Grand Canyon-Parashant Real-World Terrains 406 km²
Shift fast ... ✦ UNITY 2022.3 AND ABOVE Built-in, URP and HDRP in one package. ... The Built-in Render Pipeline has no post-processing, so the Built-in demo levels look ... ✦ USE CASES
by Matei Ioan Alexandru
Price History +
- Heightmaps - 24 x 16-bit greyscale PNG, 2017 x 2017 px: 24 maps of 20.16 x 20.16 km (about 20 x 20 km, 406 square km) at 10 m per pixel
- Relief - 343 m to 1,940 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 1.0 cm on the flattest map and about 5.9 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 - Parashant Volcanic (8 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/ElkJT-JlCHo
Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument - cinder cones and lava-capped plateaus, long fault escarpments and the river gorge where the Colorado meets Lake Mead - at their real size, 20 x 20 km per map
24 maps of Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument from real-world elevation data (DEM). The remote plateaus north of the Grand Canyon: cinder cones and dark lava flows, long fault escarpments, deep side canyons and the river gorge at the east end of Lake Mead - with up to 1,940 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
- 24 heightmaps - 16-bit PNG, 2017 x 2017 px, relief from 343 m to 1,940 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: Parashant Cinder Cones, Grand Wash River Gorge, Parashant Escarpment
- Terrain Builder - one click turns any heightmap into a real-scale Unity terrain
- Parashant Volcanic ground look - 8 ground layers in 4K: meadow, forest floor, dry earth, scree, rock, gravel, red rock, basalt
- Colorado River water - a transparent silty river coloured by its real depth that follows the Grand Wash gorge downhill, with ripples carried by the current, uneven sandy shores and wet banks, in Built-in, URP and HDRP
- Dry season on the volcanic plateaus - the ground of the demo levels is painted from the real shape of each map: dark lava on the cones and flows, pinyon-juniper woodland, rock beds on the escarpments, talus and washes
✦ 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: cinder cones, lava flows, fault escarpments, plateaus, side canyons 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 98-109 FPS · URP 111-148 FPS · Built-in 193-239 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 Inner Canyons - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426854
- 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