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

Scripting crash course


Right now, you already used scripts. They are at the heart of Unity. To add behaviors to objects, Unity uses components. If you need lighting behavior, add a Light component. If you need physics behavior, add a RigidBody component. If you need custom behavior, add a Script component.

A script has particular entry points, which define the flow of execution. Some functions are automatically called when the game runs, others every time the display is refreshed, possibly several hundred times per second. You enter the code into one of these functions or call custom functions from these entry points. In the background, scripts are compiled and bundled into your final application, so they run as fast as built-in functions and behaviors.

Internally, Unity uses the Mono framework, an Open Source implementation of the .NET framework, which was designed and developed by Microsoft as a modern and extensible framework. It works independently from the high level programming code...