3D UNITY LEVEL

A 3D Video Game Environment Made in the Unity Game Engine using ProBuilder

Final Mark: 98%

Gif of several video game characters talking in a bar

Skills & Software

Solo University Project
Made with Unity
Mapped with ProBuilder
C# Programming
3D Level Design
Dynamic Sound & Lighting

The brief for this university project was to create a 3D, blocked-out environment which a player could explore using the Unity game engine. A necessary requirement was to have two "levels" - an Overground and an Underground. This concept for the level was not my first - previous iterations included a wizard's tower and a forest with a cave, before I came to settle on a low-poly block of buildings with a night club and a corner shop. The idea formed as a simple playground of alleyways and platforms, various buildings the player could enter and explore, and was inspired by old playstation games and the idiotic exploration I used to embark on as a teenager. Initially, there was a rather absurd narrative attached that would've seen a rowdy bouncer expel the player character from the bar, only for them to re-enter through the sewers.

Gif of a video game street as seen from a first-person perspective

The first person controller allowed the player to feel "closer" to the environment.

Tools

The level was built using ProBuilder tools in Unity, which provide the functionality to add and alter 3D shapes directly in the scene. ProBuilder provides a toolbar which can be used to create quick, prefabricated objects, edit their scale, shape, add loop cuts and even extrude and inset faces - not unlike the tools available in Blender. Every object in the scene was made and edited with these tools. After creating four different versions of the "border" buildings, I then created prefabs of those objects to quickly duplicate them.

Design

I wanted to level to be boxed in with realistic limitations and no invisible walls barring players' paths. Most of the obstructions in the game are chain-link fences blocking alleyways, poorly parked white vans or an exit tunnel blocked by road barriers. The edges of the level became rows of dark-windowed terraced houses, training the player's eye towards the brighter, prettier features at its center; the night club, shop, and interlinking alleyways.

A front-lit corner shop with an open back door leads the player into the back alley, where they can enter a manhole, or climb upon some crates to access balconies and precarious boards to jump across.

A video game alleyway featuring a parked van, manhole and rubbish bins

The manhole allows the player to access the sewers below.

Gif of two video game characters arguing in a bar

NPCs weren't part of the brief, but I had fun adding in a few generic bodies to give the bar some life.

Out With the Old

Around half-way through the overall design, I realised I'd made a fatal flaw. I had created every building as one solid game object with tens of loop cuts, creating hundreds of faces. When time came to apply materials, the workload was quadrupled as unique materials needed to be applied to each face individually.

So, everything went out the low-poly window.

The exterior buildings were redesigned using multiple, more modular components that could be re-used and the core buildings were redesigned under the same logic.

Lighting & Camera

With the core structures finished, the environment still looked like a test space. Even with scene lighting applied, everything felt too bright and too crisp. I decided to change the global lighting source to a gradient colour and added a fog effect to close the feel of the world more. This made the lights pop and made the game world feel much more lived in and ambient.

I switched the camera to a first-person perspective as the level had many narrow passages and doorways for the camera to get caught on or clip through, not to mention my player character model was still a generic low-poly man in a pair of tighty-whities.

A video game shop stocked with scattered items

Every good corner shop sells bottled water, books and plantpots. Are they books? Boxes of cereal?

Gif of a video game: Water pours from sewer pipes

These three water-flowing sewer pipes were created with particle effects in Unity.

Underground

Logically, the underground level felt like it could've only been a sewer. The manhole provides one entrance, and the other links to a dingy pub cellar through a broken wall. Creating a handful of prefabs of some tight tunnels to squeeze through, I created a simple path of tunnels which connect to a large sluice room in its center. The most ambitious endeavour was creating waterfalls to pour from open pipes, which I did using particle effects. I later added some proximity-based water splashing sounds to sell the effects and give the level an impression of depth.

Sound Design

The sounds for the game were gathered from the Unity Asset Store and royalty-free sources such as Pixabay. Mostly using 3D audio, I placed a few faded and distant street sound audio sources at the edges of the map to give an impression of distant city trafffic, then applied two audio sources to the scene's titular central pub - one of a crowd, audible while near the bar's door, and another of the bar's thumping music which could be heard from further away.

Summary

If you've ever found yourself sleuthing off for a quiet pint in the Anchor Bar in Derry, then aspects of this scene may feel familiar. As I designed and built the level, I worked off what felt familiar and grounded to me, aiming for a stylised, 90s-style chunkiness but with realistic materials and lighting. Before this, I had experimented a little with 3D objects, but this particular project (and the many bad decisions I learned from along the way) taught me more about 3D spaces and level design, the particular pit-falls, and the importance of knowing the full processes of the engine you're working with.