I’ve built another random test area to learn how to export from Blender to Unity and make it more like the target environment. In other words to make a brutalist interior. I was hesitating on the size the model should be, because previously they turned out to be small when imported to Unity.
About size: the conclusion is that the size of a model in Unity depends on the scale value that is set up on the prefab before importing that to project. Before realizing it my model became huge, as according to several tutorials I set up the scale factor too big of a value (just didn’t think that they were importing small assets like barrels, while I was importing a whole area. Tutorial reference: https://youtu.be/nhJ8EJ_GtLI). This made the environment so big, that camera was clipping out several of its parts in the distance.
Lighting: this was done with some very basic knowledge of lightmapping in Unity at it is as it is. But it worked. Horrible, but worked, so it means I have to dig further on the topic.
I also wanted to try glowing panels following Brackey’s tutorial:
That turned out not ideal, but I got the idea how to do it.
Going further
After that I decided to model part of the floor plan that I’m going to implement in the final version. The starting one whith flooring/repetitiveness elements.
And I still couldn’t decide which way of modeling is better, because if building from solid blocks, then it becomes difficult for me to see through the model, and it take much more time to model.
Whilst I was strarting to research the topic of lighting, I noticed that designers quite often used panels for walls and floor, which are visible only from one side. That allows very good observation of what you’re doing. So I thought it would be a very good option since the area is big and trying to clip through walls to see something was not comfortable.
By that time after trying a couple of times to buld the area from modules in Unity doesn’t suite me at all, as Blender does that much more efficiently (especially with snapping tools and freedom to alter the modules in any way or add new ones very quickly). So my workflow is set up to modelling in Blender and exporting that to Unity.
To try that I completely recreated Brackey’s tutorial. (This was the time I discovered he was using panels. He didn’t mention how he modeled the room.) And those really turned out to be panels that he used. And practiced some more on lightmapping. That’s where I learnt to set objects to static in order to apply lightmap correctly.
I still hesitated between planes or solid shapes for walls, but started off with panels. And while it looked nice in Blender and was fast to make
in Unity it looked horrible and unable to work with it adequately, because you’re just not able to see the whole picture. I needed visibility, but not that much
So my conclusion here is solid shapes are my only option. This method is suitable for more simple environments, but when everything is supposed to overlap, it makes a mess. + as test showed, panels have issues with collision, and character was often stuck in the walls.
I’ve spent several days building the final piece and it turned out pretty well.
So the next thing is to actually work with lighting. Hopefully it will be possible to implement what I have in mind.