- One thing Unity has
always been really great at is prototyping. And that has now been made
even easier with snaps. snaps are pre-made assets designed specifically for prototyping. All the assets are created
to ease the snap together. So you can combine them in different ways to create your own 3D levels. And because all of the assets
are made using ProBuilder you can modify them
inside the Unity editor to suit your needs. And once you have something
that you think is cool, you can either replace
the assets with your own or go on the Asset Store where packs are constantly
being added to fit specifically in place of the prototype ones. Currently, Unity has two
free prototypes snaps packs on the Asset Store. One for creating a sci-fi industrial level and one for creating
an office environment. Also, this video is sponsored by Unity. Now, snaps is still a very new product and stuff is constantly being added. This also means that as
of recording this video, it might not work on the
newest version of Unity. Currently, the most stable
version to use is 2018.4, but I use 2019.1.4 when
recording and had no issues. Also snaps works with the built
in renderer out of the box. If you want to use it with
the HD render pipeline or the universal render pipeline, we need to first convert the materials. This can be done using
the asset swap tool, which is also what you use if you want to swap out your
prototype assets with HD ones. We'll have a look at
doing this in a second. And with that, let's
build a level with snaps. So that you can see, I'm using HDRP. You can of course use whatever you like. And I've gone ahead and set
up a quick example scene here that just has a main
camera, a directional light, some HDRP settings and
a few image effects. So well, a fairly boring scene. Let's go ahead and spice it up. But first we want to make sure to instal the right packages. So let's go window and let's
open up the package manager. Here let's make sure
to select all packages and under advanced we'll check
off show preview packages as well. We then search for ProBuilder and you can instal and update it, down here in the right hand corner. Let's do this same thing with ProGrids. Again, we can instal
and update it down here, and once these packages
are in your project, we can go to the Asset Store. So window, Asset Store, and here we can download the
snaps package of our choice. If we just go out and search for snaps. And as you can see a
bunch of packages pop up. Of course, some of these will be paid, but there are currently
two free prototype packs that is the office pack and
the sci-fi industrial pack. I'm going to go ahead and open up these sci-fi industrial pack. And I'm simply going to hit this button to download and import. Here we can see all the folders that makes up the snaps pack. I'm just going to go ahead and hit import. And as you can see, a folder
now appears in our project called asset store originals. And under here, we now have
snaps prototyping assets, which contains our sci-fi industrial pack. And if we expand this, we can go ahead and have
a look at what's inside. So there's of course,
a bunch of materials. We then have the prefabs, which are split into
three different folders. We have decoration, we have props and we have all the structure elements that are going to make
up the base of our level. And there's even a photo
here for some sample scenes. Let's for example, open
up our prop scene here, which lays out all of the
props inside of our scene view. Of course, as we talked
about, I'm using HDRP. So the materials need to be
converted in order to show up. If yours is already looking great, you can simply skip this step. So in order to convert the materials, I'm going to go to the Asset Store. We want to search for the asset swap tool. Of course we'll have links for
everything in the description Here we can find the asset swap tool. Let's open that up and
import that as well. And as you can see, we
now get a new folder, called snaps tools that
contains the asset swap tool. Now to open it up, we simply go snaps, click on the asset swap tool.
This will open a new window. And what we want to do here is tell our asset swap
tool where our prefabs are. So we'll hit the button at the top here, and that opens up a window where we can simply navigate to our assets Asset Store originals, prototyping assets. And let's go into our sci-fi industrial. Here we can simply hit select folder. And as you can see right away, all of our materials
snap right into place. In fact, we can go in and
select all of these materials and you can now see that they're all using the HDRP led shader, and we're going to adjust
stuff like smoothness or metallicness and so on. Awesome. So now that everything is set up, let's go to our empty scene
and let's start building. I'm going to go under prefabs, structure. Let's start by building our floor. So let's go into floors and ceilings and I'll take the deck floor 1 and simply drag it into a scene. We can then right click on our transform and reset it in order to snap it right to the origin of our scene. And you will notice that if
we start moving it around, it doesn't really snap to the grid yet. To make it do that, we
need to go to tools, ProGrids and open up the ProGrids window. Here we can, first of all
make sure to enable snapping using this button right here. We can also toggle on and off the grid and we can choose which
axis to show our grid on. I'm just going to leave that at Y. And if we now drag around our object, we can see that it
immediately snaps to the grid. In fact, we can change the snap
value of our grid to three, which is the size of a floor tile. And it's now going to
snap perfectly in place. So with that, we can start
building out our floor. I'm going to create kind of
a path like structure here. So I'm going to hit
control D to duplicate it and then move it over. And I'm just going to keep doing this until I have something
that I like. Awesome. Now I'm just going to
quickly rearrange Unity here to make it a bit easier to work with. So let's take our project
