Hi there everyone! I am fairly new to Unity, but am not a complete stranger when it comes to Blender. I have been playing around in Blender for almost 3 years now. Anyways despite my lack of knowledge in Unity, I was hoping to make a Space game in Unity (how original, right?)
I have made spaceship models in Blender and imported them to Unity, and they show up perfectly fine in the Asset area, as well as when I insert them into the world. I even have asteroids made! All I am missing is my player models, weapons, and the biggest one; Planets. I have been searching everywhere on how to make a planet, and most results come up with paying $90 to make planets. I don’t have the money at the moment to invest into something that big, nor do I want to pay for something that may or may not be a one time use.
So long story short, I was wondering if there was a way that I could make planets in Blender, bring them into Unity, and re-size them to a large playable area for my game. I’m hoping to have large enough planets to explore, with some pretty cool terrain. Is this possible to do using Blender? Or is there an easier and free way to do this in Unity itself? Thank you for any help in advanced!
Not really, unless you intend for your planets to be very small (in which case, make a sphere and put a texture on it). The reason it costs money to buy planet-making assets is that it’s a quite difficult thing to do which takes a lot of time and effort, so even if you did use it just once, it would still be worthwhile.
Ok, thank you. Would it be possible to create some sort of sphere, import it to Unity and enlarge it, then add in some sort of gravity? If not, might abandon the Space game and think of making a FPS
The problems with super-large objects are: 1) floating-point imprecision when too far from the origin, and 2) level of detail. You can’t feasibly import a planet model that’s even remotely detailed enough (because it would take a bajillion polygons), which is why planet-making assets basically create detailed sections on the fly when needed, and discard them when no longer needed.
Free Soul, I know this seems pretty disheartening, but my favorite part of game development is limitations. Think outside the box a bit and find a way to make the game doable with this limitation. A to-scale planet is clearly impossible, but what about using a planet placeholder image with a docking station floating far from the planet you can pull your ship into to visit the planets? It seems more limiting and maybe even more work, but it can really give your game a style or feel.
I realize this didn’t answer your question at all, but I think you could still pull off a great game without modeling a to-scale planet. Good luck! Hope to see your game in the WIP section soon!
blender can make whatever construction of polygons you want. it can make literally any geometrically possible thing. it doesn’t really make sense to ask if you can “make a planet in blender”.
what i see as being important in space games that allow you to land on planets is how you 1) store the terrain data and 2) handle your LOD.
when far away, a simple textured sphere or even a billboard will work. as you approach, you either tesselate it or bring in higher polygon models that show more and more geometric detail for the terrain. when you actually land on it, only a small part of the sphere’s surface exists, and the other parts are loaded in as chunks when you get close to them.
i think it would have to be constructed dynamically, using heightmaps and stuff. you would have to program that into unity, or find an asset that does that. that way, you can just have the planet’s surface stored as a mip-mappable 2d texture, and have the geometry get constructed in stages as you approach. you probably wouldn’t need to use blender to do that though.
My suggestion would be to do it Metroid Prime style.
Or in other words…“Fake it.”
Make a big or very big planet object, (doesn’t have to be be too many poly’s) that is way larger than your space ship.
Then as your space ship craft thingy, enters the png. type hazy atmospheric clouds (or other etc,) obscuring the camera view, have a script etc. immediately remove the low poly/high poly Planet model and load in your giant planet landscape scene.
It’ll look like your ship has actually entered a real planet atmosphere.
It’s one of the cheapest less taxing ways to do this.
There are other ways to though.
Or, if it’s a, say for example: a rocky planet, with 4 landing points/locations, to dock or land your space craft.
Put triggers on all 4 parts of you planet:
eg. a trigger for North = rocky mountain section of planet.
a trigger for South= ruined temple section of planet, with evil creatures.
a trigger for East = a rocky dusty red desert type section
a trigger for West =a sand sea full of scary creatures
And like the "fake it trick," I mentioned above, whichever trigger you enter,
eg. your ship enters the North section/ North trigger of the Planet.
The clouds in the atmosphere will blur the ships vision and trigger/load, the appropriate landscape/scenery.
In this case it’ll load the Rocky mountain landscape.
Note: You don’t have to abandon your Space game for an FPS.
Alot of the ideas mentioned by the other people above are nice too.
I am going to direct you to the game Kerbal Space Program. Their game is explicitly supports modding, and you need to use Unity in that process. There is a mod that makes new planets, and there are many planets in the game. They made a fantastic space game, and you never need to shoot guns.
I had something like this in mind, where you can only reach certain areas from the point of landing, and the rest of the planet is not accessible, possibly due to giant ravines or huge mountains. As much as it would be the easy way to do it, I would probably want some sort of exploration with say smaller ships that can fly around the various terrains.
I like the thought of setting up planets where chunks of the planet render into the game only when a player is within the area. There would be multiple stations around the planets where you could (properly) land your ship, however I would like having the ship land anywhere on the planet. I’m not sure if loading in pieces of the planet would work good if people flew around at high speeds.
I do agree, all the ideas and suggestions have been more than helpful I like the idea of having certain area’s where it triggers a landing station to load, where you can only land there, and explore a limited area only when you land at that certain point. I do however want some sort of freedom when it comes to landing, like landing in the middle of nowhere. I do like the idea of having the haze blur vision as it loads though, i will keep that in mind. I’ll think about making a big colored sphere, with possible terrain designs on it, that you cannot land nor explore unless you land at certain areas. Thank you for the ideas
I’ll take a look at that, thanks for the suggestion Im hoping to make my game a free-roam around an imaginary galaxy, with random quests from people on different planets. Some of those may or may not require guns too, so if there is guns, I might consider making the game multiplayer (although i’m not sure how well that would work out). I’ll go check out Kerbal Space Program now Thank you
guys i have an idea. i have been working in blender since an year and in unity from 2months ago. i got this thread as i was also thinking about creating a planetary terrain for a small project.
so here it is recently i played a game called DISTANCE which is mede in unity by refract studio. in credit section there was a level where player game object decends into a planet kind of thing so its like a sphere solid sphere then by thinking about that similar game i also played is evochron mercenary where u have to decend into planet for trading and mining purpose so its like a sphere with an atmosphere that could be made as texture which floats above sphere but sphere will have gravity towards centre some thing that kind of stuff so by referring those two games u can get a preety much good idea about building that thing.
I like the idea of having certain area’s where it triggers a landing station to load, where you can only land there, and explore a limited area only when you land at that certain point. I do however want some sort of freedom when it comes to landing, like landing in the middle of nowhere. I do like the idea of having the haze blur vision as it loads though, i will keep that in mind. I’ll think about making a big colored sphere, with possible terrain designs on it, that you cannot land nor explore unless you land at certain areas. Thank you for the ideas 