Worldbuilding with ProBuilder Effective Iteration & Workflow Enhancements
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Learn the key benefits that ProCore brings to level designers and their cross discipline teammates. The benefits discussed are those which can be used, as a level designer, to help communicate your creative intent to the wider team. These benefits include improving productivity through quick iteration on level block-out and including level detailing using Polybrush. This session's talk will be accompanied by instructional demos, giving attendees the knowledge to apply such practices in their workplace too. Finally, get hints and tips on improving your iteration speed and productivity when working with ProCore by tuning ProCore preferences to suit you and your team. Speakers: Liz Mercuri, Evangelist Jonathon Wilson, Lead Designer, Coatsink
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Worldbuilding with ProBuilder Effective Iteration & Workflow Enhancements
- 1. 3D WORLDBUILDING WITH PROBUILDER Effective Iteration & Workflow Enhancements
- 2. Liz Mercuri Technical Evangelist lizm@unity3d.com @FragFox Jonathon Wilson Lead Designer jonathon@coatsink.com @Omnislash92
- 3. The Agenda: A White Boxing Walkthrough Getting Started Accelerating Design Iteration Communicating Creative Intent Enhancing Your Workflow • Discovering what ProBuilder is. • Discovering where to get ProBuilder. • Discovering more about Whiteboxing. • Using the ProBuilder Window to create, edit & iterate meshes. • Using ProGrids for precision. • Using PolyBrush for detailing. • Using Vertex Colours for clarity. • Sharing Handy Hints & Tips. • Updating ProBuilder Preferences.
- 4. First Things First: What is ProBuilder? • 3D modelling & mesh editing. • Level design & prototyping. • Optimised for simple geometry. • UV Unwrapping & Vertex Painiting. All from within the Unity Editor!
- 5. ProBuilder: Where can I get it?
- 6. ProBuilder: What is it used for?
- 7. ProBuilder: What is it used for? • Level Design. • Prototyping. • White Boxing.
- 8. ProBuilder: What is White Boxing? • A design method used in level design. • The use of simple geometry to represent different aspects of a game level. • The addition small details but with a focus on the basic principles of the level. • Called “White Boxing” because many engines/software use white as a default colour for geometry. Source: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HuguesBarlet/20140907/225061/Block_design_in_level_design.php
- 9. ProBuilder: Why White Box? • Can work more easily to the constraints set by the level designer. • Work & iterate to a set scale & position. • Identify design flaws or blockers early in development. Source: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HuguesBarlet/20140907/225061/Block_design_in_level_design.php
- 10. IT IS DEMO TIME!
- 11. The Summary: You’re now a Whiteboxing Wizard… ProBuilder 101 • ProBuilder can be used to build, edit, & texture custom geometry in Unity. • Use ProBuilder for in- scene level design & prototyping. • Available on Package Manager Accelerating Design Iteration • Use basic primitives or create your own meshes with PolyShape. • Edit & Iterate within the Unity Editor. • Use ProGrids for precision. Communicating Creative Intent • Use Polybrush to add detail to your scene. • Use Vertex Painting to highlight key geometry traits. • Use further basic geometry for detailing. Enhancing Your Workflow • ProBuilder & ProGrids Preferences. • Work to a set scale. • Use with the FBX Exporter.
- 12. And that’s not all… For blog posts, videos & documentation: http://www.procore3d.co m/ For showcasing your talent & skills: #Blocktober. To carry on from todays talk: ProjectLinkHere.
- 13. Thank You :) GO FORTH AND (PRO)BUILD! @FragFox lizm@unity3d.com @OnmniSlash92 jonathon@coatsink.com
Editor's Notes
- Liz: Welcome and thank you for joining us for this Unite Berlin Session on 3D World Building with ProBuilder.
- Liz: Before we get started let’s introduce ourselves. My name is Liz, I am a technical evangelist based in the UK. My role as both an evangelist and in this talk, is to demonstrate how to get started with and use the awesome ProBuilder toolset to enhance your existing environment design and level creation workflows. Jonathon: I am Jonathon, Lead Designer for Coatsink. I have used been working at Coatsink for [] and have worked on []. Today I will be sharing my own personal insight into using ProBuilder in a working environment. The knowledge I share will enable you to customise your workflows with ProBuilder and communicate your creative intent to the wider team. <- Feel free to amend/add/go natural.
- Liz: So the agenda for today then. Let’s start with the basics, what is ProBuilder and where can I find it? Then we are going to jump into a hands on walkthrough demo of using ProBuilder. Jon: The demo will start by using the basic ProBuilder functions to create basic geometry. We will use the tools in the ProBuilder window to manipulate and enhance this geometry, creating more complex structures. All from within the Unity Editor. L: Next, we will show you how to convey your creative intent, useful when communicating your designs to the wider team. This will include the use of vertex colouring and detailing through ProBuilder and Polybrush. J: Finally, we will share some hints and tips with you, useful for customizing ProBuilder to suit the individual and also to common issues to help teams. L: By the end of this talk, you will have the ProBuilder knowledge to take back to the workplace to enhance your workflows with your own team and also across teams.
- Liz: ProBuilder allows you to create, edit and iterate 3D meshes directly in the Unity editor. This means that there is no need to keep going back and forth between Unity and 3D software packages. Jon: Although ProBuilder is optimised for use with simple meshes, you can build some pretty complex structures. The ProBuilder toolset is perfect for level design and prototyping. Liz: And that isn’t all. ProBuilder also support UV texture Unwrapping and Vertex Painting, which we will be covering later in this talk. Jon: And all this from the Unity Editor.
- Liz: You can get ProBuilder now for absolutely free from the Unity Package Manager. If you weren’t aware of Package Manager, this allows you modularize your Unity editor, only downloading what you need. Currently. Package Manager only supports Unity Packages. You can also check for versions and update your package from the Package Manager UI too.
