
Explore Maya style controls in Blender to navigate the 3D viewport and manipulate objects efficiently. Use frame, orbit, pan, and walk navigation with keys and mouse—ideal for modular environments.
Test a Blender environment piece in Unity by flipping normals, enabling back-face culling, and exporting as SBX, then import to preview from a first-person perspective.
Test a blender export inside unity to verify environment proportions and controls, importing the section as a 3D project with colliders, a first-person controller, and WASD navigation.
Create a cross section by duplicating a straight piece, rotating it 90 degrees, and aligning to intersect at the center; join the pieces and reset pivot to world center.
Learn to build larger UV islands by selecting and stitching roof, wall, and floor pieces in Blender's UV editor, using island selection, edge mode, and the V stitch tool.
Prepare blender for texture painting by selecting blender render, enabling GLSL shading in each viewport, and switching to material view while unwrapping the mesh and applying the ambient occlusion map.
Learn to control texture painting in Blender by using the stencil brush, face selection masking, and stencil mapping to apply textures only to selected faces and align pixels precisely.
Import meshes into Unity, assign diffuse textures, and adjust albedo, specular, and smoothness to achieve realistic surfaces; reimport meshes to refresh previews and organize materials at the root assets folder.
Add first person controls to your level and enhance visuals with image effects such as blue optimized, anti-aliasing, noise, vignette, and chromatic aberration for modular environments in games.
In this course intended for intermediate viewers, instructor Alan Thorn explores how to build low-poly environment assets in a dark industrial theme. These meshes fit together seamlessly, like building blocks, for creating expansive and versatile level design in games. Use Blender to model, unwrap, texture-paint, and optimize assets, exporting them to a real-time game engine. Over five, massive chapters you’ll examine:
1). Polygonal modelling techniques for building complex shapes and designs
2). NGons and topology optimization for enhancing and refining your meshes
3). Smooth shading and UV Seams for creating good looking meshes and texture designs
4). Texture unwrapping and UV layouts, as well as texture baking and painting for developing a smooth and intuitive workflow
5). Model exporting for game engines, to help bring your models to life inside a real-time game engine
By the end of this course, you’ll have a solid foundation for easily building low-poly, modular game assets that can be used and re-used to create potentially limitless level designs.
More about the Instructor:
Alan Thorn is a game developer, author and educator with 15 years industry experience. He makes games for PC desktop, Mobile and VR. He founded 'Wax Lyrical Games' and created the award-winning game 'Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarok', working as designer, programmer and artist. He has written sixteen technical books on game development and presented ten video training courses, covering game-play programming, Unity development, and 3D modelling. He has worked in game development education as a visiting lecturer for the 'National Film and Television School', as a Lead Teacher for 'Uppingham School', and is currently a Senior Lecturer at 'Teesside University' where he helps students develop the skills needed for their ideal role in the games industry.