Unity Scene: Control Room 2
The progress of a scene I created using Unity’s HDRP pipeline.
Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I last continued my studies over at GameDevHQ! I've decided to review a few courses and refine my knowledge.
Why am I remaking Control Room 2?
I created my first Control Room scene when I started the “A Guide to Beautiful Games in Unity” course from GameDevHQ. Below, you can see a video I put together of the scene:
It has been roughly a year and a half since finishing the scene. I also feel the need to brush up on things I need to remember!
So why not retake the course?
Different and Bigger
This time around, I challenged myself by thinking bigger. I also kept in mind about using the scene for future projects. For instance, I’ll be able to mess around with the cameras on the scene for my next course “Timeline and Cinemachine.”
The previous control room had an importance on the mechs and on this version, I gave the importance to the middle area on the bottom and top floor. It’s more evident at the final of the scene.
While laying out the scene, I also played with the post-processing effects and lighting. At first, I wanted the scene to cast sun rays on the mechs. Instead, I chose a night scene where the indoor lighting took charge to light up the areas dramatically.
Storytelling
Sometime throughout the beginning of adding details, I had the idea of creating a large elevator in the middle of the scene. Honestly, the idea came from not knowing what to do with the bottom floor middle space.
With this idea in mind, I created a separate game object and started adding prefabs for the elevator, knowing that at some point, I would animate it.
I thought to myself about many story ideas to connect the reason for the design choices I made on the scene. The elevator, in this case, serves as the main area to bring materials, parts, etc. logistically up to the control room. With these ideas, I would think that the control room is somewhere high. Perhaps ontop of a mountain!?
For the main hallway, I wanted it to be dark, creepy, and mechanical, so I added pipes, wires, minimal lighting, and a catwalk. It’s not the main focal point of the scene but I still had to make it aesthetically pleasing! The wires alone adds a sense of living to the space. It’s not entirely telling a story but it does give that extra element of visual story telling.
Finalizing the Scene
After adding all the details in place, I took the time to get the lighting and post-processing to a point of acceptance. I also added agents walking around to add a sense of liveliness. Finally, I animated and scripted the elevator coming up from the middle, with a red light spinning around. When the animation completes, the script turns off the red light.
Final Thoughts
Some challenges came about. Lighting and shadows are one of them, but after adjusting different settings, I got it to a point that I am happy with. Also, it was the first time I used the LOD Group system in most of the prefabs. So it posed some annoying instances of models switching to a lower/higher poly count when the camera was at a certain distance. I had to adjust each prefab once I found out the problem, but it was definitely a learning experience!
I’ll be releasing a walkthrough montage of the scene soon. I’ll make sure to post about it when I do! Thanks for passing by!
Gabriel
