Unity 3D Game Engine - Show you can help build games
The Unity Game Engine is a free game engine with a built-in editor.
To build games you import assets into the editor and build scenes; Then you play them.
There is an active, thriving community around Unity, so support and ideas for solving your problems will be easy to find.
To build games you import assets into the editor and build scenes; Then you play them.
- The free version can export programs that will work on Windows.
- The free version will import assets that are built with Carrara, among many other things.
There is an active, thriving community around Unity, so support and ideas for solving your problems will be easy to find.
What does this mean for you?
What if you had a little game, or maybe not so much as a game, but an environment, that a person could "visit".
This environment would show assets of many types that folks could travel through.
Buildings, a garden. Businesses with logos that you designed. A bakery, a candle shop, an internet cafe.
You could walk into the shops and talk to shop keepers.
The characters wouldn't be static, just standing around but actually moving with animations.
They might respond if you went up to talk to them. They might actually talk - recorded audio.
You could incorporate jokes and a simple story line.
The entire little world could be incremental. It will be simple as you start, but over time you could add more to it.
And unlike what happened with Maya, you will not lose the licenses and suddenly not have access to all your assets.
You will be able to incrementally make this better over the years as you have time to work on it.
You could even incorporate things into it from your other jobs.
What if the person came across a bridal shop in the quaint little town and went into the shop and the NPC there talked a little about the person who used to work there?
What if you had a little game, or maybe not so much as a game, but an environment, that a person could "visit".
This environment would show assets of many types that folks could travel through.
Buildings, a garden. Businesses with logos that you designed. A bakery, a candle shop, an internet cafe.
You could walk into the shops and talk to shop keepers.
The characters wouldn't be static, just standing around but actually moving with animations.
They might respond if you went up to talk to them. They might actually talk - recorded audio.
You could incorporate jokes and a simple story line.
The entire little world could be incremental. It will be simple as you start, but over time you could add more to it.
And unlike what happened with Maya, you will not lose the licenses and suddenly not have access to all your assets.
You will be able to incrementally make this better over the years as you have time to work on it.
You could even incorporate things into it from your other jobs.
What if the person came across a bridal shop in the quaint little town and went into the shop and the NPC there talked a little about the person who used to work there?
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What will your little world look like?
There are so many sources of inspiration as I'm sure you know. Of course you will pick a style for your first village or forest or whatever environment strikes your fancy. But if you want to explore another style, all you need to do is travel to another place in the "game" and it can be of any style. The world is up to you. These are pictures from Pinterest when I searched for Quaint Little Shop. |
The art of Richard Burns.
You might base your theme on the work of a particular artist so that the artwork will be in a consistent style. As you grow the environment over the months or years in the future, each new part you add could be in a different style. Of course you know you want it to be eye catching and show that you know how to design and implement interesting and appealing ideas. But you don't need to do it all at once. You can start simple with a few buildings or whatever and then grow it as you have time. Google images for Richard Burns Artist. [not the race car driver]. ;) |
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From my study so far. Unity and Carrara work together to allow you to build games.
Or in your case, perhaps a living world that folks would download, and install and visit. Not the first work of yours that they will see.
They will see the website, and the videos on YouTube embedded on your site.
But maybe some of the videos will be of you visiting your world? Or screen shots from your world.
[Of course you can use Fraps to capture video / audio of you visiting your world.]
Maybe this is a more interesting way to make video assets. Certainly it shows off the animations, and so much more.
You don't have to build a working "game" necessarily. But it will be an interactive place to visit.
You don't want to get bogged down building many of the same things over and over again. For example, you don't want to spend hours building a dozen different human figures for your world. Any animations that the folks have might be simple. Just one chatting animation and one standing animation.
You may not want to have the person visiting the world get stopped reading bubbles [or subtitles]. But it's easy to record audio narration - both to describe the world and to have the NPCs communicate. After all the NPCs in the world will be describing it. I suspect that a lot of the NPCs will be women talking in your voice. But some might talk in a male's voice. Perhaps you find a man to do some narration.
What if the world were described in audio as you walked around in it? You don't need an NPC to do the talking. Just walking by a spot can trigger an audio clip.
Or in your case, perhaps a living world that folks would download, and install and visit. Not the first work of yours that they will see.
They will see the website, and the videos on YouTube embedded on your site.
But maybe some of the videos will be of you visiting your world? Or screen shots from your world.
