Samuel Watts Unit 68 - 3D environments : HA12 Task 5

Below is the design map I chose as a foundation to build my environment, this helped me to realise what starting assets I would need to begin shaping the 3D environment.

Below are the steps on how I built my terrain:

DISCLAIMER: The only asset not made by me used in this build is the skybox, everything else has been crafted and moulded by me.

To start off I went into a 3D modelling application known as blender and began to create assets using skills I had learned from previous work and using youtube for other areas. The three screenshots below show what kind of modelling I did and the textures I would add. The look of the assets were originally supposed to be detailed but for the size that I wanted my environment to be I chose against that and went with low polygonal shapes and basic textures.

After creating a lot of the base assets I began to model the world in unity by importing a terrain object and moulding the terrain to match the idea of my design product, I moulded it so there were different levels of ground making it look more natural and taking away from the flat ground that would be seen if the whole terrain was flat.

Then I went into Unity and made several colours of grass, stone and pathway looking to paint the landscape with. Once importing them I over the first colour (since the whole terrain would instantly be coloured by the first PNG) with green in the area where the character would play, then I got the beige colour and painted a path that the player would be able to follow.

Next I added a water tile into the environment and changed the colour so it was a brighter blue to make the colours really stand out, I copied and pasted multiple ones to look like a river flowing through a canyon.

Then I imported a rope bridge made with blender and connected the two separated pieces of land, since I was following my design pack I knew that the player would spawn in there and so created that first so I could test the sizing of the assets and terrain.

I also added in the log cabin I built along with adding the assets build for the inside. Since it was too dark I decided to add some lighting with particle effects so that the player can see within the cabin. It also added to the inside which is quite bare with its contents.

The next step was to add grass since this would take a lot of time and be very tedious I decided to get it out of the way early, it also helped me to place assets in better locations so I could make the world look more filled in places where it actually isn't.

Over on the other side of the terrain I decided to make a mountain and add a waterfall to offer the landscape something new. I also planted a skull into the side of the mountain to add to the fantasy feel for the player and making the environment feel like it has a story.

Since it was a forest I decided to finally implement my trees, using the pine trees for the ridges since they fill out more space in the gaps between each other, it makes the area look more dense without actually having too much in there.

I also added in my regular trees but made them appear less as to not take the view of the world away from the player and blur it completely with trees.

The next step was to add flat type rocks into the pathway making it look more gravel like and adding a small but needed detail.

After looking at the mountain and seeing how flat and non detailed it looked I decided to add several types of differently made rock assets to the mountain giving it more of a 3D popping effect and ominous overtone.

The rest of the build was adding small details like some small rocks around the area, mushrooms and an area light to make them look like they glow in the dark, rocks at the start to look like there is more going on, painting the sides of the rivers and mountain with different opacities of colour to give it a mouldy rock texture etc.

This is what my build looks like from the sky with all assets inside of it.

Finally, I added a skybox which I downloaded from the unity store, this was the last essential item needed but since I had no experience in skybox's or how to create them decided to use one from the store. This gave the world more life and let it look more colourful than the grainy default skybox. I also made the shadows strength emitted from object lower as this allowed colours and objects to still be seen in the way of a shadow.

All Assets:

Some of the assets shown below are not textured as I found that the texturing could be done within the unity engine and so I would create materials and match them up to the needed areas of an object and texture the object later in unity as to see what colours work within the unity engine and what need to be changed.

Log Cabin