- Home /
What is the best and optimized way to export/import 3d objects into unity
hi...
I'm a little bit confused here... I know how to export objects from 3dsmax and import them in unity but what I dunno is that how many objects should I export-select and apply Unwrap UVW at once? Say we have a huge scene containing many many objects (I dunno, lots of buildings, street posts and so on in 3dsmax). Now what is the best way of attaching objects and mapping materials to them ? Should I attach objects accordin to their Collisions or mapping materials in unity ? Should I export-select every single object without caring about materials, drawcalls and so forth ? Is it really ok to model a huge scene in 3d applications at once? if not how am I gonna fine-tune the exact location of objects ? should I model any object in a new project and then import and fine-tune them in unity instead of modeling everything in 3d applications ? OMG this is really confusing...
I found some of the answers here but it didn't cover everything: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/23513/3ds-max-unity-the-best-way-to-import-a-multisub-ob.html
I googled a lot and I can't seem 2 find any answer regardin the optimized way of doin so... my project has stalled coz I dunno what to do...
any help would be appreciated...
This doesn't answer all of your questions but I think the best practice is to export each type of object separately (e.g. you'd have one model for a street post), then use Unity to place multiple copies of those objects in a level. But then again I'm pretty sure there's more than one "right way" to do it and there probably are some cases where modeling a whole scene at once would give acceptable results, depending on your target platform and game type.
It's really good to export objects separately and instantiate the prefabs in Unity to be able to make any future changes easily but fine-tunning in unity is a little bit difficult for me... Now that I know there's no straight forward answer for that and it's kinda like a trial error practice to master, well I'm not afraid anymore to go for it...
thanks js... that was really helpful.
Answer by reptilebeats · Jun 17, 2012 at 11:41 AM
i think it doesnt really matter how you do it, one of my levels i constructed the entire building in a 3d modelling program but this can be more annoying in the long run and can take more space. say for instance i have ten lights all the same made in 3d max (i use blender) when i then import this into unity it will create a mesh for each object.
then if you create another level with a lot of the same stuff you will have to do the same. you could make the level in max and then import each object seperatly only doing the same objects once..
i personaly and i think most will say the same is draw out a level plan first and then create all the objects seperatly in a model program, when you have a fairly large asset collection it will be a lot quicker to create levels. then when i import into unity i have that one mesh instead of 50 different meshes. plus you have more easier control over each individual object.
for textures the best method that i can suggest is making atlases and combining objects to reduce draw calls, so say i have about 30 small items like trash cans and what not all close together if they all share the same atlas/texture then the draw call will be one.
if you want to edit objects inside unity you will have to download gamedraw, sort of modelling program for unity.
oh another method i use for textures is to try and make one full texture not positioned to a uv, so say i need a stone texture for a fountain, ins$$anonymous$$d of making it to the uv cords i will make one full texture so that i can use it on multiple items.
however this will cause seems to be visable if the object is unwraped, which i do to create difference on the object, so i try to make the unrap seem somewhere it isnt going to be visable
Thanks $$anonymous$$icheal. nicely explained. WOW gamedraw looks sexy. it's really cool to have anything inside unity. nice find. BTW... any tutorial on how to create atlas ? I hear it's kind of a third party program which generates atlas and nothing to tweak inside unity itself.
the way i create atlases is to simply have all the textures the same size, so all $$anonymous$$e are 1024, and then make a large image in photoshop set as the max size that unity will take so 4096. so in total i have 16 images in a single atlas.
then simply change the shader tiling to 0.25 or 0.5 depending on size, it will always be 1 quarter removed though until the first image is visable.
the hard part is moving the u's position by one, but i beleive there is a free tool that does this and then you can simply move the uv by the textures position in the atlas. always going in +1.
so say the texture i want to use is 3rd along and two up i simply add 3 to the uv's x position and 2 to the y position of the uv. once set just save as a prefab and use that ins$$anonymous$$d of original object
you could also do this with smaller textures to get double the amount of images inside an atlas or make the atlas larger but it will be reduced on import and quality halved. you do lose a lot of space from textures with wasted space but its the most simplest method
if you like the look of gamedraw i would purchase now rather than later as price is gunna go up a lot probably about 150, i missed out on the sale but worth every penny. bnit buggy at the mo but with enough tweaking should be a solid investment.
also wanted to mention to press v on the keyboard when aligning objects as this will give u more precision
Your answer
Follow this Question
Related Questions
What is the best way to export textures with objects? 2 Answers
Blender -> Unity Confusion 2 Answers
Importing .blend files from blender2.49b to unity 1 Answer
animation blender to unity problem 0 Answers
A node in a childnode? 1 Answer