folder to the right here so we can quickly see all of
the stuff that we can use. And this way we can also see more stuff in the hierarchy at once. I'm also just going to
close the console window. So let's add in some more flooring, I'm going to take the gen
floor 3 here, drag that in. I'm going to reset the
transform in the inspector. And again, I'm just going
to scatter this around. Remember, you can always hold down shift to select multiple objects at once. That's definitely going
to make it much quicker. Perfect. That makes the floor of our room. However, it's a bit dull. So let's go ahead and add some variations. I'm going to use gen floor
4 here and deck floor 2. Those are pretty cool. There we go. So once we
happy with our floor, we can move on to placing walls. So we'll navigate to
the right folder here. There you say folder for walls, and I'm going to go for the
gen wall, simply drag that in, and let's hit F to focus on it. And as you'll notice, this isn't currently
totally snapped to the grid. So we can go up here and hit
these snap to grid button. Now I'm just going to
duplicate some of these and move them around. I'll make sure to leave room for doors as well as corner pieces. Now on this side here, we want to make sure to rotate our object, to do that let's hit E. To switch to our rotation tool, let's hold down control while rotating in order to snap that as well. In fact, we can go ahead and do that for an entire wall piece here. Just make sure that when you're rotating that your centre point is
set to centre and not pivot, otherwise you'll get some
weird looking results. We then place down some corners. I'm going to take the gen wall corner here and place it and snap it in place. And I'm just going to
quickly distribute these. There we go. We can also
add some doorframes. So let's take the general doorframe and use the exact same
method to place these. And there we go. We've now
added walls to our room. Of course, I'd like my
room to have two levels. And so I think we need to
raise the ceiling a bit. So let's go ahead and select
all of the walls here. Hit control D and simply move them up. As you can see, snapping by three units is not ideal in the situation. So let's just go ahead
and change it back to one. And this way we can simply, move it down. And I don't really like the
look of these grey boxes going all the way around. So let's go to the inspector and let's simply flip
these models on the Y. So let's simply press minus one here. And if we now move them up, you can see that they tile perfectly and all of these great boxes
will be near the ceiling, which I think looks much, much cooler. I'm also just going to
duplicate these walls and move them over to fill
out the top of the doorframes. And finally, let's go
ahead and place some doors. So let's go and do doors and windows. I'm going to take the gen door 1 and place that into our level. That's it, F to focus on it, and this is not necessarily
going to snap perfectly into place. So let's just go ahead
and disable snapping on our grid and move it in
so that it perfectly fits our doorframe. There we go. And let's do the same
thing for the other one. Perfect. So next up I'd like to create a podium in this part of our level. We then add some stairs
that leads up to it as well as a doorframe that
allows you to go underneath. So to do that, we need
to start with some walls. I'm going to take a deck
wall here and place it in. Let's set our snapping back to
three and let's re-enable it. And I'm just going to go ahead
and create a bunch of these. There we go. I'm also going to create
a hole here for a door. And over here, let's add a variation. Let's use deck wall window 2. Snap that in place and put it in. And let's use deck wall doorframe 2. Let's rotate that and snap
that right into place as well. With that, we need to create
some flooring at the top of our podium here. I'm going to go and do
floors and ceilings. And I personally really liked
the hale floor side here. It's not that. Move it up and over. As you can see again, this
doesn't tile perfectly. So let's change it to one
unit and move it up here until it rests right on our podium. Let's change back to three and I'm going to distribute these as well. There we go. Finally, we
can add in a staircase and that's of course
under stairs and ramps, and I'm going to choose the deck stairs 1. I'm going to rotate this and let's move it somewhat into place. And this will definitely
need to be fine tuned. So I'm just going to disable snapping and place this wherever I think it fits. I think that looks good. Next up, we can add in
some supports and pillars. So let's go under pillars and supports, and let's start by
creating a vertical pillar right around here to support our roof. I'm going to choose the
vertical strat base, place that and turn snapping back on. Thing right around here looks good. Let's focus on it. And if we simply duplicate
this and move it up, again, we'll have to
change units back to one. We can see that we can simply tile these in order to create a
quick and simple pillar with the desired height. And the cool thing about
these vertical strats is that because they're modular, we can also use them to
create stuff like arches. So let's drag in another
vertical strat base, let's placed it around here and let's create a another one over here and let's now make an arch between them. So from this one here, let's go ahead and place a vertical strat on top of that, snap that into place. And on top of that let's create
a vertical strat connector, snap that into place and rotate it. Let's used some more of
these vertical strats here and there we go. We've now created this cool
arch that goes over our path. Let's also take the wall support big and place this near one of the walls. There we go. That looks really cool. So now the base of our level
is pretty much complete, and we can start to add
in some smaller objects to make it come to life. Let's
start by adding some rails. So to do that, we can close
down the structure folder and go into props instead.
