I’m completely new to Unity so bare with me =] but I want to apply different materials to specific areas within a building (floor, walls, ceiling and exterior). When I apply this brick wall material to the exterior of the building, it also applies the material to the entire structure and I can’t get rid of it. I want there to be different materials on the other parts of the interior, I don’t want the whole building to have the same one!
Hello and welcome to Unity! =) I don’t think Unity supports drag and drop materials per mesh/ face. =/ Have you looked into/ worked with UV-mapping yet?
hey thanks! I’m also completely new with 3DS Max so I don’t know much about UV mapping. am I meant to somehow function different faces to allow them to have different materials than everything else?
hello! i havent done any modeling, animation, or game design in over five years, so i am real rusty, and new to Unity as well. i know that unity is not meant for modeling, though you can get away with the very basic stuff. what you should do is create the interior in 3ds max, get the textures how you like em, then import it into unity. im in the same boat as you are rocket, learning every thing at the same time! its a lot of fun isnt it?
hell yea it’s fun, but so difficult to learn haha, well 3ds max is anyway!
and yea, i’ve tried adding the textures to the models in 3ds max, but once i import them into the unity they don’t have their textures; it’s just a grey shape! pretty lame, shame is i have until Thursday to have a whole prototype done and i haven’t learnt much :o
If you want to texture in Unity, your building would have to be made of seperate parts ie wall1, wall2, ceiling etc You would then apply the necessary texture on that basis. Possible but tedious.
If you do the texturing in Max (much better) then you need to look at a tutorial on using the UVUnwrap modifier of Max.
Here you will create an image that that is the sum of all the flat surfaces of your model. You put this image (a collection of rectangles typically) into Photoshop and texture or paint them. You finally re-import to Max add this as a material in the Material editor and it magically re-wraps itself around the orginal surfaces of your model (as it knows the co-ordinates from the un-wrapping process earlier)
Ahh, so instead of box modelling and making use of the extrude tool, I have to create separate shapes (most likely boxes) for each area of a building? That does sound tedious!
Also it just seems to group anything I create within a Max project together so it basically attaches the separate shapes to the entire structure, causing it to act as one individual object; thus having the same material painted on it.
You extrude (box model) in Max but then you need to add the UnWrap modifier to texture individual faces of the building. (Think about peeeling an orange then painting on the peel and then replacing it back on the orange)
If you want to do everything in Unity, then you will have to make the building from individual boxes etc. Someone on the forum is actually selling a bundle of primatives for this purpose (look under showcase section of forum) These individual walls etc can have textures dropped on them (without much control)
Something like Unreal (UDK) game system has a BSP system built in the editor to enable you to quickly mock up buildings etc. When you are happy with the prototype, you replace the BSP with mesh based geometry created in Max, Maya, Blender etc as it uses less CPU time.
Sweet, what do I need to do once I added the Unwrap UV modifier though? Do I need to somehow select certain faces and add them to a group or something? Surely just simply adding the modifier won’t make the entire object flexible. 3DS MAX is confusing! :o
Simple way: In your modelling application detach faces which should have other materials… Like: faces for floor, wall, windows etc… You should end up with multiple objects sharing the same material… Then map them with your textures…
Harder way: Make proper texture that fits your object. google for “unwrap”
Cheers man, however do you think I’d need to add any modifiers to them?
Also, isn’t there a way to add textures to the models in 3DS Max, then import them into Unity with the textures/materials on them included? Whenever I import a model into Unity from 3DS Max it just seems to have a greyscale material to it regardless of whether it had a texture on it or not.
Look up documentation… There is workflow regarding 3D Studio Max. Use standard materials, export to FBX format and make sure to include maps and other media in export dialog. Also update FBX exporter/importer… Max should tell you if you need to update and redirect to download page.
