My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Make a game look beautiful-URP and Texture Maps pt.2

Objective: Adding new texture maps to different game objects for emission in the Control Room scene.

Final results of the Control Room with emissions.

We’re going to use emission maps a little bit more to enhance the Control Room. Let’s begin with the Column game object, placing it in your 3D software which we will be using Blender.

The Column game object comes in 3 pieces, therefore bring in the objects and have the front of each part of the Column facing towards you. Select either Layout or Modeling, change Object Mode to Edit Mode, and Face to select faces of the object. Now select the middle face of each Column parts which will be used for emission.

Selected the 3 faces of the game objects that make up the Column object.

Next, select UV Editing to open the UV Editor window and see the faces selected from each object only. Under UV->Export UV Layout, save this as a new .png file wherever you would like to keep it.

Used UV Editing to Export the newly created emission objects file.

In the GIMP image editor, open the new .png file created. Use the Rectangle Select Tool and outline each image on the layer. Or better yet, use Select by Color Tool to place outlines around all of the images onscreen.

Select Bucket Fill Tool to paint the inside of the entire image with the color White for emission. Also, select either FG for foreground or BG for background Color Fill to select the color layer White is associated with. Make sure Fill Whole Selection under Affected Area is turned on, and the full bar brush is selected. Click the Bucket Fill of White paint inside the images to signal these images for emission.

Used the Rectangle Select Tool to select all faces and filled in with white paint.

Create 2 more layers with the 1st being White to highlight what will be shown. Then the other layer will be Black for transparency which will show the faces selected with the White color filled in. We can Merge the Black layer DOWN to the White layer, and this new merge layer DOWN to the main texture image layer.

Saved as an emission .png file into the texture folder of the Scifi Columns 01_03 in the Assets folder.

To expand the emissions in the scene, let’s use the Scifi Floor texture map in GIMP. With the Rectangle Select Tool, draw outlines around the images on the black Scifi Floor 01 & 02 objects. Then, create 2 new layers of White and Black above the Grounds Albedo layer.

Scifi Floors texture added to GIMP with 01 and 02 floors face designs selected.

Select the Bucket Fill Tool, Fill Type to the White color, and Fill Whole Selection. Click inside the highlighted image to color all the images selected White.

Face designs selected filled in with white paint through the layers.

Back in Unity, create a new Material name Scifi Floors 01_02. Turn on Emission, and add the new emission map created to the Emission Map property. Add this Material to the 2 Scifi Floors 01 & 02 objects in their On Demand Remap Grounds under Remapped Materials inside the Materials tab.

Emission turned on and new emission texture added to Scifi Floors 01_02 material for Scifi Floors 01 & 02.

Another way to create a new emission file, is to use the Select by Color Tool and click inside one of the floors being used. But, to select the right image faces from the 2 floors is to use the Invert setting under the Select menu option. Now if we click in an open area, the White paint will fill in the open areas and the inside of the face images. Make sure to create a White and Black layer to represent the top layers.

Selected the face designs on the Scifi Floors texture and filled in with white paint using Invert.

Using the Scifi Floors 01_02 Material created earlier, turn on Emission and add the new emission texture map created to the Emission Map property.

New texture added to Scifi Floors 01 & 02 objects through the material.

To change the highlighted emission image faces in the scene, use the original floor texture in GIMP. Select all the images on the texture map, select Invert, and with Bucket Fill Tool selected click in an open area on the map. Set up the White and Black layers and save as a new .png texture. Add this new texture to the Scifi Floors 01_02 Material’s Emission Map. If you don’t see the new changes right away, select both Scifi Floors 01 & 02 FBX prefab objects. Go to the Materials tab, change the material to Scifi Floors 01_02 in On Demand Remap Grounds, and click Apply.

Adjusted another new Inverted texture with a different selection of face designs.

We played around with some of the other game objects in the Control Room giving them emission maps to use. Using the same techniques that was used for the Columns and Scifi Floors 11 objects, we applied them to other objects and gave them an emissive appearance. It was fun doing it, but I did get out of hand with the emissions. I will remove some of them when we work on Post Processing next.

Final results of the Control Room with emissions.