To start this year off I will be learning Unity game development as apart of my Interactive Digital Media course. I have been learning how to use Unity for game development over the holidays and have found it quite easy to learn.

I have mostly done 3D modelling and would like to learn the scripting side of game development. I have done a bit of JavaScript on some websites I have created so I know the basics. I have been doing the challenges on unity3dstudent.com and find it very useful because it actually gives you the opportunity to put the code together yourself.

I have put together a test scene to try out Unity’s features. I modelled a game character and animated it to find out the process of bringing a character into Unity. I started by modelling a low poly character in 3ds Max.Then I UVW mapped it.

I then created a  a high poly model by turbo smoothing the mesh, this will be for the normal map. I then converted this mesh to an editable poly and sculpted it using the paint tools. Using the render to texture tool I projected the high poly normals onto the low poly character to create the normal map.

To rigg it I used bones with IK solvers. I didn’t use the biped because I have heard there are some problems importing the animations into Unity. I then animated the walk and idle animations one after the other in the same scene. I did this so I could easily split the animations up in Unity.

To make my character work I used the character controller & third person scripts that come with unity. For the camera I used an orbit camera script that comes with the Lerpz tutorial. Have a look below at what I’ve done so far and if you have any questions let me know and I will make a tutorial :D