- Liz: Here are a selection of games and experiences made using ProBuilder.
- Liz: As you could see from the video, ProBuilder has been used to create a multitude of games, often inherent it the games level design. ProBuilder is often praised for it’s ability for quick iteration and speedier workflow. This workflow lends itself to Prototyping and Whiteboxing game levels and that is what we are going to be focussing on in this talk today, using the ProBuilder toolset to prototype and Whitebox your levels.
- Jon: White Boxing is a way of blocking out a level or environment in a game. [Expand as you see fit with your knowledge here].
- Jon: White is key to level design and is important for a number of reasons. [Expand as you see fit with your knowledge here].
- Liz: Ok, let’s hop over into the Unity editor to get started. Jonathon, take it away and I will be your glamourous assistant. ---- GETTING STARTED AND DESIGN INTERATION ---- Jon: Let’s start by taking a look at what we are going to build together today. We are going to block out the interior and exterior of a house, that could later be used in a game level or environment. L: Open Finished Scene to Show Finished House J: Here we have a house, with an interior and exterior. L. Perfect. Now let’s start with a blank new scene. I have opened Package Manager from Window > Package Manager & I have installed both ProBuilder & ProGrids. I can then Open the ProBuilder Window from Tools > ProBuilder > ProBuilder Window. Looking at the ProBuilder window then, you can see that these functions may be familiar to you if you have used a 3D software package before. J: Let’s start by creating a basic Cube. We can do this by selecting New Shape, selecting a Cube, let’s keep the dimensions as they are and then select Build cube. You can see that there are lots of basic primitives here to get started, including stairs! A designers nightmare abolished with the click of a button! L: If there isn’t a shape that you like from the list, you can create your own with PolyShape. Let’s select New Polyshape and now I can plot the points of the shape that I want to create and determine the depth. This is great for complex or custom shapes. Let’s delete that and get back to out cube. J: Let’s extrude the faces of the cube to make our room. L: You can see the toolbar at the top which determines the selection mode, object, face, vertex and edge. J: Let’s select edge mode, select the top face and extrude 3 units upwards, by simply pulling the face upwards. ProBuilder works with Unity units. The default material of the ProBuilder meshes shows this. We can make It easier to work to precise units though rather than relying on the ProBuilder material. L: As I mentioned earlier, I also downloaded ProGrids from the Package Manager, ProGrids can be used to align our geometry precisely. Let’s open ProGrids by selecting Tools > ProGrids > ProGrids window. This gives us a toolbar which allows us to toggle a grid on and off on each axis and also set the snap increment for our project. Now when we extrude the face of the cube, it snaps to increments of 1 meter, making it easier to quickly blockout a level and also making it to the correct dimensions for the rest of the scene. J: That’s great. So this will form the wall of our house. Let’s delete the bottom face, by selecting it and choosing Delete Face from the ProBuilder window. ---- HINTS AND TIPS ---- J: Ok, now we have got the meaty part over, lets go over some hints and tips for using ProBuilder. L: These will be useful for individuals but also for enhancing workflow and understanding of ProBuilder for your team as a whole. J: Let’s start with the individual. We can customise ProGrids to suit our individual needs from the ProBuilder Preferences. We can access these from Unity > Preferences and selecting either the ProBuilder or ProGrids tab. For ProGrids, we can increase the alpha of the gridlines to make them more visible and also change the colour. We can select the grid Units and also alter the Grid Size. It is so important as a team to choose the units you are using for scale and stick to it. L: For ProBuilder, you can set keyboard shortcuts and show scene information, useful for optimisation or working to constraints but also seeing what is selected in a complex scene. J: How about we talk about hints and tips for the team now? L: Ok. Let’s start with the fundamentals, managing your hierarchy. If you have a complex scene or structure that you are building, break it into sections. This means if a structure or part of a structure doesn’t match your scene or that part of it, it can easily be removed or moved. We can create sections too using empty game objects. Make sure that the empty gameobject has a tag of EditorOnly though so it isn’t used in any physics or lighting calculations. [Demonstrate this] J: If you have a sketch for a layout, it is a good idea to add it to a plane as a texture and build up your layout with ProBuilder from there. You can use the Polyshape tool to quickly trace the shape of the layout image and create your level base in seconds. To add to this, you could also create a key to go with that blockout, that can be committed to the project and shared across scenes. The project used in this talk will be shared at the end of this talk and an example of this will be supplied. (!!!! Can we do this? Is this possible? I don’t fully understand this. I could show this in the project folder as you talk through it !!!!). J: We can also proBuilderize a non-ProBuilder mesh. L: If we want to have the same control over meshes as we do with ProBuilder meshes, we can select the imported mesh or Unity GameObject and select ProBuilderize to convert it to a ProBuilder mesh [Demonstrate with a Unity Cube]. L: Finally, ProBuilder can be used with our FBX Exporter, available on the asset store [Show in the A$ tab] . Thanks to our partnership with Autodesk, this asset allows a livelink between Unity and an Autodesk 3D modelling software, allowing even faster iterations of meshes.
- L: And that’s not all, we have some further resources for you too. You can find out more about PropBuilder, Polybrush and ProGrids at ProCore3d.com. Here you can find documentation, blog posts and instructional videos to get you creating. J: And if you want to show off your work, don’t be afraid to get involved in #Blocktober, which celebrates all things level design. Share your level design with the hashtag #Blocktober and the ProBuilder Twitter handle during October. L: Finally, you can find the project we have worked through together today at the link here.
- L: Thank you all for joining us today, we hope that this talk has been useful. J: Thank you and if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Both: Enjoy the rest of Unite!