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Best way for creating a high quality world map
Hello everyone.
For the project I´m currently working on we need a big world map with something about 50 different regions. The map will be based on a real map of the world. The player should be able to zoom in pretty close and also be able to switch between different filters like economic level which will change the color of the region (e.g. a color between green and red) Some of those will be static and some will change during the game depending in the players action. So the texture or the material has to change.
At the moment I have two problems with that. First one is that the map won´t look good anymore when I zoom in closely even if I use a 4k texture.
The second one is that I don´t know what would be the most efficient way to make the region color dynamic.
I have two ways in my mind how I could do the task. One would be to use one big texture on a plane for every filter and write a script which changes the colors of the pixels of the different regions if something happens. The problem is that one big texture doesn´t seem to look good enough when I zoom in on a small region. The other way would be to create an object for each region with a separate material but this doesn´t seem to be efficient at all.
I would be glad if someone has any suggestions for a better way.
Import settings can make a huge quality difference. If you haven't already, use Texture Type: Advanced, Generate $$anonymous$$ip $$anonymous$$aps: Off, $$anonymous$$ax Size: 4096, Format: RGBA32 or RGB24. You may not want to ship with these settings, but using them will tell you if your quality issues are import settings driven.
As for color, there are a variety of shaders on the net that use masks. So you might be able to get your color by either allowing it to bleed through from the bottom or by overlaying the color on top. The solution isn't free, but you only have to provide 8-bit textures ins$$anonymous$$d of 24-bit textures. In a quick search I found one here:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Texture$$anonymous$$ask
Thanks for your answer. I´ve already played with the import settings but I think 4k is just not big enough for the zoom level I would like to have. So maybe I will have to split the map in parts.