So, I want to make some placeholder models to work while I work on a proof of concept. However, from past experience, as soon as I make a prefab, or whatnot, any changes that I do from that point forward to the model, will not be reflected in Unity.
Thus, the question is: is it possible to import a model into Unity, yet still have any updates to the model be recognized? Or am I just doing something wrong? Or…
If you want to maintain the link, you need to import it, but not actually change it in unity. IE, you can duplicate it, rotate it in the scene view, but you can’t say, delete parts of it, if its embeded.
For instance, if your working in a scene in 3ds max, how it imports into unity by default is loading the whole scene as a prefab, you can continue to modify that scene in max, and hit save, and it will update, or, similarly, if your loading in a fbx file, and you overwrite that file, it will update in unity. (assuming its placed in the asset folders).
Because the scene as a whole is a prefab, if you need to modify any of the individual elements, you’ll lose your prefab connection with everything.
It might be easier to simply break up the scene into individual parts you want to have changes reflected, and duplicate parts you want to upgrade scripts with, so you can test those changes.
So, what you’re saying is if I want to add lighting (or anything) to an object, I can’t add it to what I import. But, rather, I’ll have to have my imported object a child of an empty game object with anything else I need added as another child to that empty game object:
Empty GO
|-> Imported
|-> Colliders
|-> Scripts
|-> Etc
e.g. A hallway block getting lights as colliders, etc.
Assuming that, will the Start() be able to access all object in that hierarchy (i.e. is everything loaded before scripts are run, or is there some threading race conditions to worry about?)? Because, constantly accessing things at runtime wouldn’t exactly optimize the scene.