Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter
4
Importing Static Assets
While Unity does have a handful of primitive objects, you will be importing most of the 3D art
assets for your games. There are many pre-made assets available for free or for purchase at Unity's
Asset Store. If you are mainly a programmer, or are just looking to prototype a game quickly to test
functionality before creating assets for it, the Asset Store is invaluable. If you are a 3D artist and are
looking forward to creating your own assets, or are in charge of procuring the assets from various
and sundry sources, you will inevitably need to learn how to prepare them for use once imported
into Unity. In this chapter, you will be exploring the importing, preparation, and management of static
assets. Animated assets have different needs and will be covered in Chapter 6.
Supported Formats
Unity supports a large number of formats for imported meshes and textures. It can also read files
directly from many popular DCC (digital content creation) applications, such as Max, Maya, Blender,
Cinema4D, Modo, Lightwave, and Cheetah3D.
3D Assets
There are two main types of 3D models, or
mesh
, formats that Unity will read: standard export file
types and proprietary application file types. The former includes .FBX, .3DS, .dxf, .obj, and .dae
(Collada). The latter type can be read directly from many of the popular DCC applications, such
as .max, .ma, .mb, etc. Besides containing the 3D mesh itself, these file types can store material,
mapping, animation, and even the textures associated with the object's materials.
The important thing to know is that, internally, Unity converts everything to FBX on import. There
are advantages and disadvantages to both import types. The export types are the most generic,
as they can be used immediately by anyone. The downside is that if you update an asset in the
original application, it must be exported into Unity again to be updated. If you are not using SVN
or some other versioning software, this helps you by letting you keep versions of the asset to use
if needed in the future. Keeping the proprietary files directly in your Unity project allows for quick
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