Virtual Space – Final Piece
http://mattlaurence.co.uk/virtualspace/ (Must be opened in Safari)
I thought my project was a fairly good virtual representation of the Weldon Downloads Open Air museum in Chichester we went to visit. I took several photos of different buildings from all angles, getting as many authentic textures and orthographic views as I could to help with my modelling.
Creating the buildings on Cinema 4D was relatively easy. Everything was mainly comprised of either cubes or spheres and by putting these elements into a cloner I could quickly mock up the basic look of the building. I then threw some basic textures onto the building and baked it, so I could then edit it in photoshop.
Once I took it into Photoshop, I could then add all my textures properly and adjust their sizes to make them fit and seamlessly repeat.
I then re-opened the file in Cinema 4D and just reloaded the baked texture, and then saved the entire model out as a .fbx file.
I then opened all of the files in a Unity project and imported the models. Once they were all re-sized, I could arrange them following my plan. Using terrain tools I could then raise and lower the ground, paint on trees and grass and finally add some water and environment like smoke and bird sounds.
My buildings also needed collider tags adding to them, so the character couldn’t just walk straight through.
Having done this once now, I would definitely be able to model other buildings quicker and easier. I now know what kind of photos I need to take to model accurately and what kind of textures to get for the same reason.
I would also be able to avoid some of the pitfalls I found in Unity and Cinema 4D such as walls being transparent at certain angles, shiny textures and surfaces and not baking textures in the colour tab.
The possibilities for future projects in Unity is expansive. I feel like I would be able to accurately and correctly build a virtual environment, with door and sound triggers, beautiful textures and even inside components to the buildings, in which you can run around.