Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6.33
Finished Particle
Emitter systems.
upsampling at the wrong time (Detail Distance), take a look at this section
where all these attributes can be tweaked for a more seamless experience.
Remember that it is important for performance to have trees that are indeed
far away to be billboards and detail meshes to be very low poly when they
are far from the player. The quick solution a lot of students employ is to just
crank these settings up (or down) so that all the trees are never billboard
(for instance), but this starts to defeat the whole point of allowing Unity to
generate these dynamic terrains. It takes a little tweaking to get the settings
just right, but it's worth it when the game looks beautiful
and
plays smoothly.
Conclusion
In the course of this one chapter, we have created a great deal of assets solely
within Unity. Largely these have not been objects to interact with (although
theoretically they could be), but rather objects to add style or atmospheric effects.
The scene has some great things happening. The scale feels good, the previously
modeled level is now surrounded by mountains with trees and rocks to hide the
transitions. The atmosphere of steaming water and thick fog give the scene both
movement and a cold feel. However despite all this, the scene still feels very flat
at times because of the evenly lit scene. This is a result of that shortcut of adding
ambient light to the scene. Everything is lit, but everything is lit the same.
In the next chapter we will continue in Unity and look at lighting the scene so
that it has a sense of light and shadow and visual depth. Lighting is one of the
most important parts of getting a scene to look “right.” Taking time to get the
lighting right and then baking that lighting in will start to make the scene feel
complete and ready to play.
