Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Proprietary meshes create clutter. As mentioned, when importing a Proprietary
mesh, Unity calls upon the mesh's associated software and uses its FBX
Exporter to create an exported version. In doing this, however, Unity asks you no
questions and provides no options. It simply creates an FBX version with default
settings applied. In contrast, if you export a mesh manually to FBX using the
tools in your 3D software, then you'll get finer control and options over exactly
how the FBX is exported and the kinds of meshes and objects in your scene that
should be included in the file. The result is that manually exported FBX files are
typically cleaner and more efficient, because they feature only the data you truly
need. In contrast, the Unity-generated FBX files from proprietary files generally
include plenty of data that you never wanted exported anyway, such as lights,
dummy objects, meshes and faces you forgot to delete, and so on.
Proprietary meshes are unstable. The term unstable is used here in a narrow
but important sense. By “unstable” I mean that importing a proprietary file into
Unity can lead to different results at different times, when different versions
of the 3D modeling software are installed. This is due to possible changes or
updates made to the FBX Exporter. In short, importing a Proprietary mesh with
one version of the 3D software installed will not necessarily produce the same
results when a different version is installed.
Note More information on Proprietary vs. Exported meshes for Unity can be found online at
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/3D-formats.html .
Tip #6: Disable Ambient Lighting
If you build a scene with some meshes but without any lighting, and then play-test it, you'll see
that your scene doesn't appear completely black as you'd expect it to. In other words, your scene
is not in total darkness—even though there are no lights! This base or default illumination is known
as Ambient Light . It represents a non-shadow-casting light that is projected outward from the
scene origin in all directions infinitely, and it affects every mesh surface with equal intensity. That
is completely at odds with how “real world” lighting works, and so Ambient Light rarely produces
believable results. But it's especially useful for lighting a scene during development and early
play-testing. It lets you see “what's going on” before you've added any lights at all. But often
(after creating your own lighting), you'll want to disable Ambient Light entirely.
To do disable Ambient Light, select Edit Render Settings from the Editor main menu to show the
scene render settings in the Object Inspector. From the Inspector, use the Ambient Color swatch to
specify Black RGB (0, 0, 0)—meaning no intensity (see Figure 1-24 ).
 
 
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