Transcript:
In this tutorial, you will learn how to import 3D models to your UNIGINE project. Unigine supports the most popular 3D data formats: FBX OBJ 3DS DAE (collada). FBX is the format supported by most 3D editors and can contain meshes, animations, lights, cameras, etc. Therefore, it is recommended to use FBX as an intermediate file format to bring your 3D models to Unigine. Let’s import an FBX asset. We can click. Import and select the asset. The Import Settings window appears. There are plenty of import options available for geometry materials and textures, other elements, including animations, joints, cameras and so on As well as additional settings such as Up and Front axes, Animation Frame Rate and others. As all necessary, options are set, we can click. Yes, to import our model. Now we have an FBX asset in our project. We can preview it in the Asset Browser window. Take note that all import options are available in the Parameters window. So you can change them later and re-import your asset. You can see there is a materials folder created next to your FBX asset. It contains material assets generated using the parameters of materials of the imported 3D model. The following source parameters will be used automatically: diffuse (albedo) color specular color emission color. Unigine uses its own advanced material system so other parameters should be adjusted manually. If we open our FBX asset, we’ll see its contents converted into UNIGINE built-in types. Here we have three meshes representing different variations of the object that can be used as levels of detail and the parent object represented by node. We can drag the FBX asset directly to the scene viewport and place it on the scene. A new node will be created and added to the World Hierarchy. You can use the Move to Camera option to place the node in front of the camera. A dummy node is created as a parent for the hierarchy of your model represented by static meshes. Each mesh has surfaces corresponding to the parts of the imported model with different materials assigned. After importing geometry, we can set up materials that were created for the surfaces. Let’s start with textures First. We create a separate folder to store them. Then we select and import all necessary images. Various types are supported. Now we can adjust necessary options and assign imported textures by simply dragging them to the corresponding fields in the Parameter’s window. So our model looks much better now. For an FBX asset that contains different variations of an object, we can organize the levels of detail automatically. Let’s change import settings for our asset. You can access them anytime via the Parameter’s window After selecting the asset in the Asset Browser To apply new parameters to your asset, just click Reimport after changing them So to generate levels of detail, we should enable the Combine by Postfixes option. It uses name postfixes to define levels of details. Here we should specify their total number. The name postfix that will determine each LOD and the minimum visibility distance for it Click. Apply to confirm your changes and place your asset on the scene. As you can see, the re-imported model is now represented by a single static mesh instead of the hierarchy of meshes. This mesh has several surfaces, corresponding to the parts of the model, having different materials and different LODs. All LOD settings are set up automatically. Importing the animated skinned mesh is also simple. This time, let us consider another way of importing models. Suppose we’ve already prepared all necessary textures and materials. So first, we import all textures and put them to the textures folder. Then we create the materials folder and put there all materials required for our model. In this case, when importing a model, UNIGINE will automatically assign materials by names. But be careful with the Overwrite Materials option. You should disable it when you already got the materials for the model in your project. We’re importing an animated model so we should enable the Import Animation’s option. You can also set the desired framerate in the corresponding field below. So we click OK and place our model on the scene. You can see that all materials and textures are assigned automatically. Now, if you open the hierarchy of the imported model, you’ll find a skinned mesh. In the corresponding tab of the Parameters window, you can see the list of imported animations and play them Don’t forget to enable animation globally using the PLAY/PAUSE control. Now we’ve got a flying copter. We can control animation playback, select necessary animations and frames via the Node Tab. Unigine allows you to import heavy models too such as CAD models, for example. Let’s take an FBX file with a huge CAD model. Click YES, and we get the model in our project. CAD models contain multiple meshes, as well as identical materials often with different names. We can optimize the imported model via specific import options. First, we can combine all meshes into a single one using the Merge Static Meshes option. In this case, each mesh will be splitted into parts by materials and these parts will become surfaces of a single mesh. We can also merge all the surfaces having the same materials. Now we’ve got a single mesh with only eight surfaces. Let’s enable the wireframe mode to see all the polygons of our mesh. As you can see, various 3D models can be imported to your UNIGINE project, including animated ones and even heavy CAD models. For more information on content, import and optimization, please refer to our online documentation.