Basic textured room with a ceiling light

Unity Engine
1

Hello everyone,

I am new to Unity but not to game development - I have significant experience in gameplay and AI programming but almost zero in graphics development (or anything related to the aesthetic visuals of a game). I am interested in using Unity to build a couple of prototypes for games that I’m interested in developing, and could really use everyone’s direction in how to approach the aesthetic aspects of development.

To start, I’m interested in making a simple room, with four walls, a ceiling, a floor, and a ceiling light providing the illumination. If the light is turned off (the logistics of doing that in the game I can handle) then the room should be almost completely dark. One caveat is that I’m not interested in utilizing any 3D modelling programs as of yet, and so all the geometry for the room must be created in Unity3D itself. I know that’s not a standard approach, but unless it’s impossible to do it this way, it’s how I’d like to start.

The source scene I’m using as inspiration for this can be found here:

Now I have no need for any props, pillars, or extra textures other than for the walls/ceiling/floor themselves (which I’m sure I can find on a free texture site such as TextureKing [ex: http://tinyurl.com/3zdhvbq]). The main focus is simply on the walls/ceiling/floor and the light. The properties of the light in that video seem fine for what I’m looking for, except that it would be stationary and on the ceiling. Shadows would be nice, cast by the cylinder I’m using for my “player”, but I’m unsure if that’s possible using the free version of Unity.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about texturing, shaders, and lighting, so I’m guessing that most of the knowledge for how to do this will come under those three subjects.

Assuming this is possible, I’m not asking anyone to tell me step-by-step how to do it, I am simply looking for someone to give me an overview (or link to a tutorial) for the techniques themselves that must be employed to achieve this basic scene. For example, I’d imagine this could be broken down into the following two stages:

  1. Texturing a wall that was created in Unity
  2. Adding a ceiling light to that scene

But I could be mistaken in assuming it’s that straightforward. Nevertheless, any direction that can be offered would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Will

2

I didnt watch your video link , but assuming all you want is a simple 4 wall, floor cieling room, use a couple planes, cubes , to achieve the basic setup. I really strongly recommend you look into a modelling tool, for what you need , any of them could create the scene, in minutes, with much better quality than Unitys built in primitives. That said , yea you could still do a basic room.

You create materials , with your textures in Unity, all easy. Drag and drop the Materials directly onto your scene objects, etc.

~Will

3

Hi Will,

Okay, so I downloaded the texture (http://tinyurl.com/3zdhvbq), created two cubes and stretched them to make walls. I created a new material, added the aforementioned texture to it, and set this material to both of my walls. I then added a point light, as that seems to be the best approximation for a ceiling light.

The attached screenshot shows the results. The texture was originally stretched along with the cube, rather than tiled, so I set the X-Tiling to 10 (since I scaled the cube to a size of 10) and now it just looks like a cube with a bunch of tiled textures stuck on it. How would I make it seamless? Surely these textures are made with that in mind.

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers,

Will

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4

Use a 3d modeling app and not Unity… Unity isn’t made for 3D modeling. The prefab models are just for placeholders or prototypes. :slight_smile:

5

So is it actually impossible to make it seamless with the Unity cubes?

6

Its not impossible at all to seamlessly tile a texture on a plane , cube , etc , in Unity, the issue is most likely your texture is not truly seamless. I just made a 10x1x1 cube in unity with a random seamless brick texture i have , and it looks fine, when tiled out.

In fact, looking at your image , i am 99% sure thats not a true seamlesssly tiling texture. See the Dark at one side , and how it lightens at the other side.? Thats why it is so visible when tiling. A truely seamless tile texture will have all its edges (colors) matching.

7

Hi again Will,

Yep, you’re absolutely right. I explicitly searched for “seamless” brick textures, found one, applied it, and the seams were gone. I had figured that all such textures would be seamless (what’s the advantage of having one that isn’t?!) and so I didn’t bother qualifying that the first time.

Thanks so much for your help!

Cheers,

Will

8

Well , theres lots of conditions where a non seamless tiled texture works. For example, a cut out image, used for LoD purposes, But yea, glad it helped.