How to get ready a 3D asset package for download
Preparing and making a visually attractive presentation for 3D asset packages
Some of you may already be familiar with our Open Source initiative. For those who aren't, I'll summarize it very briefly:
We have released a lot of assets and 3D scenarios from some of our projects for people to download and use as they please, completely free of charge. You can find these assets on our GitHub and Sketchfab accounts.
In order to share our creations under the premise that "sharing is caring", we had to make all our asset collections ready and usable. That’s why this article exists - we want you to know how we sliced up our projects, refined their assets to make them as modular as possible and obtained an attractive pack as a result.
This article tells the story of how we improved our 3D environments into something for others to directly use and share. Let's take a look at the technical processes our projects went through before being released!
Resources
First steps
Firstly, we need to examine the general scene and become familiar with all the models and materials. We need to observe how many of these models are separable and how many modules we can create from them.
To prepare an object, follow these steps:
- Select the object.
- Press "tab" to enter "edit mode".
- Right-click and "separate → selection".
Asset listing & nomenclature
Once we have every model we want to use ready, we have to list each asset in a Notion board, or your trusted table or listing program, such as Excel. The important thing is that everything is neat and tidy.
We recommend the following nomenclature:
- “Name_Art” (each model has to have that “Art” suffix)
If there is more than one model of the same type, it’ll be indicated with numbers.
- “Name_01_Art”, “Name_02_Art”, etc…
A more specific example:
- “Table_01_Art”, “Table_02_Art”, “Table_03_Art”.
For textures, we used the following nomenclature:
- “Name_Albedo”
- “Name_Metallic”
- “Name_Normal”
And for materials in Unity we used:
- “Name_Mat”
Blender scene
It would also be interesting to have a Blender scene with every model. Each model has to have its origin point properly positioned at the base.
Transforms like the "scale" & "rotation" must be applied.
Export models to .FBX
Once we have all models ready with everything correctly applied, we can start exporting each model to FBX.
Simply go to the "Export → FBX" tab. Make sure to check the "selected objects" and "apply transform" checkboxes.
Import assets & materials into Unity
With every model exported, it’s time to import them into Unity. We just have to drag the .FBX file into a new project. If we see that there is no material created, we'll have to create one and name it correctly: "Create → Material → Name".
We will then attach the albedo texture to the material.
Finally, we’ll need to attach the material properly to the model. Follow the steps in the video and you're done.
Making the visual presentation
The last step is to find an attractive way to display our assets. We do it in the following way: we create a model and a diorama and put them in the same scene.
In the mock-up layout, we place the larger assets at the back and the smaller ones at the front, so we will highlight every object properly.
In the diorama the objects will be placed as in the original project. This way, the modular objects will be placed in their original context. We all know that it is difficult to appreciate a wall just thrown in a model, so in the diorama, we put it where it belongs.
Conclusion
As we have already seen, making the 3D assets of our projects to be ready and presentable for everyone to use is not an overly complicated task. You simply have to take into account a series of technical steps and offer an attractive visual presentation.
If you still want to know more about our Open Source initiative, take a look at our GitHub and Sketchfab profiles and start downloading lots of great 3D objects and scenarios for free!
