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Using a maya-made mesh as interior
Hi all, I'm playing a tabletop starwars RPG and I wanted to model our spaceship (the far star) and make a simple unity game to walk around the spaceship.
I've never done interiors in Unity, but I was wondering if I could model the spaceship in maya and then use it in unity.
One of my worries is the polly count, since the spaceship is rather huge, I believe unity will have to split it up. Second worry is collisions. I guess i could use a mesh collider, but is that not overkill?
Is making interiors in a 3D modeling software common practice, or do people usually make it in unity.
I've looked a bit around the web but I haven't found a satisfying answer to this question yet.
Poly count has plagued us all sometime or another. If you do indeed have a large spaceship you should split it up into multiple levels so it can load individually.
If you have a VERY complicated mesh that requires lots of collision detection, that is the only time you should use mesh colliders because you are essentially duplicating your own mesh again and adding components. If not, remember to name your mesh so the good 'ol box colliders can find them without hassle.
Usually you never really model in unity, it's simply not that kind of software. What I would do with your model is put it in to another software and try to combine meshes form there. You seem to like maya, it actually has allot of useful tools for doing just that. Another great software for doing interiors is trimble sketch up. You have probably head of it, but if not, it is now standard for doing architectural designs.
Good luck, I hope this helped!
Oh, thanks a lot, I never tried sketchup before, it's excellent. this was very helpful indeed, thanks a lot
Answer by Fattie · Dec 26, 2012 at 03:05 PM
Heya Jeango ! Here's the deal ...
when you make video games, very typically - basically "always" - you make the colliders, in the game engine, using primitive colliders. (Indeed, almost always just "boxes", and most of the time .... just "flat boxes" - ! )
About the ONLY time you typically use a mesh collides is for a ground surface (I mean, if the ground is not simply flat - if it's flat you just use two enormous triangles), and indeed for a road in car games. Other than that 99% of colliders in video games are "cubes" and once in a blue moon you use a sphere.
{It's an amazing realization that all the video games we play all the time - the colliders in them only very roughly match the visual shapes of the dragons, tanks, spaceships, etc.}
This question comes up often on this site: a new developer will say like this: "So, I have this ace model and I put it in Unity. What the hell do you mean I now have to sit there and add colliders myself? Isn't this automatic? Can't I use the mesh or something?" The answer is just that.. you have to do it yourself by hand
Of course -- specifically in the case of a building -- from Maya you may be able to make a mesh that is just a series of squares (1 square == a pair of tris) sitting in the correct way to form the walls. Of course, that is great and you can do that.
Secondly: note that you can have a really amazingly large number of tris with no problem, often the issue just never comes up
Thirdly: as ina says, buildings really don't need many tris. The interior of a cube (a room) has only 12 tris! A straight corridor 18 miles long has only .. 12 tris. If thr corridot bends 90 degrees over say 100 meters, you still only need, say 20 sections, it's only 100-odd tris.
Fourthly just as you intimate, culling is a huge part of 3D work. If you have some mouldings or balconies or whatever, with zillions of tris, the pipeline will only render those when they can be seen or when they are nearby - in time, you have to master all these processes (both manual and automatic culling of all types) and every single little detail about culling in Unity3D specifically. (But, don't forget point 2 - you'll be amazed how little it matters, just go ahead and make big spaceship interiors.)
Fifthly - as a very general rule and in relation to point 4. Don't import "one big house". Do it in sections, each room, etc, it's own section.
Note that you have to be hip to convex colliders and the like. Documentation/Documentation/Components/class-MeshCollider.html As something of a rule, you can only have the one mesh collider in your game (ie, typically the ground - if it's not flat - or maybe the walls in your case.)
Hope it helps!
PS if you're doing space ship interiors, at some point you may need this big trick! :) http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/299407/character-collision-of-walls-inside-moving-ship.html
wow, that's what one could call a comprehensive answer :-) I wasn't thinking of making the ship move but that'll be an interesting read when time comes :-)
thanks a bunch
it's nothing, de rien !! http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/292333/how-to-calculate-swipe-speed-on-ios.html
I wonder what the LONGEST ANSWER is in the database here?! Hope it helps!
Answer by ina · Dec 23, 2012 at 11:48 AM
You can always low-poly optimize the spaceship. There are lots of good spaceships less than 5000 polys on Turbosquid and on the Asset Store.
You can use either the mesh itself as collider or just rough-out colliders
You can also use a very, very low res mesh for colliders, or a bunch of them. Convex colliders are also pretty nice to use since they generally offer more stability but are limited to 255 (?) verts IIRC.
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