[Of course you can use Fraps to capture video / audio of you visiting your world.]
Maybe this is a more interesting way to make video assets. Certainly it shows off the animations, and so much more.
You don't have to build a working "game" necessarily. But it will be an interactive place to visit.
You don't want to get bogged down building many of the same things over and over again. For example, you don't want to spend hours building a dozen different human figures for your world. Any animations that the folks have might be simple. Just one chatting animation and one standing animation.
You may not want to have the person visiting the world get stopped reading bubbles [or subtitles]. But it's easy to record audio narration - both to describe the world and to have the NPCs communicate. After all the NPCs in the world will be describing it. I suspect that a lot of the NPCs will be women talking in your voice. But some might talk in a male's voice. Perhaps you find a man to do some narration.
What if the world were described in audio as you walked around in it? You don't need an NPC to do the talking. Just walking by a spot can trigger an audio clip.
Unity can import assets from many places, including Carrara.
As you can see, importing 3D assets into Carrara is no problem.
As you can see, importing 3D assets into Carrara is no problem.
- We have yet to try whether an entire scene can be imported?
- What about a small village with a terrain, trees, plants and buildings already in place?
- Perhaps it's better to bring the parts in separately.
- If you import a building, can you then walk inside that building in the game?
- Can you place objects inside the building?
- There are dozens of questions. But it's free, and I hope, simple to find out.
Game Engines are Complex
But no more complex than tools you are used to dealing with.
The assets are added and scripts are added to those assets to change their behavior.
Full fledged games are very complex, mostly because of the very large numbers of assets and scripts / etc. that are added. But there aren't that many different asset types and the scripting language is not as complex as "C" for what you want to do.
There's another "Dynamic Shader" language of some type that creates particles, glowing effects etc.
We aren't talking about building a complete game, only a small world to visit. So what kind of assets and behaviors are you going to need?
But no more complex than tools you are used to dealing with.
The assets are added and scripts are added to those assets to change their behavior.
Full fledged games are very complex, mostly because of the very large numbers of assets and scripts / etc. that are added. But there aren't that many different asset types and the scripting language is not as complex as "C" for what you want to do.
There's another "Dynamic Shader" language of some type that creates particles, glowing effects etc.
We aren't talking about building a complete game, only a small world to visit. So what kind of assets and behaviors are you going to need?
- Static 3D assets like buildings, terrains, plants and other props.
- Animated assets like human figures or animals, the NPCs or Non-Player Characters.
- "Dynamic Shader" assets like glowing windows, floating snow or fairy dust in the air.
- Sounds like background sounds [water, birds, wind], and narration for the NPCs.
- Scripts to trigger behaviors, either all the time or as the "visitor" shows up to look at your world. These should be fairly simple compared with the other items. Most of the work should go into the artwork.
It works!
Proof of Concept.
Using video tutorials on YouTube, I created a game maze in Carrara's vertex modeller and then moved that maze into Unity3D and moved through the maze using the WASD keys and the mouse. This shows that Carrara can be used to create assets for Unity3D and that a Walkthrough style game can be created.
Many other video tutorials exist for all sorts of operations such as behaviors of game objects, playing sounds, particle shaders, and so forth. Finding out how to use both Carrara and Unity3D should be no problem.
Using video tutorials on YouTube, I created a game maze in Carrara's vertex modeller and then moved that maze into Unity3D and moved through the maze using the WASD keys and the mouse. This shows that Carrara can be used to create assets for Unity3D and that a Walkthrough style game can be created.
Many other video tutorials exist for all sorts of operations such as behaviors of game objects, playing sounds, particle shaders, and so forth. Finding out how to use both Carrara and Unity3D should be no problem.
Here is the game maze in Carrara where it was created in the vertex modeller.
This process took about six hours, which is not bad for being new to Carrara and to Unity3D.
This process took about six hours, which is not bad for being new to Carrara and to Unity3D.
What can you show with Unity that is different than other applicants for that job?
- You are showing that you understand more than they taught in school. You've been keeping up with technology in your area.
- You have presented something new and interesting, no matter how they consume it. Whether they look at screenshots of your world, or watch a video of your world, or download and visit your world, they will get the idea that you went way beyond the normal "portfolio".
- You will show that you know how Game Engines work, as an Artist. So you are ready to join a team as a designer of assets for games, or anything else they have in mind.
You are showing you are ready!