Importing Models into Unity

Unit set-up

Before I begin modelling anything in 3DS MAX which I intend to import into Unity I go to Customize - Unit setup, then click the System Unit Set-up tab which brings me up with this menu.

 I set my Unit Scale to 1.0 and Meters, this helps me to keep my models in scale for example height of walls and the size of rooms. This is important because when I import multiple models into unity they will piece together perfectly without having to spend time scaling them to fit together.

Here is a basic model of two planes I created which I have applied a texture and a basic bump map.

Model

Render

Now I open Unity and create a new project saving it to My Documents. Back in 3DX MAX I save my model to the the assets folder with in my Unity project folder. I also create a new folder with in the assets folder naming it textures and copy and paste my model texture and bump map to it.

Now when I go back to Unity my model and textures have been imported to my project tab.

Now I tick Collision Colliders and select Don't Import on the Animations Generation tab and click apply.

Now I can just drag and drop my model from the Projects tab to my scene. After that I click each plane in the Hierarchy tab. This give me the option to apply my textures to the model. I select an extra Shader option on the Shader tab and select Bumped_Diffuse. This applies another texture option below to put my bump map into. I select my textures in the 2D texture tabs and select the tiling to 3.0 on the X and Y axis of each texture, this is the result.

My model is now imported into Unity, now to add some lighting I go to GameObject - Create Other and create a Directional Light and a Point light, position them to bring out my textures and here is the final result of my 3DS MAX to Unity import test.

UNITY – Particle Effects

To create a particle physics system in Unity I go to GameObject - Create Other - Particle. This applies a particle system to my unity scene.

From the Inspector menu I can adjust the variables of the particle system to suit an effect of my choice. For this blog post I will create a rising flame. To do this I go to the Particle Renderer script in the inspector menu and double click on Materials - default elements section. This brings a new window within the Inspector menu which allows me to change the textures of the particle system. From here I select Flame D which is a particle texture that comes with the Unity software, this now changes the textures that the particle system generates.

Now I can adjust the variables of the particle system to get the effect of a rising flame. To do this I change the Max Size to 1 (this adds a variety to the size of the particles being emitted) , the World Velocity to 5 on the Y axis (this sends the up the Y axis to a factor of 2), the Local Velocity to 1 (this adds a sway to the particles direction which gives the effect of the particles being swayed by the wind) and finally the under the Local Rotation Axis - Size Grow to 1. Below is the result.

Research Methodology

Qualitative research

Qualitative research aims to theorize and contextualize meanings in human behaviour, for example, decisions we make and reasons why we perform certain actions.

Ethics

Grand Theft Auto, the first instalment to the series is a game that raised a lot of ethical questions when it was released. Grand Theft Auto is set in three cities which the player is free to roam, the main objective of the game is to reach a certain amount of points for each city, the player can achieve this through various criminal activities; stealing cars and selling them, running people over, killing and assassinating people, also missions can be completed which include robbing banks, being a getaway driver, returning stolen drugs to syndicates and more. These raise ethical questions that Toshihiro Nagoshi designer of the game Yakusa reflects upon in this article from kotaku.com "I thought one day someone is going to have to make something like this. Personally, because I think you must think about the influence games have on people, I would never think about wanting to make a game like this. However, because of the moral issues in this game, I think we should have a healthy debate...In gaming, if you make a decision, there is a reaction, and it's the most stimulating form of media, I think. And thus, it can asked if it's the most dangerous media... Depending on what you make, perhaps." (Nagoshi, Yakuza Creator On Grand Theft Auto by Brian Ashcraft, Kotaku.com, 2009) I believe Nagoshi makes a good point, it’s a debate that has been running about films for years, do they have an effect on people? Here is an article from cbsnews.com. This is a report by Correspondent Ed Bradly. Devin Moore of 18years “who had played Grand Theft Auto day and night for months.” (Ed Bradley, Can A Video Game Lead To Violence, n.d.) Shot dead three police officers after being brought into Fayette police station on suspicion of stealing a car, he then “grabbed a set of car keys. He went out the door to the parking lot, jumped into a police cruiser, and took off.” (Ed Bradley, n.d.) Its reported that after his capture Moore said “Life is like a video game. Everybody’s got to die sometime.” (Moore, n.d,) Frighteningly these do feel very similar to events from the game and there is no denying the assumption that Grand Theft Auto could be a contributing factor. Attorney Jack Thompson on the case says “What we're saying is that Devin Moore was, in effect, trained to do what he did. He was given a murder simulator... He bought it as a minor. He played it hundreds of hours, which is primarily a cop-killing game. It's our theory, which we think we can prove to a jury in Alabama, that, but for the video-game training, he would not have done what he did.” (Thompson n.d.) My views on this moral question on video game related violence is that if someone is capable of committing such an extreme act of violence they would find some other medium to vent themselves with, for Thompson to say Grand Theft Auto is a “Murder simulator” (Thompson n.d.) and provokes violence from individuals in the outside world is unfounded as there would many more cases across the globe. I believe it a possibility Devin Moore was capable of crimes even before he played Grand Theft Auto, but I am not denying that it may have desensitised him and contributed towards his actions, which could have been from elsewhere in his life or yet to be, from another media source for example, reading about a crime, or watching a violent film or documentary.

The Making of: Playstation

Here is an article from edge-online.com. It gives a good introduction into the history of the playstation and its success.

Rising from the ashes of a battleground of negotiations and betrayal with Nintendo over the Super SNES CD, a peripheral CD-drive for use with the SNES "Nintendo declared that it would be breaking its deal with Sony by partnering with Philips instead." (edge staff, the making of: playstation, 2009) This enraged Sony's president Norio Ohga and with the influence of Ken Kutaragi (who designed the S-SMP chip, used in the Super NES) sony eventually decided to develop their own console. At that time named the Playstation X. 

A part of this article I found particularly interesting was the decision by Norio Ohga to remove Ken Kutaragi from Sony and move him along with nine team members to Sony Music. He did this for two reasons:

Not only outside the company but also internally views towards Sony entering the gaming business was met with resistance, and Ohga feared Kutaragi's passion to enter it would crush his reputation. Explained by a quote from Phil Harrison, the then president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios "The main reason why the Sony brand wasn't really used in the early marketing of the playstation was not necessarily out of choice, but it was because Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-yearold brand. They saw Nintendo and Sega as toys, so why on Earth would they join the toy business? That changed a bit after we delivered 90 per cent of the company's profit for a few years."(Harrison, n.d) This is also an interesting insight in to the cultural value of gaming within business at that time.

Secondly "Sony Music knew how to nurture creative talent and how to manufacture, market and distribute music discs - with the move to CD-ROM, the mechanics of making and supplying games had become similar to that used for music" (edge staff, the making of: playstation, 2009) which would have made the working on CD-ROM on the Playstation for Kutaragi an easy transition.