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

Optimizing scenes and models


While the performance of Unity running on current generation computers and handheld devices is still increasing, there are limitations to the amount of geometry you can place in an interactive scene. Especially trees, cars, curved models, and other objects with many polygons slow down Unity, sometimes dramatically. The following screenshot shows how to activate the Stats button on the Game view, which gives some insight in how much work Unity has to do.

We try to reach at least 30 frames per second (FPS) for smooth display. In practice, we hope to attain 60 or more and drop down to 30 as a worst-case scenario. However, don't be too fixated on this number, as it is not an exact prediction of how the application itself will run, for example, on a tablet or in the Web Player. The Unity Wiki provides a utility script for that purpose. For more information on FPS visit: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=FramesPerSecond.

Luckily, Unity itself does some optimization...