I have a quick question on the specific roles of Unity.
From the tutorials and screenshots, it appears that Unity can do a certain amount of 3D editing itself, as far as terrain and objects. Of course it can also import from Maya, Blender, etc…
I guess I am wondering where is the line drawn? IE if you are going to have a basic environment and objects can you do it all in Unity, and then move to an external 3D application for higher-poly models and a more lush environment? Or have I misunderstood the workings and you always use an external 3D app and simply use Unity as the constructor? Also when imported are lamps and light sources not used and that is all configured in Unity? Does it drop a lamp if it is included?
Trying to get a baseline if I should be spending my time constructing the objects and landscape in Blender or if A is done in Unity and part B is done externally and then imported.
Thanks so much!
With the exception of the Unity Terrain engine/tools, yes you would normally create all your objects in an external 3D app.
No, empties are placed where lights appear in your 3D app. You have to manually (or through script) replace the empties with lights. I don’t even bother lighting my scene in my 3D app and do all that in Unity.
I and several others here use Blender also. I’m sure others have better, more efficient ways of working with the pair, but I build my objects separately in Blender and save them (with their origin at 0,0,0) to either a .OBJ (if its not animated) or .FBX (if it is animated). I then separately import the file into my assets in Unity. The reason I do this is because it provides a duplicate of my files, which gives me a backup in case something goes wrong. Others will probably tell you to just drop the .blend in your resources and have Unity and Blender work from the same file, and that’s probably the more efficient way to do it.
Unity is the assembly point for your game files and the place where you do the scripting.
Whenever it comes to modelling, texturing, animation, audio-editing, you´ll be doing it in external applications and then import to unity.
The only thing you can build directly in Unity is the terrain. There are tools to create and deform the terrain-mesh and also you have paint-tools to apply your previously prepared textures, plants, billboarded grass and tree- and detail-meshes.
I hope this helps.
Frank
Wow thanks guys! What a fast reply!
Yes that is what I was looking for. How do you feel the terrain editor compares to creating a plane in blender and doing it there?
I would assume a more complex area could be created in Blender, but I could be wrong. Also do you handle water in blender? I thought I read Unity does water itself. (The screenshots looked amazing)
I look forward to working with this community in the coming months!
We are gearing up for a nice project and Unity has been our decision to get there.
Thanks again-
As long as the terrain doesnt need caves or rockneedles pointing anywhere but up, youll do it Unity. When you need special rock-formations and stuff you create them in your 3D app and apply them either as model or as a terrain-detail object. ****
You can simply layout a plane in blender and apply the water-shaders in Unity.
How to set up water correctly you can explore in the fps example that can be downloaded from the main unity page.
Youre welcome. Cant wait to see some new work around here!
Frank
****[EDIT] Its very smooth and easy to create terrain in Unity. I would prefer Unity. Also you get automatic LoD on your terrain. The Terrain-Engine easily handles meshes of 4096 x 4096 Polygons without messing up your game performance. WIth the right tweaking you can actually keep a game on such a big terrain pretty fast. That would be a hard piece of work in blender i guess…
Last bit: Keep your eyes open for Eric’s new “Fractscape” app which will be an awesome tool to compliment Unity’s terrain tools.