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

Using procedural materials


Although it is not currently common in CAD or BIM software, most DCC applications not only support colors and textures, but also procedural materials using some kind of shading language. Shading languages can be very extensive and support many other instructions. Current GPUs calculate advanced shaders in real time. The glass shader above is a basic example of a procedural shader.

Allegorithmic substances

As we don't expect our readers to simply start writing such shaders, and this book has no room to discuss them either, we suggest an alternative route and use a procedural shading system that is more directly accessible for end users.

Allegorithmic is a company that develops a procedural material system called "Substances". They have an authoring environment where you can create new materials and they even sell individual materials. Many 3D systems, including Unity, support substance shaders. In the Asset Store, check the 8 FREE Substances for Mobile package (https...