360° architecture views with Unity and Cinema 4D

In this movie I would like to briefly introduce the course. In a quick run-through, I'll show you what you can expect. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to implement this project in Unity. We will be working with Cinema 4D for modeling. Of course, any other 3D program can also be used for this.

We start modeling our island in Cinema 4D. I'll show you several ways to get there and an efficient method for quickly creating new models if the customer still has lots of new ideas. The content can basically also be reproduced with other 3D programs and only two of the methods shown are only available from Cinema 4D R16 onwards. Otherwise, the modeling is also easy to understand with older versions of Cinema 4D.

For most people, UV layout is the least popular in the 3D sector. Many also think that Cinema 4D is not yet fully developed in this area. However, you can create a very good UV layout very quickly in Cinema 4D without having to use plug-ins or other software. If you adopt this workflow, the UV layout will no longer be a headache.

We will import our UV layout from Cinema 4D into Photoshop, work with textures there and adapt them to our UV islands.

We will export our model and import it into Unity. There are a few things that should be taken into account.

In Google SketchUp, we're going to pick a house model and quickly prepare it for Unity. We're going to be pretty rough with the model here so we can quickly import the house back into Unity. In the end, this method will also work without having spent many hours just on the model.

We don't want to script. For our example, we would have to script quite a lot. For this reason, we invest 10 euros and let the script do everything we need for us. This script can also be used in many other projects. We won't spend a second on the script itself. So no knowledge of scripting is required. It will simply work. We promise.

How do we add custom buttons in Unity? And how do I add functionality? I will show you in simple steps how to solve the problem very quickly.

A simple text as a button is not very nice, but we would like to insert our own graphics for our example. If you know how, it's very easy. No scripting is needed here either. The workflow is very simple.

We repeat the step from the last chapter with another button. We want to hide our second roof. The next functionality is created with just a few clicks.

We want our example to be more beautiful. We will add some nature and import a tree. There are many ways to import trees. We search the asset store and don't want to spend money on it.

It would be nice if our tree was a little animated and the leaves moved a little in the wind. No problem with our imported tree. But there is something we need to consider first.

Sometimes it could also be that the customer wants to hide certain things because this distracts from the actual model. For this reason, we will create another button so that we can also show and hide the tree.

When the architect presents his building, he naturally wants to see his contact details directly in the presentation. In this step, we will model a simple advertising sign in Cinema 4D, texture it, export it, import it into Unity and add functionality with a button. After this step, you'll be ready to handle buttons and functions.

Since Unity 5, "Global Illumination" is now available on the house. With this movie you will quickly understand the GI. We will add "Global Illumination" to our project to make the visuals more appealing. I will explain the GI with a simple example.

HDRIs are now a dime a dozen. For this example, we will export an HDR image from Cinema 4D and use it in Unity. The Global Illumination will react to our HDRI. At the same time, while we want to illuminate with the HDRI, we want to have a simple color in the background and not the HDRI. Here I'll show you how it works.

If you want to try to add a gradient to your background color, you will be surprised that it is not that easy. Of course, you can use scripts for this. But we want to completely dispense with scripts and see if we can fulfill our wish using the camera effects. We can even achieve many more looks here.

In this short movie, we change a few things that still bother the project. Adjustments to the brightness, move the graphics and a few other small changes.

We have reached our goal. We will now export our project from Unity. We will export our example for a website. Of course, many other formats can also be set for the export. I'll show you how easy it is in this movie.

If you have never worked in Cinema 4D before, you will find a short introduction here to make it easier to follow the tutorial.

This short introduction is for people who have never worked with Unity before. After this video you will be able to follow the course more easily.