Game Prototyping in Unity, Part 2: Art and Sound Integration

This is Part 2 of my short blog series "Game Prototyping in Unity" about my recently released tutorial. If you have not already read Part 1 I recommend starting there!

In the second module of my tutorial I cover integrating art and sound in Unity and adding lighting and particles.

The first step is bringing in your model and texture files.

Then you will create a new material in Unity. Unity materials have a lot of properties you can work with, but the easiest ones to start with are the diffuse color (which is just the color of the material), normal color (which determines the detail or roughness of the surface), and specular or metallic color (giving it a shiny quality).

When you are done setting up your models with materials and textures, you can turn each art asset into a refab and replace your whitebox with art.

Make sure there are no areas where the player can walk out of the level. You don't need to follow your original layout, just use it as a general guide.

Once your layout is replaced with art it's time to add some lighting. For this type of level I want to use torches to give it a medieval feel. So I used a fire effect from Unity's default particle package and made some modifications so it would fit with this art style.

The flame particle system comes with a point light, but I also like to add a couple more point lights around each torch so you can see the details of the torch.

Once you have your bright areas, be sure to give some thought to lighting your dark areas. It's tempting to just keep dark areas unlit and leave them mostly black, but that generally doesn't look good in games because the player really can't see anything at all.

If you want to keep the feeling of darkness but still give the player enough visibility to play, use some dark blue lighting to fill the darkest areas.

When you are done, you'll have a well-lit level that conveys mood as well as giving visibility.

The final step in asset integration is adding sound effects. Rather than attaching ambient sounds to the main camera, try adding ambient audio sources as 3D sound around the scene, so as the player walks the sound changes. This helps bring the level to life.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please check out the video tutorial on Pluralsight which will take you step-by-step through this whole process! The next section will cover creating a character controller.

Thanks for reading!