Posts by Category: Unity 3D
Importing Blender Data into Unity 3D
Just to see how it worked, I decided to try and save a simple scene in Blender (ok, really simple in fact, the default cube) and import it into my trial version of Unity 3D.
Unity reported a problem with the importing of .blend files, "Blender could not convert the .blend file to FBX file". I posted on the Unity forum and got some useful feedback but didn't get a final solution. Following some advice elsewhere on the same forum, I finally resolved this issue by uninstalling Blender 2.49a and deleting files from the C:\Documents and Settings\
Import into Unity now seems to work.
Posted by Graham Blake on 18th August 2009 at 13:05
Unity 3D
When I was growing up I owned a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. Because I was that sort of chap, it was my ambition to emulate the guy that wrote Jet Set Willy and make a small fortune writing computer games. I began to learn Z80 assembler and began to draw-up designs for games. My problem was that I enjoyed coming up with the ideas, and writing about them, more than I enjoyed writing assembler. My other problem, which is still with me to this day to some degree, was not being able to stick to one task. I always found that, as I was mid-way through designing one game, I'd have a seemingly brilliant idea for another game. I'd then drop my original idea and work on the next idea. That kept happening and sometimes I would go full circle and come back to an idea that I had months previously. What does this have to do with game design? Absolutely nothing what-so-ever; it has more to do with my own issues with staying-power.
My point here is that I've had an ambition to write computer games for many, many years and that ambition, I've realised more recently, hasn't gone away completely. I was enrolled on an ActionScript course at my place of work some months ago and I was talking to the instructor about producing some form of virtual world using AS3. He mentioned Unity 3D and so I went away and looked at it. I discovered that it was only available for the Mac but that there was a Windows version on the way. I thought that maybe I would take a look at it when it came to the Windows platform and went on my merry way. The notion of writing games has returned recently; however I'm not going to go into my reasons for this anytime soon.
As I'm interested in using AS3 to write apps, the use of AS3 to write games made some kind of sense. One of the main issues that I have with the use of AS3 is that of 3D graphics. I know that there are a good number of AS3 libraries around such as Papervision, Away3D, etc., but they still seem a little limiting in terms of what can be produced, and I'm thinking in terms of polygon count here really. I've not looked into any of these 3D libraries in any detail, ok I'm being very unfair here. I've only had the briefest of glimpses at the Away3D library.
A little while ago I decided to take a look at Unity again as I was aware that a version for Windows had been released recently. That's where I am currently, taking a look at Unity 3D with the 30-day trial. I've not made much progress, as I've only really looked at some tutorials, but it looks quite promising. I've started to think about writing games again; I reckon it should be a little easier with Unity than with Z80 assembler.
*UPDATE* And now the indie version of Unity 3D is free!!!
Posted by Graham Blake on 18th August 2009 at 13:05