3D Engine, Unity – Patryk Kleczkowski Workflow:
Introduction:
To create my 3D game I have picked the Unity engine. I want to create a big and lively forest scene along with a small village and some landmarks scattered around. The play area will be relatively small but used effectively nonetheless. I will also have some mountain ranges for better visual effect of the level as well as some good variation in it. For my models in the level, I will mainly use the Unity Store as well as some outside sources for models such as Turbo Squid.
Inspiration:
While I haven’t directly inspire myself through other games, I have looked at examples that might help me imagine how I want my level to look like or what I want to include in it.
http://www.curse.com/worlds/minecraft/223117-mountain-basin-custom-terrain
Some
of the inspiration came from custom maps that were created in Minecraft, I
specifically looked at the layout of how it combines forest, mountains and
lakes together in a nice set. As well as look at how specific mountains look
and what I can replicate.
Other games that I have taken inspiration from includes games like the Far Cry series with its lush jungles, forests and mountain ranges. I looked at those formations and tried to learn some interesting ways of using terrain to make the scene appear livelier.
I have started off my level by creating a border around it with a mountain range, and then putting an even bigger mountain across the level, essentially cutting it in half. My original plan was to have this big mountain in the centre with a castle on top of it, and then have 2 arches on either side, thus making a very effective looking level that is also functional. In the end however I have found making the archways too hard and had to abandon the idea, it would take too much time and too much resources just to concentrate on that.
I have thus abandoned the idea of having
the two arches on either side of the big mountain and just left the big
mountain in the middle alone, the intention of having a castle on top of it
remained. I have added a spiral climb around the mountain to make it accessible
for the player. I have also made the level smaller since I decided that I do
not need that much space in the end. Also, I have made the mountains around the
level taller to make sure that the player cannot escape outside the boundaries.
After that, I have done so minor
modifications to the mountain as well as covered the entire level in a basic
ground texture which would remain on the boundaries as well as the sides of the
main mountain in the middle but would be changed everywhere else.
After adding the basic texturing I have decided to add a simply skybox to my level for starters. I picked this skybox since it is mostly covered by clouds, and since my level will be covered in mostly dark textures, it will fit.
Here
I have begun to experiment with different textures and what will fit, for now,
it was the grass textures since the very first thing that I decided to do was a
forest. I tried light and dark textures, but considered that while it might not
look ok from my view as a developer of this, it might look ok from a
perspective of a player on the ground level.
In
the end I have went with a quite light texture of grass mixed with forest
leaves. For now I felt it was sufficient and if it needed changing then I could
do so easily.
After
I covered the area needed with my chosen texture, it was time to place the
trees themselves, I have used the tree placer tool that comes standard with
Unity, and placed quite a lot of them on the area covered up by my previously
chosen texture.
This
is how it looked from the perspective of a player. At this point I have
realised that the standard trees don’t really fit, and the ground texture will
need a little fixing as well.
I
started browsing the internet for some royalty free models of trees that I can
use in my project and in the end found some good results. This was the first
one. While with more detail (and thus there was a risk of hindering performance
of the level in the end) it was also bigger, and therefore I didn’t really need
that many of them in the end to fill up my forest.
I have then used textures from unity store to texture the
model properly and then also sized it correctly for my use since a little
adjustment was needed. I also had to add a collision box to make the tree
solid, since it wasn’t after I got it from the web.
After
the first tree, I have found a couple others that I also textured, sized and
added collision boxes to accordingly. I would use them later on in other parts
of the level to make it seem more varied and not just have the user see the
same tree everywhere.
I have then copied the first tree that I repurposed and pasted it, and repeated
that process until I filled up the entire space of the forest with them. In the
end, I found them much, much better than the standard unity trees, they were
more detailed, larger, and also just took more space, just like a real tree
would, instead of being tightly packed together like Unity’s trees.
This
screenshot was taken from the players perspective upon entering the forest, I
have made the trees quite large to have a good effect, now all that was left to
work on was the texture of the forest.
As
said, the next thing to work on was the texture that was found within the
forest, I have applied another grass texture over the original one, a much
darker one at that, but I didn’t erase the previous layer, instead I have
joined the two together by giving the new texture some opacity so the old one
would still show through, this ended up looking very good. I have then added a
path through the forest, that later on would be continued through the level.
I then started adding other additions to the forest that I
had in mind, to improve the detail of the general area. First off was this
little ancient fountain with some columns on each corner. I thought that it
looked quite well and decided to use it.
I
then textured the fountain, gave it a collision box (since it didn’t have one
to begin with) and also added some big rocks to either side in front of the
fountain to add even more detail to the area. In the end the results were quite
effective.
