Live Training 7 Oct 2013 – Models and Materials – Unity – 52:30
In this video they cover the concepts of models, materials, shaders, and textures in Unity. Unity tutor: Mike Geig.
2:26 – A mesh is basically a collection of 3D points that when combined together define some physical presence or physicality of some object.
2:55 – The model is what contains the mesh, texture, shader, or any other material or component.
3:35 – Every mesh is made up of a series of triangles. Keep in mind how many triangles are in your scene, if you have to many it will become slow when trying to process and render all of it.
6:21 – The default diffuse which is called a material, and the material is basically the skin for the mesh that gives us a more robust model experience.
11:12 – If you are prototyping a game and you want to start working on the mechanics or any particular reason that you would need a visual standing without actually having a model. You can use build in primitive objects like a cube and a sphere to make an object similar to what you need so you can start a prototype of the scene or game.
19:17 – Now if need a model that you don’t have you can go to the Unity asset store. You can either get free assets that are made available for people to use or a place where you can buy assets if there is something in particular that you want. Or even somewhere where you can sell assets and models you’ve created. And you could make your own too.
20:14 – Control 9/command 9 to access the asset store.
27:23 – With a model you can apply a models material which is an asset itself, a file. And it has two parts to it, a texture and a shader. The texture and shader is applied to the model material which is applied to the model. – Without textures you can’t see the mesh or object.
40:30 – Using bump diffuse instead of diffuse the normal map gives it texture, a lot of 3D detail. It gives it a textured bumpy look on a brick wall. You can use these to achieve a high level of affect, depth, and quality without adding a lot of rendering time, which slows down the speed and performance.
44:30 – It’s better to back out your camera instead of in closer with a wide range of view. Because if you are up close it gets kind of distorted, or fish eyed as he put it.
47:45 – Normal maps are generally made in whatever software that you use to make the texture. You can make normal maps in Photoshop. Unity can also generate them from the texture.