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

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?

 

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.

 

Is it important that the world truly be round?

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

 

Yes

 

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.

 

Software like terragen can generate maps, but those are flat. Spherical worlds are a pain. See:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/experiments-spherical-worlds-in-unity-tests.1314360/

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.