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

Minding the gap


While the above sections are a minimal but complete overview of how to set up an interactive walk around your architectural model, some additional recommendations and tips are valuable, such as:

  • To walk around your model, provide a terrain or at least a slab to walk on. As an alternative, you can use a Plane or Quad GameObject or, even better, a Unity Terrain.

  • When you notice your character cannot get up the stairs or onto a slope, you will have to adjust the properties of the Character Controller component of the FPC, such as Step Offset and Slope Limit.

  • When you can see through the walls when you get too close to it, lower the Near Clipping Plane of the Camera component.

  • If your character cannot pass through a door opening, try lowering the Radius of the Character Controller component.

  • Unity sometimes freezes when characters collide with geometry that is too complex, for example, plants or furniture objects with a full Mesh collider. Replace the collider with a simplified one...