Last week I got a chance to attend the workshop of James Simpson, fondly known as Doctor Unity. He is known for his extensive work in the field of Unity, developing Unity tools, games and even a full MMO (massively multiplayer online game). As you can see my experience in 3D modelling is limited to Blender, so I want to add Unity to that list. This has been the main motivation for me to attend the workshop, and I have thoroughly enjoyed sitting through it.
Firstly, he explained us a few things to familiarize us with the tool and then moved on to creating a few simple structures. Later we were asked to model a Plinko board game. It was exciting to model the board and animate the Plinko game where the puck/plinko disc moves. It was all done as a part of the workshop. It was nice to learn good concepts, tips from a person who has vast experience in the Unity tool.
It was interesting to apply the laws of physics and dynamics to the game. After creating the board and the puck, when we eventually drop the puck, it doesn’t do a thing. It simply falls on the board and lies dead in gravity. In order for it to look real, we apply physics dynamics such as bounce, skid etc. So we applied bounce dynamics to this puck and then tested it. It worked fine and seems close to reality. Some other concepts that he thought about were similar to blender where we have to add a light source or a parent-child relation etc. We could add color, texture to objects and animating in Unity seems simpler when compared to blender.
Apart from the workshop, we discussed various things related to gaming and how he along with two other people developed a game in 2 weeks. It was encouraging to know that there are many other tools which have been developed and are being developed to enhance 3d modelling.