And as you can see in here, there are a bunch of
objects for guardrails. I'm going to take guardrail one joint and simply move that in. Let's snap it into place,
hit F to focus on it, I'm going to rotate it. And we can now scatter these around in order to create guardrails. At the ends we can use guardrail end, and these will have to be placed manually. We can also use the guide rail 1 in order to place single rails like this. And of course, once
you've created something you're happy with, we can go ahead and simply duplicate
these and move them up on the podium as well. Because currently I
think it's pretty common for people to break an
ankle falling down here. That looks much safer. We can then add in some
barrels and crates. Not going to lie, this
is my favourite part. I recommend just using
all the four barrels and all of the four crates. And I wouldn't really
worry about snapping these. So I'm just going to
turn it off completely. Something to remember when
creating scatter like this is that it's a good idea to often place it near larger objects. So as you can see, I've placed
my crates and barrels here either near the walls or near the pillars. And it's also really important
to distribute them in groups. You don't want to just place one here and place one here and place one here. It's going to look like you've
tried too hard to make it random and stuff like this isn't really random. It's placed out of the way, and it's placed near a larger object. It's just the way things happen. And there we go. The scene is already looking
much more interesting. Let's also spice up the
walls by adding some pipes. As you can see, they're
both medium and small pipes, and both of them have both normal pieces. As you can see here, as
well as corner pieces, I'm going to turn
snapping back on for these and just see what I can do with them. And I'm going to do the same
thing with the small ones. I also just noticed that
these are currently stuck a tiny bit inside of the wall. So I'm just going to stick to all of them, disable snapping and
move them out a tiny bit just to get all the 3D models showing. And that looks really cool. Of course, doing this all the way around is pretty time consuming. Luckily, we can often get away by just duplicating
what we've already done and rotating and flipping
it to make the elusion that we've done a lot of work. For example, we can just
take this piece right here and simply rotate it, move
it alongside the wall here and up a tiny bit and that's
now a standalone thing. In fact, let's duplicated once more and put some over here. There you go. Let's also take this entire thing here and put it over here. There we go. And instantly our
level is much more exciting. Of course, we could go
more nuts with the pipes, but there are lots of other
objects that we can add. And these don't belong
to a particular category. There are stuff like
generators, power cords, consoles and so on. And I'm just going to throw
a bunch of these in here. Awesome. And that completes
the insides of our level. At this point, we are basically
ready to add the ceiling and then we can throw
in a couple of lights to make everything look really cool. So as for the ceiling, what we can do is simply
go under structure again, go under floors and ceilings. And I'm going to use two ceiling pieces. I'm going to have one for
these sides near the walls. And then I'm going to have one
for the centre of our room. For the sides, I'm going
to use the gen ceiling 1. Let's simply snap this in place. That's changed the snap value to one and move it over here
and snap it into place. There we go. And you're going to have a look at what that looks like from underneath, and I'm just going to
scatter these around. And then for the middle here, I'm going to use the deck ceiling 1. And you're going to have a
look at what that looks like from underneath here. If you'd like to level
to feel less enclosed, I think you can easily
turn these into windows. There we go. And we are now completely
locked out of our level. And I recommend when
working inside of a level, instead of holding down alt and clicking in order to move your scene around, simply use the right mouse
button and the vast keys in order to just fly
inside and have a look. Of course, all of our
objects are currently lit by a directional light. So I'm just going to go
ahead and disable that. You should, of course, add
lighting that suits your scene. I'm just going to throw in a
bunch of coloured point lights to make the scene really pop. And there we go. We've now added lights to our scene and you can see what a
difference that makes. And one thing that I actually want to do is just go ahead and adjust the material of this generator here since
I think it really sticks out. Luckily that's so easy to do. We just select it, go
under the material here and we can simply change the colour to something that we think is
more suiting, like this one. And of course another thing
that makes this so great is that if we ever want to edit an object, well, we can simply click on it and we can open up ProBuilders. So tools, ProBuilder window, and we can simply go
in here and select say, faces and move those around. We can extrude and basically
do our own 3D modelling on top of what we already have in here. If you want to learn how to use ProBuilder to configure objects or
create your own from scratch, definitely check out our video on that. And if you want to learn
more about lighting, we have a video on that as well. Links are of course, in
the description. Awesome. And that's pretty much it for our level. Once you're happy with your prototype, some of you might want
to upgrade these assets with compatible HD versions
found on the Asset Store, similar to this one that is made to work with this sci-fi industrial
pack we've been using. Again, this is done using
the asset swap tool. We'll of course have links for everything in the description. Also, if you enjoyed this
video, make sure to subscribe and ring that delicious notification bell. So you don't miss the next one. On that, thanks for watching. And I'll see you in the next video. - Thanks to all the
awesome Patreon supporters who donated in October and a
special thanks to InfintyPBR, Lost to Violence, Loved
Forever, Ruonan, Chris, Jacob Sanford, Faisal
Marafie, Peter Schwendimann, Leo Lesetre, Dennis
Sullivan, Alison the Fierce, Stig Christensen, Kirill
Sviderskyi, Gregory Pierce Naoki Iwasaki, TheMightyZeus,
Danijel Dusanic and Erasmusof. You guys rock.
