Asset Creation: Unity Scenography Importing - Creating Games with Unity and Maya - page 100

The Materials folder is new since the EntryWay.fbx was imported. When Unity
imported the .fbx and understood what it was, it created this folder and in it
are all the materials that Unity has applied to the polygon meshes you built in
Maya. We will be adjusting the attributes of these materials as time goes on.
Generally, there is little need to mess with this folder or its organization.
The EntryWay.fbm folder is the result (and benefit) of manually exporting
the .fbx file from Maya. In this folder are all the texture files created for use in
Maya. These specifically are the texture files that are used on the geometry
contained in EntryWay.fbx.
EntryWay with its unique icon is the Prefab of the imported Maya .fbx. This is the
model created in Maya with the materials attached to the meshes. To understand
what this is, we need to talk nomenclature for a minute.
Unity Nomenclature
GameObject
GameObjects are essentially things in your scene—anything that is in the
scene is a GameObject. GameObjects can be thought of as containers; they
can contain all sorts of components including cameras, lights, geometry,
audio sources, audio listeners, and so on. GameObjects can hold lots of
components at once. For instance, look at the Hierarchy panel of the scene
and there is a Main Camera object there. This is a GameObject with a Camera
component on it. If the Main Camera is selected in the Hierarchy panel, the
Inspector will show all the components that are actually attached to this
GameObject (including an Audio Listener).
Sometimes, certain GameObjects include other important items like
geometry. Looking at the Project panel, the prefab EntryWay is a type of
GameObject that includes meshes with attached materials.
Prefabs
Prefabs are GameObjects that can be reused. Sometimes these prefabs
contain meshes, as EntryWay does, but they can also contain other types of
components (audio, texture, text, particles, etc.). When prefabs are dragged
into the Hierarchy panel (or into the Scene view, which also then populates
the Hierarchy panel), an instance or copy is made in the scene. Multiple
instances can be placed in the scene, and if the original prefab is ever altered
the changes inherit down to all the instances placed within the scene.
Scenes
Unity thinks of Scenes in the same way that Maya does. A Unity scene file will
contain lots of different assembled assets. Any particular game may contain
several scenes that the player passes through over the course of the game.
A scene can contain a single prefab, or many. Often multiple scenes can make for