Grand Canyon Inner Canyons Real-World Terrains 406 km²

• Heightmaps - 33 x 16-bit greyscale PNG, 2017 x 2017 px: 33 maps of 20.16 x 20.16 km (about 20 x 20 km, 406 square km) at 10 m per pixel
• Relief - 399 m to 1,915 m per map (lowest point of each map at 0)
• Unity terrains - one terrain of 2049 samples per map, terrain holes for the exact edge
• Height precision - one height level is about 1.2 cm on the flattest map and about 5.8 cm on the map with the largest height range
• Demo content - 3 map prefabs (one prefab works in every pipeline) + 9 demo scenes (3 per pipeline)
• Ground textures - West Canyon Benches + East Rim Woodland (16 ground layers) + the shared ground layers, 4096 x 4096 albedo, normal and mask
• Rock beds - a bed table per demo map, read by the terrain shader in Built-in, URP and HDRP
• Water - transparent river and lake surfaces whose colour comes from the real water depth (depth texture), soft uneven shorelines, travelling waves and river flow, for Built-in, URP and HDRP
• Shaders - anti-tiling, world-aligned terrain shaders with side projection on steep faces, rock beds, shrubs and fine relief, for Built-in, URP and HDRP
• Editor tools - Terrain Builder, Project Setup, Grand Canyon Ground Textures; PDF documentation included
• Compatibility - Unity 2022.3 and above; Built-in, URP and HDRP

▶ Full 4K video showcase: https://youtu.be/8nEY0g4qGsc

The inner Grand Canyon - the great walls below Great Thumb Point and Peshlakai Point and the lower canyon in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, with the Colorado River at the bottom - at their real size, 20 x 20 km per map

33 maps of the inner Grand Canyon from real-world elevation data (DEM). The walls, buttes and benches below Great Thumb Point in the west and Peshlakai Point in the east, and the lower Grand Canyon in Lake Mead National Recreation Area - with up to 1,915 m of relief on a single map. Each map covers 20.16 x 20.16 km (about 20 x 20 km, 406 square km) at 10 m between samples. Every Unity terrain sample is an original heightmap pixel - nothing is stretched or resampled - and 1 Unity unit is 1 metre.

​

✦ WHAT'S INSIDE

• 33 heightmaps - 16-bit PNG, 2017 x 2017 px, relief from 399 m to 1,915 m per map
• One Unity terrain per map - one terrain of 2049 samples per map; the unused 32-sample edge strip is cut away with terrain holes
• 3 demo levels x 3 render pipelines - 9 ready scenes to fly or walk through: Great Thumb River Bend, East Canyon Walls, Lower Canyon River
• Terrain Builder - one click turns any heightmap into a real-scale Unity terrain
• 2 ground looks - West Canyon Benches and East Rim Woodland, 8 ground layers each in 4K: meadow, forest floor, dry earth, scree, rock, gravel, red rock, dark rock
• Colorado River water - a transparent silty river coloured by its real depth that follows the canyon downhill, with ripples carried by the current, uneven sandy shores and wet banks, in Built-in, URP and HDRP
• Dry season in the canyon - the ground of the demo levels is painted from the real shape of each map: level rock bands from the pale rim down to the dark inner gorge, scrub on the benches, talus and river sand along the Colorado

​

✦ CANYON GROUND

• Rock beds from each map's own cliffs - the painter measures the map's cliffs and benches and writes a bed table that the terrain shader reads, so walls show level rock bands with ledges that catch the light
• Colour carried by the drainage - the ground below a wall takes the colour of the rock above it, carried down the map's real drainage
• Washes and river sand - washes where the map's real drainage gathers, river sand placed from the real water level
• Shrubs and trees in the shader - separate pinyon, juniper and desert shrubs drawn by the terrain shader, following the painted ground
• Fine surface relief - lumps and hollows finer than the height data on the near ground, fading out with distance

​

✦ FEATURES

• Huge real-world maps - up to 20 x 20 km of real ground per map, at 10 m between samples: rims, cliffs, terraces, buttes, side canyons, wide benches and the river gorge are in the data itself
• Exact scale - size and height range are in every file name and inside every PNG, and the builder reads them for you
• Anti-tiling terrain shaders - every layer blends three texture sizes by viewing distance, so no repeating patterns
• Cliffs without stretching - textures are projected from the side on steep faces, so walls show real rock texture instead of vertical streaks; flat ground is unchanged
• Verify - compares every terrain height with the original pixels

​

✦ PERFORMANCE

• Native 3840 x 2160 - no upscaling, demo scenes in player builds: HDRP 78-96 FPS · URP 97-106 FPS · Built-in 121-184 FPS (RTX 3090)

​

✦ DEMO CONTROLS

Mouse look · WASD move · Shift fast · G walk at 1.8 m eye height · F fly · N / P next / previous level · H help

​

✦ UNITY 2022.3 AND ABOVE

Built-in, URP and HDRP in one package. Tools > Lidar Terrains > Project Setup switches on terrain holes, and Shore Water Setup the depth and opaque textures the water reads, in your pipeline asset with one click. The Built-in Render Pipeline has no post-processing, so the Built-in demo levels look simpler than the URP and HDRP ones.

​

✦ USE CASES

Open-world games · flight and driving simulators · western, survival and exploration games · cinematics · terrain studies. The heightmaps also work in other tools: 16-bit PNG, north up, size and height range in the file name.

​

✦ THE GRAND CANYON SERIES

Neighbouring ground, never the same map twice:

• Grand Canyon Rims & Plateaus - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426850
• Grand Canyon-Parashant - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426856
• Lake Mead & Mojave Desert - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426858

​

✦ MORE REAL-WORLD TERRAINS

Same format, same tools:

• USA Sierra Nevada & Cascades - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426148
• USA Rocky Mountains & Great Plains - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426150
• USA California & Desert Southwest - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426152
• USA Eastern Forests & Lakes - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426154
• UK Fells, Moors & Dales - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426156
• Alaska Mountain Peaks - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/425664
• Alaska Valleys & Uplands - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/425668
• Alaska Fjords, Lakes & Volcanoes - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/425670