About Hexasphere Grid System
- Tools, Systems & Learning > Level & World Building
Hexasphere Grid System builds high-performance spherical grids for planet-scale 4X, global strategy and board games on a globe, with hundreds of thousands of interactive tiles.
Powered by texture arrays and geometry shaders, it keeps generation and runtime fast even on huge grids, so your whole planet stays interactive.
*** DESIGN YOUR WORLD ***
Wireframe, Shaded and combined (shaded + wireframe) styles, with an optional bevel effect.
Per-tile color and texture.
Extrusion with customizable height and gradient colors to raise terrain, mountains or stacked regions.
HeightMap texture support with optional separate water mask; Earth and water-mask textures included.
Load a texture and map its colors onto tiles around the sphere in a single function call.
Smart Edges option hides edges between adjacent tiles sharing the same material for a cleaner look.
*** MAKE IT PLAYABLE ***
Interactive out of the box: highlight tiles with the cursor, drag/rotate and zoom the sphere, fly to any tile.
Fast, easy path-finding to get the optimal route between any two tiles.
Group cells to define different surface types for path-finding.
Easy C# API to change individual tile properties, get neighbours, compute shortest paths and more.
*** SPECIAL MODES ***
Inverted mode renders the hexasphere inwards with the camera at the center, ideal for dome and skybox-style worlds.
VR support (multi-pass).
Export Hexasphere: bake a permanent copy of the sphere into the scene, preserving colors and textures.
*** GEODESIC ACCURACY ***
Produces perfectly regular geodesic grids, which by definition contain exactly 12 pentagons. They are fully functional: color, texture, extrude and path-find through them like any hexagon. The grid can also be shifted so pentagons avoid undesired positions.
*** REQUIREMENTS ***
Full C# source code and a demo scene included.
Supports Built-in and URP pipelines.
Compatible with Unity 2022 and Unity 6, including Render Graph.
Works with SM 2.0 for basic features on all platforms; texture arrays require SM 3.5+; extrusion uses geometry shaders (SM 4.0+, OpenGL & DirectX, not supported on Metal).
Spin up a hexagonal planet for your next strategy game and start placing tiles today.
Powered by texture arrays and geometry shaders, it keeps generation and runtime fast even on huge grids, so your whole planet stays interactive.
*** DESIGN YOUR WORLD ***
Wireframe, Shaded and combined (shaded + wireframe) styles, with an optional bevel effect.
Per-tile color and texture.
Extrusion with customizable height and gradient colors to raise terrain, mountains or stacked regions.
HeightMap texture support with optional separate water mask; Earth and water-mask textures included.
Load a texture and map its colors onto tiles around the sphere in a single function call.
Smart Edges option hides edges between adjacent tiles sharing the same material for a cleaner look.
*** MAKE IT PLAYABLE ***
Interactive out of the box: highlight tiles with the cursor, drag/rotate and zoom the sphere, fly to any tile.
Fast, easy path-finding to get the optimal route between any two tiles.
Group cells to define different surface types for path-finding.
Easy C# API to change individual tile properties, get neighbours, compute shortest paths and more.
*** SPECIAL MODES ***
Inverted mode renders the hexasphere inwards with the camera at the center, ideal for dome and skybox-style worlds.
VR support (multi-pass).
Export Hexasphere: bake a permanent copy of the sphere into the scene, preserving colors and textures.
*** GEODESIC ACCURACY ***
Produces perfectly regular geodesic grids, which by definition contain exactly 12 pentagons. They are fully functional: color, texture, extrude and path-find through them like any hexagon. The grid can also be shifted so pentagons avoid undesired positions.
*** REQUIREMENTS ***
Full C# source code and a demo scene included.
Supports Built-in and URP pipelines.
Compatible with Unity 2022 and Unity 6, including Render Graph.
Works with SM 2.0 for basic features on all platforms; texture arrays require SM 3.5+; extrusion uses geometry shaders (SM 4.0+, OpenGL & DirectX, not supported on Metal).
Spin up a hexagonal planet for your next strategy game and start placing tiles today.