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

Lightmapping


Real-time lighting is computationally very expensive. If you don't have the latest hardware, it might not even be supported. Or you might avoid it for a mobile app, where hardware resources are limited. It is possible to pre-calculate the lighting of a scene and bake it onto the geometry as textures. This process is called Lightmapping, for more information on it visit: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/Lightmapping.html

While actual calculations are rather complex, the process in Unity is made easy, thanks to the integrated Beast Lightmapping. There are a few things you need to set up properly. These are given as follows:

  1. First, ensure that any object that needs to be baked is set to Static. Each GameObject has a static-toggle, right next to the Name property. Activate this for all models and light objects that will not move in the Scene.

  2. Secondly, ensure that all geometry has a second set of texture coordinates, called UV2 coordinates in Unity. Default GameObjects...