Book Image

Unity for Architectural Visualization

By : Stefan Boeykens
Book Image

Unity for Architectural Visualization

By: Stefan Boeykens

Overview of this book

Architects have always relied on drawings, renderings, and sometimes even movies to present their design concepts to clients, contractors, and other stakeholders. The accessibility of current game engines provides new and exciting possibilities to turn any design into an interactive model that anyone can experience at their own pace. "Unity for Architectural Visualization" explains how you can create compelling, real-time models from your 3D architectural project. Filled with practical tips and in-depth information, this book explains every step in the process, starting from the very basics up to custom scripts that will get you up to the next level. This book begins with a general overview of the Unity workflow for architectural models. You will start with a simple project that lets you walk around in your design using basic Unity tools and methods. You will then learn how to easily get convincing lightning effects on your scene. You will then set up a basic navigation system in your project, and not only this; you will also cover some tips and tricks to take navigation to the next level. You will quickly learn how to fine-tune the shaders and how to set up materials that are a bit more advanced. Even when you finish Unity for Architectural Visualization, this book will make scripting easier with reusable examples of scripts that can be applied in most projects. After reading this book, you will be comfortable enough to tackle new projects and develop your own.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Unity for Architectural Visualization
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Pre-rendered models


While Unity has a very well integrated Lightmapping system, it might make sense if you do the baking in dedicated rendering software, such as to use advanced Global Illumination. Most current DCC applications support light baking, including CINEMA 4D and 3ds Max.

When you use, for example CINEMA 4D, this is available for texture/light baking. This can be achieved by following these steps:

  1. When a scene is set up, select the object and choose Bake Object from the Objects menu inside the Objects browser.

  2. In the dialog, activate Ambient Occlusion and Illuminate and choose an output folder to save the textures to.

  3. When you press bake, CINEMA 4D will render the lighting and materials onto the object and create a new mesh, with optimized UV mapping. The original mesh is kept hidden if you ever wanted to make any changes.

  4. When the baking is done, check that it works, by disabling GI and lights and call render. In a fraction of a second, the model will be re-rendered.

  5. When you load...