(if I'm going to make a rivers.bmp like Paradox does in Ck2, then I'd just take that rivers image and use it as a "selection map" in the trees image to select and delete any trees that are in the same place as the rivers. this would give me a pretty good start base and I'd call it Earthgreen.dds or someth8ing. I would take the whole Earth image, the color one, and select all the green. Ok, how I would make your image tree placement file is this. so.if I were to design my own map, Id make the forests just a thin layer over some soil covering bedrock. those trees on any paradox map are like 12-20 miles across. mainly because the scale always bothered me. I did some experiments in CK2 and this was the densest jungle that I could create with their engineīut, that's not how I would make trees for a grand strategy map. lighter green to represent sparse tree placement and darker green to create dense trees. Paradox uses an imagefile, called trees.bmp. , here is my personal favorite of the Earth heightmaps, and I'm pretty sure HOI4 is based off of this one That looks nice, a little lighting and detail and it would be perfect I should mention that I'm totally on "Art-side" and am not a coder.
from what I've seen so far the whole thing could be done in 8-9 image files and some simple primitives within Unity. yeah a lot of good ways to make a worldmap. in Unity, you could have the forests done as a "partical effect" just one that doesn't move, but could change over time, and the colors could also change to reflect seasons. Then detail from the "Terrain" map is added from image and normal dats in the "texture atlas", the trees have their own file. the Big paradox maps I've looked at for HOI are 16K resolution, if I recall, and it came down to about 12 or so real world miles to the pixel on the big colourmaps. Maybe you give me a hand, and I can give you a hand. ) and I could use an Earth for the project that I want to make anyway. That's not a bad project, and I'm just learning Unity (my 11 year old son and I did the Basic Tutorials today in under an hour. and a normal map, and a "texture atlas" like Paradox uses, and they have a "colourmap" and some other stuff to add detail. So, a good looking Worldmap that has trees and rivers. or actually better, you want a Sphere maybe instead of a "flat map"? and I got weird ideas about maps, like I would enjoy a map, say, based on the Polar projection, then maybe flattens out when the camera zooms in. So, for starters, you want a World Map? I can make you a nice one, only I'm a little crazy. Here's a link to a Ck2 mod with a map based on Antartica. I know everything there is to know about how Paradox makes their Grand Strategy maps.