Post on 16-Jul-2015
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/dragons-lair-custom-terrain---reposted-with-download/
Patryk Kleczkowski
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1543494-Forests-in-video-games-suck
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
This is a screenshot showing the players perspective when he enters the town.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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 cre ate 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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
After texturing the castle itself, I textured the ground around and inside it and made sure it looks
okay before moving on.
Patryk Kleczkowski
After that was done, I had started to work on the space in front of the castle, added a small vill age 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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.
Patryk Kleczkowski
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.