The PLD project is a developing tool for for the Unity platform which populates a native Unity terrain object with textures, trees, grass, and detail objects based on a key image.
Check out the repository on Github through the release link above.
This project uses bitmaps as references to
place landcover on a Unity terrain.The XY coordinates of the
bitmap are correlated to the XZ coordinates of the Unity
terrain. Each pixel's color acts as a key representing the
placement of textures, trees, and meshes. The pixels are
evaluated with various modifiers to determine the
placement of each asset.
The example below highlights the fernan lake
watershed and each pixel color represents a fuel type from the Scott
and Burgan Fire Behavior Fuel Model containing 40 different models.
We demonstrate this FBFM system because of the models available at
the landfire.gov website, FBFM40
was the best balance of fuel model detail and model depth, and because
the FBFM provides an abstract structure to benchmark the PLD's
features and performance.