Keaton Bradley

3D game engine workflow

I have been asked to design a 3D level on unity, I have started this by making an environment to work in. I created this by using the brush tools buy building up hills and making mountains but when I was doing this it was all un textured, which means that I had to paint a texture on to all of the ground.

This is my level up to now I hope to add a fort and castles later on in the future.

To add the textures I had to first go in to the assets and then add the texture in to the paint brush so I could use it here are the tools I will go in to detail by annotating it.

This tool here is use to create mountains and hills you do this by holding down the mouse button until you are happy with the hill/mountain you You can change the type of

mountain you get by changing the brush to get a different shaped mountain, as in a pointy mounting or a smooth mounting the brush tools are here

Keaton Bradley

As you may be able to see, I have completely changed the way the level looks this is due to me not being able to think of a good design on the design, you may be able to see the blue spot on the level this is a village I am working on I plan to have a forest a few farms and a wizard tower in the mountains somewhere.

To add the water into my level I have had to create a plane then add textures on to that plane to get the look I got I used 3 different textures to get the water look to set the height of the water you have to use the X, Y and Z coordinates, I have set them to about 24-25. I set it to this because it seemed to fit to my level height really well.

To create a plane you have to go in create

To edit the waters position I have to use the X, Y, Z coordinates

As I said before I had to use 3 textures to get the texture of water I wanted the consist of snowflake and 2 water bumps, but on the water bumps I have put the tiling to 20, this gives off a wave effect on the water.

Keaton Bradley

When you start to make your level at first you will start off with a big white tile this is because it is un textured, so get the shape of world you like, so add mountains islands and dips where you want the water to go in, once you have done this you can now start to paint. You paint on the level by using the terrain tab, in the terrain tab you can change the shape of the land and texture it you can also place down trees by either painting them on or mass placing them which will cover the level in trees.

This tool will raise terrain until you let go of the left mouse button.

The tool with the both up and down arrows will raise the terrain to a set height this is good for getting you level to a flat surface to start from.

The two mountains with the rain drop is a tool which will smooth out the terrain to make gradual hills so you can walk up and down them or you can use it to make a beach going in to the sea.

Now this is the tool which I have been explaining the paint brush as you could have guessed allows to you pain a texture on to your plain white surface.

The tool with the trees allows you add tress in to your level, the reason I have no trees is because they was bugging out and kept on disappearing.

The tool with the flowers are pretty much self-explanatory, you guessed it you can paint on flowers on your level.

Keaton Bradley

as you may be able to see I have change the water, this is because this water looks a lot better and has animations when you’re playing the game, the animation is a wave when you ;look near the land the water will crawl up the land an go back like a tide.

This is a castle I found on the assets store, to get the assets store all you have to do is open google and search, unityassetsstore and you will be able to download whatever assets you want to, although moth of the assets you will like you will most likely have to pay for them this is because the

Keaton Bradley

people who make will need money to continue to make more assets and making an asset isn’t very easy and it is extremely time consuming.

All of these trees in the court yard of the castle have mesh colliders on them this is so you cannot walk through the trees, I could have used a capsule collider but this only covers the trunk of the tree whereas the mesh collider will cover the branches and leave also. The only problem with using mesh colliders are that it will increase the lag you have if your machine is very powerful, so if your specs in your pc are not too good just use capsule colliders rather than a mesh collider.

Keaton Bradley

To add a mesh collider you have to click on the asset you would like to have collisions, and then whilst you are on it you will get a side menu, what you want to do is add a component in the menu then click on physics. Once you have clicked on physics you can add your colliders the ones you use for trees are mesh colliders or a capsule collider these are right next to each other in the drop down menu. On you have done this your tree will have colliders.

Keaton Bradley

To add a sky like mine you have to add a skybox, for this you will need skybox textures you can get these from the assets store to add the skybox you have to go in to edit then go on render settings and play about with different skyboxes until you get one you like.