Download: 3D Games - Unity & Cinema4D page01

3D Games - Unity & Cinema4D page01

Cinema 4D / 3D principles

Edges – otherwise known XYZ – Dimensions up/down, left/ as “verteces” (or a ‘vertex’, right and back/forward singular) are lines between 2 points on a model. Use RGB Arrows – Red (x), Green (y), the edge tool to manipulate Blue (z) – blue should be forward these. facing Normals – The visible Primitive – Basic 3D object creatable from the faces of a model that a Cinema 4D menu : texture maps to. In the example of a cube to the right, the normals would be the outer (orange) faces, with the inside of the cube not being mapped to.

C4D Primary Tools

Polygons – Make a primitive editable Model Tool – the main tool to have by pressing “C” on the keyboard or selected when using Scale, Move or selecting the button pictured right. Rotate, this simply addresses the whole This turns a primitive into a Polygon. model A Polygon is a face made up of triangles, and occasionally these go missing when exporting Polygon Tool – the tool to select when to other packages, such as Unity, to fix this, you manipulating properties of a face should perform triangulation. Edge Tool – to manipulate verteces of a Triangulation – Found in the functions menu, this model fills in any lost polygons, by checking the model for areas which will develop gaps upon export. Point tool – to manipulate points of a model, to add additional points, go to Structure >add point, then reselect the cursor to continue manipulating the existing points. Faces – Selectable polygons / surfaces C4D Structure Tools that you can select with the face tool in Knife – Cuts a new vertex into an existing face of order to manipulate / a model, you should have the Edge (vertex) tool extrude etc, 3D Games - Unity & Cinema4D page02 selected on the left in In the example (below left) a 5x5 segmented order to use this. cube is being manipulated with the point tool, In the image to the right, more points could be added to this to allow finer a knife has been used adjustment between the existing points. to cut between 2 vertical verteces of a cube. Bridge Create a new face between verteces that have no interconnecting polygons. This requires the Edge Tool to be selected. In the example to the right, i’m Extrude Inner bridging a gap thats been cut into the cube too far into the Creates a new face top face - in the front face i’ve within a face, in order only cut2x1segments out, but to make a surface in the top i’ve mistakenly cut for extrusion. Select2x2segments, so the bridge a face with the Face tool is needed to create a face Tool and then right between 2 verteces, which click and select creates what is shown in the “Extrude Inner” then lower image. drag to the left to create an inner face (see above). Extrude Pulls a face in or out C4D Other Essentials depending on which direction you drag, the example below, View Controls the inner extrusion from the example to In the top right of each viewport the right has been extruded inward. are the view controls, from left to right “Pan”, “Zoom”, “Rotate”, “Switch Views” (the latter of which switches Add Point between all 4 views and maximising the selected window). This adds a new point onto a vertex of a model, whilst in point mode. Having placed one or more new points, reselect the cursor to continue manipulating points., 3D Games - Unity & Cinema4D page03 Materials Materials are typically textures to apply to surfaces of models. Cinema has its own dedicated materials window to act as a space to create materials and browse what you have made. Materials utilising an image texture rather than just a colour require the base image need to be scaled as a power of 2 - eg. 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512 pixels. Objects Window The objects window acts as a library of everything in the scene, allowing adjustment of heriarchy, attached materials and various behaviors of objects, based upon child / parent relationships. Please read on to the next page for an introduction to the Unity3D interface., 3D Games - Unity & Cinema4D page04

The Unity Interface

Unity3D’s interface looks like this ... This is just one of Unity’s potential GUI (graphical user interface) layouts, accesible by using keyboard shortcut Command/Apple & 4, or by going to Window > Layouts > 2 Split. Other layouts are also available here, I will be using the 2 split layout for the purpose of this exercise just as a personal preference.

