Hello! I’m sure this is a stupid newbie question but I’m stuck so any help would be appreciated.
So I’ve been thinking about starting a project that would need a 2d map of earth, I’m wondering what the best method of obtaining or creating one would be?
Thanks for any help! 
It depends on how much detail you need. There’s some very large Earth texture maps if you just want to make a planet, but if you’re talking about Google Earth type stuff, then you’d probably need to integrate some type of satellite service so that it would be able to download the images that you need at the time.
Hey! Thanks for the reply!
In terms of detail it doesn’t have to look too detailed. The perfect example is probably the earth from the game “Super power 2”.
And do you think its better to take a texture online rather then to create a new one?
Thanks!
Anything useful here?
You’ll want to use the topography image from NASA to make a normal map and bathymetry to mask out the water, and if you want you can use the city lights for the emissive. You’ll also want to use the cloud image and generate a normal map for the clouds as well. The atmosphere also creates a faint blue glow around the edge of the planet. The land is going to be very rough, so you can put the roughness around 1, but the ocean will be a bit more glossy, maybe try around .5 as a starting point.
Assuming its the images from the link above your post, then my browser can’t view them to save them. >.<
I’m also going to need to somehow “cut them up”? so countries are playable. I’ve probably not been clear the project is a geopolitical sim.
Thanks for the information you’ve provided though! ^-^
Thank you also! Although my browser can’t view the images lol.
&stc=1
. .