Last
bit of detail that I wanted to add to the forest before moving on was little
columns along the path that led through it so that they would have a connection
with the fountain that was tucked to the side of the said forest.
I had decided on adding two columns in the end, left each one
next to where the path would split somewhere else, one near the path to the
fountain, another one near the path upwards that led to the top of the central
mountain. I also textured them and added a collision box accordingly.
After
the forest, the time came to create a small village right next to it. I went onto the web to look for some good
looking buildings and after finding them added them to my level and aligned
them up properly.
This
is a screenshot showing the players perspective when he enters the town.
So
being happy with the layout of the town, I decided to start texturing
individual buildings and this is where I run into a massive problem, the
buildings that I were using were all modelled on the same layer, this meant
that I couldn’t apply more than one texture to a building, which meant that the
buildings looked extremely bad, I tried to find textures that would work both
on the roofs and walls of the buildings but in the end couldn’t do it. I had to
scrap the entire town and start searching for better models to re-do it.
While
I searched for new buildings for my town, I started experimenting with some
lighting on my level and decided to do a little bit of a lens flare for good
effect.
After
some searching I have found good models on the Unity web store and started
building a new town out of them, at this point I also decided to make the town
much bigger than previously, since with this there were more buildings that I
could use, so I could create a much bigger town without having the player
realise that some parts of the town might be duplicates. I laid out each building, as well as build 2
walls on either ends of the town with them using a gatehouse like buildings for
entrances.
After
laying out the town I started adding colliders to it to make the buildings
solid, added textures of both grass and cobble paths, and then at the end added
smaller detail like wells, some stones, trees, and adjusted some buildings
sizes/locations for better effect. In the end, I was very happy with this town
and was kind of glad that the other one didn’t work out since it allowed me to
explore this option.
After
the town was done I had decided to start working on top of the central mountain
and add what I planned to add at the start, a big castle. Not having luck in
finding some good models on the unity web store, I went to search for a good
model on the internet and eventually found a sufficient one.
The
castle was modelled on a huge grass area which I had to remove, with it, went
the mote that was surrounding the castle originally. The problem with the top
of my mountain was that it was very tight and thus I had to remove bits of the
castle as well as shrink it down in size considerably for it to fit on top of
the mountain. In the end however I managed, and kept most of the castle with
me.
I
had then made the castle solid, and textured it with some basic textures. It
was quite hard to do since there was a lot of smaller elements that had to be
worked on individually, the removal of the basis of the model also seemed to
have had an effect on some of the models that were left, which caused problems
while texturing and editing. So overall it took more time than expected. In the
end however it was effective and good looking.
After
texturing the castle itself, I textured the ground around and inside it and
made sure it looks okay before moving on.
After
that was done, I had started to work on the space in front of the castle, added
a small village to it, some tree’s, made sure that everything has a collision
box and is sized well and then created a cobble path leading around and down
from the mountain. The problem with this village was that it was, similarly to
the castle, hard to fit on the small mountain top and therefore I had to
experiment quite a bit with some sizing so that it would look right but it
would still fit on that mountain top, in the end I feel like I did well.
After
the mountain top was done, I made sure that the spiral path leading down from
it was decorated with some tree’s and stones so that it wouldn’t be completely
empty while the player traverses it. I have also made sure that the textures
were balanced well and weren’t too light or dark.
Then I moved onto the side of the map that I hadn’t worked on before, in this
part, next to the town at the foot of the mountain, I had added some trees that
varied from the previous ones, and added some big rocks, I made sure that
everything is then textured correctly and everything looks good.
Finally,
I have done another small village with two houses and some big rocks next to
the forest and the entrance to the spiral way to the top of the mountain where
the castle was located. I made sure that everything was textured correctly, and
also added some smaller detail like wells and some overlapping textures with
low opacity.
To conclude, I feel quite a lot of satisfaction from my level, in many areas it took a lot of trial and error to fix all the issues I had with it but in the end I am very happy with it. I feel like I gained a lot of valuable experience that I will definitely use in the near future in building more levels, whether it would be with Unity or another engine. The main areas that caused me trouble were the texturing and sizing of models, as well as proper lighting.
If I were to do it again I would definitely use my own models, since then I know what I need exactly and I can create them to work with my level perfectly, rather than have to adjust to models that I found on the internet instead which threatened to make my level look bad in some cases. I would also try to work on my lighting to make it more effective and better looking, I would also try to work on my terrain, use it better to create more appealing and performance friendly levels. And finally, I would work on my texturing, try to make better and more effective combinations.
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