Marked Areas

1) Scene View - An ‘editor’ window allowing you to navigate and organize your 3D world 2) Game View - Upon hitting “Play” in the bottom left of the screen, you’ll compile and preview the gameplay in this window. As standard this view will be taken from whatever camera is active. 3) Hierarchy Panel - This is the list of objects in the game, listed in alphabetical order. Objects can be removed from the game by selecting them in the Hierarchy view and using Command(apple) & Backspace., 3D Games - Unity & Cinema4D page05 4) Project Panel - The project panel lists all Assets “assets” (usable objects) that are located in your project’s Assets folder. Similar to the Library in Assets are items used to make up your game Flash that you may be familiar with. - models, images, sound files, scripts are all examples of these. 5) Inspector - The Inspector, much like the property inspector in Applications such as Flash Levels and Dreamweaver contains settings for the object currently selected. Levels are the individual game scenes that make up your game, these get linked together when you

View Controls create a build of your game.

The 4 View control buttons are accessible (left to Build right) via the Q,W,E and R keys on the keyboard, and perform the following - An exported version of your game containing all of its levels, which can either be an application, or an Q - Pan View html page and web package. Q with Alt key held - Rotate View Game Objects Q with Command(apple) key held - Zoom A game object can be defined as any active object in your game, they do not technically add any W - Move Object functionality to the game but are simply holders for components. E - Rotate Object For example, a Light in the game is simply an R - Scale Object empty game object with a light component. In the same way, empty game objects can be added and Remember, you needn’t hold Q,W,E, or R, they given components such as scripts, rigidbodies, simply switch view modes, the alt/command keys particle systems, you name it. you’ll need to hold. The way most developers work with game objects Also, to zoom in to a currently selected item, press is to create them in the scene and then drag F on the keyboard. them to a new “Prefab” so that they are infinitely duplicatable.

Essential Unity Concepts Prefab

Projects A prefab is a ready made object with various components attached. These are set up in such a way A project is a folder containing your entire game that they can be “Instantiated” (created) in the game and all its assets environment, retaining their components / scripts, without having to be present when the level begins., 3D Games - Unity & Cinema4D page06

Colliders GUI Texture

Colliders are invisible surroundings of a model in your A GUI Texture element in your game is a graphical game that are present to check for collisions with other element that is also superimposed on the Main models (and therefore their colliders). So when for Camera’s view. example, you fire a bullet at an enemy in a first person shooter, the physics engine of the game engine (in this These can be used for a number of purposes such as case, Unity’s Ageia engine) is constantly checking to see menus, and displaying items on a First Person HUD if the collider for the bullet overlaps that of something (heads up display). else, and if it overlaps the collider of an enemy, it will call a function in a script to destroy the enemy. Materials There are several types of colliders, and ideally you Much the same as their Cinema 4D counterparts, these should select a type of collider that is of a similar shape materials contain textures to wrap on models, which can to the model it is being applied to - eg. for crates, you also be done in Unity as well as in Cinema beforehand. should select a “Box Collider”, and for something like a car wheel, a “Sphere collider”(or the custom “wheel Physic Materials collider”) is appropriate. For complex shapes, there is the “Mesh Collider”, which is usually the one applied to “Physic Materials” which govern the way a surface of a imported maps. Game Object behaves - eg. bouncy, slippery etc. Note: Mesh colliders will not collide with other mesh colliders, so do not attempt to place any weighted SkyBoxes (rigidbody) objects into the Scene with a mesh collider, as they will fall through the map. A Sky box is a cubic set of 6 images (front, back, left, right, top, bottom) which make up the view of the world “in the distance” in order to fake real surroundings.

Rigidbodies

a Rigidbody is a physical presence to a gameObject. Without this, gameObject will float statically wherever Video Tutorials you place it, uneffected by gravity or other physics, and unable to be assigned with a velocity. The Unity team have released a set of video tutorials on Unity Basics with Unity version 1.6. To watch them, or

Scripts download to watch on your iPod, visit -

Scripts are written in order to perform the many http://unity3d.com/Tutorials/Video/ functions of your game, without them, your game simply would not do much! Scripts contain many functions, My Video tutorials for the 6 week 3D games unit, are which either run constantly or only under certain available online at - conditions (eg. upon collision of objects). http://www.willgoldstone.com/vidtutes

GUI Text If you have any questions about this subject, or any

interactive media enquiries, feel free to email me - A GUItext element in your game is a text element that is overlayed on the Main Camera. You can then write email is hidden scripts to control what that GUItext element displays (eg. running score total, health, lives left etc).]

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