Autos and Barbed Wire

With a small degree of exploration we now have a workflow that allows us to appropriate Google 3D warehouse models for use in the Unity3d world. Some of the models are so basic that we're not really saving that much. Others, however, have been finely crafted and are saving us a considerable amount of 3D modeling time. Modeling aside, UV mapping and texturing are needed in any case. Our general working knowledge of UV mapping techniques has blossomed. This affords us the ability to make professional and high quality objects. We did try and decided against using Maya to bake the shadows onto each texture.





One thing we did was to take the 2 hand drawn maps we have and try to put them in-world to the appropriate scale. This helps us with a more accurate build and solves a lot of scaling questions we had about the buildings, cars and surrounding topography. Robyn said this is the most accurate we've been yet!


This is a decent example of Unity3d's tree creator tool. This tree was generated procedurally with just a few clicks and slider drags.


Here's a pulled back shot of Block 4. Barbed wire fence, old trailer and some junky old cars are starting to meet the personality of the photos Robyn shot. It's kind of neat to make some of these 3D virtual shots line up almost exactly to the real thing!


Closer detail of the old trailer and van. Both are Google 3D warehouse models we retextured and cleaned up.


Detail of the van front. We had a particular problem with that grill. Unity3d only will apply texture to one side of any 3d object. The other sides aren't rendered and just don't exist to Unity. Turns out that the "outside" of that van's grill was seen as the "inside". The result was us seeing right through the van ... which was unacceptable! Ultimately, we just remodeled that one small piece and UV mapped/textured it out to give us a useful model.


Google's 3D warehouse even has air conditioning units. We UV mapped/textured this one and plunked it right in Unity. Admittedly, this would be easy to model but in the grander scheme of things any trimming we can get on our workload is very welcome.


Another Google 3D Warehouse model. Lots of great detail. If anything, the UV mapping was a bit more challenging. Originally, there was no textures and just flat color shaders. You couldn't really see the car's details and it stuck out like a sore thumb against the buildings we labored over to make realistic. A little texturing and we're good to go.