During my first major Unity project, Fortitude, I decided to create some original enviroment assets to suppliment our scenes. I had been interested in creating "mysterious and fantasy" style tree and vegetation assets for a while and this provided the perfect oppurtunity to do so. I decided to use blender to create these assets as i was already familiar with the GUI and shortcuts from earlier projects.
I began by researching some of the ways I could acheive my desired finish within blender by searching for tutorials and documentation online.
One of the videos I found incredibly useful in understanding how to create organic and natural looking trees was...This!
Now that I had a better understanding of how i could create my models i decided to research the actual trees and vegetation i would like to replicate. I know from experience that working without any reference images or information can often lead to procrastination and a lack of direction. Sourcing reference images would also give me the chance to consult my project leader to ensure i would be able to acheive the desired style.
I was particularly interested in creating a Weeping Willow style tree in this pack as i hadn't seen a low poly version of this species before and was concious that creating "standard trees" would simply result in re-creating existing assets.
Now I had some direction and the knowledge to apply i jumoed into blender and got to work!
I created a range of trees with varying styles, shapes and sizes to help me better understand how i could manipulate the tools in blender. This also allowed me to prototype different tree versions that i could show my project lead and gather feedback.
After consulting my team regarding the style of tree, We decided to further develop a select few of the initial batch I had created to save time and allow us to spend more time and resources improving the quality of each model. As well as creating trees i took this oppurtunity to create some smaller enviroment assets to help fill empty space in our games scene and make the world feel more alive.
I chose to create mushrooms as they are not only bright and colourful meaning they are clearly visible and can give a good sense of life and surrealism but they are a fairly simple shape that can be easily and effeciantly replicated using blender.
Now that I was happy with the models i had created I unwrapped the meshes and painted some textures using blenders in built texture paint tools and photoshop where i felt more detail were required.
I had now created 4 completly original assets ready to use in our teams project! I imported the meshes into Unity, Applied their materials and added them to our games scene!
