Making a world through Procedural Generation?

Hi everyone.

So this is my time approaching a project like this. I have zero background in this kind of stuff, I am an accountant for god's sake! But I always enjoyed creating a little world and see what happens in what I made.

My project is to make a map of a continent or a very large island like this.
I would love for Unity to generate something random like that that map and procedurally add in the vegetation, trees, rocks and etc... to make this large island a beautiful place to see and look at.
Maybe when I eventually learn more I will add some animals for the player to track and hunt... or maybe just a "survive on the island" kind of mission.
Further down the line maybe I can add ruins in the jungles for the player to explore.

I know this is all ambitious and some might say, are unrealistic goals but I would still love to know what do I need to do and buy to achieve these results... if at all?
I did some research and started watching these tutorials but I don't know if these are the right tutorials for me.

Thank you for your time!

 

I've just started looking at an asset called Gaia. Looks quite powerful, and reasonably priced at $45. Perhaps that's one to consider?

 

Can I use such a thing with my free version of unity?

 

Certainly. There is no difference between the free- and the non-free versions of Unity (except that once you make more than $100k/yr on your Unity games, you need to be using the non-free version).

 

Really depends what you are looking for. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of the mathematics, then you can build your own system. It takes a long time to get anything decent this way.

If you just want the pretty world, Gaia is a good way to go. Its currently being actively worked on, so it doesn't look like there is any risk of it going away any time soon.

 

Thank you both for answering my questions!
Yes Gaia seems like the best choice.

I kind of wanted to make this island to be kind of like a theme park for me to test all the tools so... snowy mountains to the north, deserts in one corner and wet marshes in another corner and so on... For now though I need to figure out how to use Gaia and the required assets to make a heights map large enough to make all of this happen.
I kind of have this rough draft of the location. Anyway suggestions would be very welcome lol.
Here is rough outline of what this place would look like: https://i.imgur.com/7wqxrw5.png

 

Depending on how interested you are in learning how this works, you can also roll your own by starting with the premise of creating a plane that uses gradient colors to represent elevation and such in 2D space. Then learn to modify the mesh based on colors and zones to create a 3D landscape. Then grow from there. It's not easy, though.