Challenge - Update 1
Before the Christmas break, I managed to get a good start on this challenge. There is a bit too much progress for one post so I’ll break it down retrospectively as best I can. In this update, I cover model creation in Blender and touch on prototyping the controls.
![Challenge - Update 1](/content/images/size/w2000/2020/12/Header-Image.jpg)
My art skills are better suited to 2D rather than 3D. Yet this project is about me trying something different. I want to be a little bit uncomfortable. I hope I'll discover new aspects of development that i didn't think i would enjoy or even think i could do. The first step in this process was to see if creating 3D assets was even viable. Could I create assets that could appear in a commercial game? Would someone pay for this? Will it look like crap?
Well after jumping into Blender for a bit it kinda did start to look like crap.
![](https://www.badunity.com/content/images/2020/12/OriginalTank.png)
This was my first attempt. I mean it kinda looks like a tank I suppose? I had to keep telling myself it’s only been 10 minutes, you're retraining Blender muscle memory, chillout, relax. I wasn't too confident at this point. I mean look at that abomination above.
I took a step back here and realised I’m jumping in too quickly. Yeah it’s nice getting into Blender again but what I’m i actually creating? What style am I going for? Where are the reference images?
I asked myself a couple of questions. What’s practical for this project? What can I achieve effectively in a short space of time? I decided to go with a Low Poly style and spent some time looking at reference images on google and pinterest.
![](https://www.badunity.com/content/images/2020/12/PlayerTankReference.png)
I found a few cute low poly tanks that I thought would suit the direction of the project. After a few attempts I started getting back into the swing of modelling again, below is the result.
![](https://www.badunity.com/content/images/2020/12/PlayerTank_2.png)
![](https://www.badunity.com/content/images/2020/12/PlayerTank_3.png)
![](https://www.badunity.com/content/images/2020/12/PlayerTank-1.png)
I’m happy enough building on top of this. It’s simple with some exaggerated parts such as the wheels and tiny turret, I hope it gives it some character.
Not bad for a second attempt.
At this point I’m still getting used to Blender so even this simple Tank needed a lot of clean up. It had overlapping UV’s, flipped normals and the geometry was not in the correct orientation. These problems should be easy to solve so I decided to put it to one side and work on the Tank movement in Unity.
Using primitives and the Unity Tanks tutorial I was able to get the initial movement working. Once I was happy with this I extended it to work with the new input system. Unity’s Interactions system can help check for specific input patterns. I used it to check for a button hold i then used this to create a charged shot function. This means I won't have to use timers or delays as much in the code. Very handy.
Another problem to solve was Turret direction. I have it set up to point in the direction of the mouse, but what about a gamepad?
I set up the Input for keyboard, mouse and gamepad. When Unity finds a gamepad signal it uses a differnt function for turret movement. All the other movement commands are the same. This saved a bit of time and will help when I come to the multiplayer component. There are a lot of options when it comes to the new Input System. You can gather a lot of detail about what types of controllers are in use. It's nice but I did struggle a little with documentation.
![](https://www.badunity.com/content/images/2020/12/GamePad.png)
One other thing to note here is that I used the Player Input component. I normally skip this and listen for the input via the code. It was simple to set up Unity events using it. It saved a good bit of code and helped keep the classes clean.
Now to Import a cleaner version of the tank as a .fbx, add my scripts and components. I added a few basic effects using the line render and VFX graph. I’ll go into a bit more detail on these at a later date.
I think that’s enough for one update. In the next post I’ll detail how I set up the hud, level models and enemies.