Stylized Planet Toolkit

Stylized Planet Toolkit generates flat-shaded, stylized planets, moons, rings and debris belts for URP projects — then bakes them into ordinary prefabs, meshes and materials, so shipping builds pay no procedural generation cost.

Pick one of 12 presets, drag a few sliders, and press Bake & Save As Prefab. Every planet ships as a prefab with its own mesh assets, atmospheric rim material, optional cloud layer, ring system, debris belt and orbiting moon — ready to drop into a scene, a menu, or a solar-system map.

GENERATE

- 12 editable presets: Real Earth, Earth (random), Moon, Mars, Ice, Desert, Lava, Gas Giant, Toxic, Crystal, Ocean, Alien.

- Seam-free icosphere terrain with 3D fBm noise, mountain sharpness, spherical flat oceans and coastal cliffs — no UV seam, no pole pinching.

- Terrain styles: standard low-poly, terraced steps, gas-giant bands.

- Procedural impact craters (count, radius, depth, raised rims, seed).

- Emission masks for lava lowlands, random city lights, glowing peaks and cracks/chasms.

- Low-poly cloud shells, solid ring systems, debris asteroid belts (15–200 chunks, seeded) and orbiting moons/satellites with tidal locking.

LOOK

- Flat-shaded vertex-colour surface shader (half-Lambert diffuse, ambient, atmospheric rim, emission mask) plus a separate additive Fresnel atmosphere shader.

- Auto Fit shells: the atmosphere and cloud radius is measured from the actual generated peaks, so the shells hug the terrain instead of floating far above it.

- The showcase scene ships with URP camera data (post-processing, SMAA), soft shadows and a Global Volume (ACES tonemapping, Bloom, Vignette, colour adjustments).

SHIP

- One-click bake: prefabs + mesh .asset files + per-planet materials, with an overwrite mode that keeps prefab GUIDs so existing scene instances pick up rebaked assets automatically.

- Batch bake all 12 presets, with stale sub-assets cleaned up — no orphan assets.

- Landmass Mask Baker: bake real Earth continents from the bundled public-domain Natural Earth data, your own GeoJSON, or seamless procedural noise; import settings are applied for you.

- 4K / FHD screenshot tool for store art and marketing.

- Runtime components (rotator / orbit rotator) with editor preview toggles.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

- 12 demo planet prefabs (one per preset), 38 baked meshes, 16 materials, 2 URP shaders.

- 4 runtime scripts and 6 editor tools (generator window, custom inspector, mask baker, GeoJSON rasteriser, import post-processor, assembly definitions).

- Showcase scene with all 12 planets plus its post-processing profile.

- Public-domain Natural Earth landmask data with its licence file, README and LICENSE.

REQUIREMENTS

- Unity 2022.3 LTS or newer (developed and tested on Unity 6 LTS).

- Universal Render Pipeline (URP) 14.0+ — required. Built-in and HDRP are not supported.

- No other package dependencies.

KNOWN LIMITATIONS

- URP only. The shaders do not compile under Built-in or HDRP.

- Lighting model: the surface shader samples the main directional light plus a constant ambient colour. Additional lights and received shadows are intentionally not applied — that keeps the flat-shaded look and the shader cheap. Object shadows (cast) still work through the URP fallback pass.

- Fixed generator paths: the generator resolves its default materials and the bundled mask through fixed paths under Assets/StylizedPlanetToolkit. Keep the folder where it is; baked prefabs reference assets by GUID, so they keep working even if you move them.

- Bloom is a sample-scene effect. The prefabs look correct without post-processing; disable the Global Volume on low-end mobile.

- No LOD or imposter system: baked meshes are a single LOD (~1,280 triangles per planet surface at subdivision 3). Measured cost per additional planet is ≈0.003 ms at 1080p (50 instances ≈ +0.14 ms), so LOD is unnecessary at desktop scale.

- Landmass masks are generated, not scanned: the bundled Earth mask is derived from public-domain Natural Earth vector data at 110 m resolution.

- Mobile is untested at publishing time. Verified on the desktop reference below; no device measurements exist yet, so no mobile frame rate is claimed.

SUPPORT

- Support: bleedthrough.logic@gmail.com — 1 business-day response target.

- Semantic versioning; the changelog lives in README.txt; updates in the 1.x line are free for existing customers.

- When reporting an issue, please include your Unity version, URP version, render pipeline asset and a screenshot of the Console.

FAQ

Q: Does it support HDRP or Built-in?

A: No. The toolkit is URP-only by design (both shaders plus the sample scene's camera data).

Q: Do the planets cost anything at runtime?

A: No generation cost — you bake to prefabs, meshes and materials in the editor. A baked planet is a normal MeshRenderer (~1,280 triangles for the surface at subdivision 3) plus optional cloud/ring/debris renderers, and meshes are shared between instances.

Q: Can I use my own landmass or heightmap?

A: Yes. Author a grayscale equirectangular mask and set Settings > Landmass Source = Custom Heightmap, or bake one with Tools > Stylized Planet Toolkit > Bake Landmass Mask from the bundled Natural Earth data, your own GeoJSON, or seamless procedural noise.

Q: Is the bundled Earth mask safe for commercial projects?

A: Yes. It is rasterised from Natural Earth vector data, which is public domain ("No permission is needed to use Natural Earth"). The full terms ship in ThirdParty/NaturalEarth/LICENSE_NaturalEarth.txt. No AI-generated or third-party artwork is included in the package.

Q: Why is my atmosphere so large?

A: Auto Fit measures the highest peak of the generated mesh and places the shell just above it; the Atmosphere Scale slider is a margin over that measured peak (1.00–1.10). Turn Auto Fit off to fall back to a simple multiple of Radius.

Q: I changed a preset and rebaked — will my scene update?

A: Yes, when "Overwrite existing prefab & sub-assets" is enabled: the prefab keeps its GUID, so instances in your scenes pick up the new meshes automatically.

Q: Where are the tools?

A: Tools > Stylized Planet Toolkit (bake, showcase scene, capture, mask baker) and Window > Stylized Planet Toolkit > Planet Generator for the interactive editor window.