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

Summary


Scripting is a necessary evil when you need to go beyond the included assets installed with Unity. It might be beneficial to look around the Asset Store to add other tools and scripts to your arsenal, but a decent understanding of scripts is a valuable competence to gain in the long run.

Always strive for short, simple, understandable, and reusable scripts. If you need two unrelated behaviors, they might be better off being split into two scripts. To make scripts reusable for different contexts, give them a rather generic name. RotateObject is more versatile than RotateDoor. If variables need to be adjusted, provide them as public variables, so they become parameters of the scripts. Reusable scripts never need to be edited during usage, but mainly tweaked by their parameters.

Add easing and tweening to improve smoothness and to obtain a visual, modern animation style. If you are pressed in time, you might cut some corners here, but they do provide an overall professional feel to your...