Textures, Materials, and 3D Objects

3D games need 3D objects in their scenes! In this chapter, we will explore different ways of adding 3D objects to our scenes, including the following:

• Using and adapting the built-in 3D primitives that Unity offers, such as cubes and cylinders
• Importing 3D models from third parties, and converting other modeling formats into the .fbx format, the easiest format to use in Unity

We also want to customize how 3D objects look when seen by the user (via a Unity Camera). An understanding of textures and materials is needed to customize the look of 3D objects. A texture is a 2D image file that is used by the game engine as a source of pixels (colored dots), which can be used to influence the display of a 3D object. A material is an asset file that defines how the rendering engine should treat a 3D object, which includes textures for colors (albedo), textures for height maps, transparency, how metallic (shiny) the surface of the...