain albeit i have a little hope left for pt since the time of inactivity is not that huge.
from other aspects i also suggest pt because:
its cheaper, costs half of etherea
terrain can be modified/painted
exports meshes
can define different “types” of planets by arranging the noise functions in a graph.
can place objects on surface (never tried this).
so from my pov the overal editor integration and workflow with pt is better.
and i can noone suggest to buy etherea because of the mindset of the author. have a look at this post to see that he stops support because the package was pirated. so he offends and hurts the paying customers for something which happens inevitable to EVERY software out there. immerso has delivered a small update since fixing some of the issues but i don’t see any future for it. and i think this customer adverse mindset does not deserve any more sales. you generate sales by great customer support not by complaining about something the paying customer has NO influence on.
so if you have to choose one choose planetary terrain.
another package you could consider is space graphic toolkit by darkcoder. it also provides ring systems, nebula, asteroids etc. i have read he added a lod system but i’m not aware that it also generates planets. i think you must provide it the height maps. but i have never played with this feature here. but its a good addition for the non-surface space stuff. and together pt and sgt cost in the range of etherea and you get way more for your money.
i’m not aware of other tools/packages which provide this. there are some other planet packages in the assetstore but they are meant for background planets not those you can walk on.
