Tutorial: From Maya to FPS Control (Unity) Video Lecture | How to make Video Games: Game Editor Tutorial - Game Development

if you like using Maya to create your
game geometry you appreciate this video
we've asked the guys from CG kooky calm
to showcase how to set up the scale in
Maya so that your assets fit the FPS
control plugin for the Unity game engine
exactly now cg cookie has some of the
best game art to tours in the industry
so we are honored that they're helping
us out enjoy hello this is Wes McDermott
in this video we're gonna take a look at
exporting 3d assets from Maya for use
with FPS control before we actually
export any assets what we want to do is
make sure that we have our scene scale
set correctly so here I am in unity and
I have the shellshock demo scene open so
I'm just kind of kind of zoom in here
into a doorway and I have this tool
called the distance tool now this is a
tool that I wrote and it's free on the
unity asset store you can pick that up
and what I use this tool for us is to
basically just measure scene elements
and so here I have two nodes set at the
bottom and top of this door and you can
see that using the distance tool I can
see that this doorway is about two point
three three units tall so let's look at
this another way let's get a bit more
visual with this so what I'm going to do
is I'm gonna come over to my game object
and I'm going to create a cube and this
is just gonna be a default unity cube so
it's basically going to be the scales at
1 so it's gonna be just basically a 1 by
1 by 1 unit cube and I'm just gonna go
ahead and place this here in the doorway
and now let's go ahead and just
duplicate this guy so we've got one cube
here and let's duplicate this guy so now
we have two cubes and if we take a look
at this we're looking at basically this
doorway is about two and a third cubes
so here let's do one more let's
duplicate this guy and then we'll kind
of scale it here and we'll place this up
here in the doorway just kind of match
this up so you can see here and so here
we go just roughly about two and a third
cubes unity cubes and each one of these
cubes again are about one unit tall so
we'll go ahead and just remove these
cubes and we'll go back here to the
distance tool so what I do for setting
up scenes for FPS control is eyes go
ahead and set my
self at this 2.33 units so this is kind
of like my working unit for all my scale
and it's basically like I said it's it's
the it's the average height of a doorway
here inside of the shell-shocked scene
so now if we go ahead and jump back over
to Maya we now have this fire hydrant
asset that we're gonna place into the
shell-shocked scene and so I have a
distance tool created already and so I
can go up here to create that's measure
tools and I added a distance tool and
you can see that this tool or by setting
this up you can see this fire hydrant is
actually about 3.9 so this is a lot
larger than our doorway so here I'll go
ahead and select this locator and I'll
start to just pull this down and you can
see that we'll get about two let's see
2.3 here we go 2.3 three so this puts us
here at about the size of our doorway
and now we can see that our fire hydrant
is a lot taller than it should be now
the average door is about seven feet
will say 84 inches and an average fire
hydrant might be around you know 26
inches so we're looking at you know
close to a third in size so what we want
to do is scale this fire hydrant down so
what I've done is I've set my pivot here
at the base of this and I always set
especially for environment assets I will
take the pivot point and I will always
set that at the base and that makes it a
lot easier if I want to be able to snap
this control around on a grip I'll just
hold down the X key here and now I can
easily move this asset here around a
grid and it makes it it makes it good
for a more precise placement into our
world so now we'll just go ahead and
make sure that we put that back so also
we can adjust our scale a bit easier now
so we're going to be scaling from the
bottom and we know that that this
locator here is now about 2.3 so that's
about the size of our door set in unity
so I'm going to go ahead and select this
fire hydrant we're going to activate the
scale tool and I'm just gonna scale this
down and I'll tell you what just so we
don't have to eyeball this let's go
ahead and just grab hold of this locator
now and let's pull this guy down to be
to about a third of that doorway so that
would put us about maybe 0.8 here
roughly and so now I have a scale that
I'm going to work towards we'll go back
and we'll select the fire hydrant
will activate the scale tool and then
we'll just scale this guy down and here
we go we'll just drop this
into our right view and get a little bit
of a better look on this there we go and
then we'll bring this up and so now we
have this scale down and you can see
that we actually have some values in our
scale so what we're going to want to
make sure that we do is freeze
transformations on this so we'll come up
here to modify and we'll do freeze
transformations and so that way that
will set our scale all the way to 1 and
I'm also going to make sure that I set
this guy at the zero so when I export my
items I keep everything at the origin so
we have the origin we have frozen our
transforms and now we're ready to go and
we've actually scaled this item down so
now what I'm going to do is just export
this FBX so we'll go to file and we'll
do export selection and I'm going to
place this into that demo assets here so
we'll just call this fire test and the
FBX export and then in in the case of my
version here I was using 2014 so I'm
just going to export out FBX 2013 I find
that you know some apps are having a
little bit of issue with 2014 at this
time so just to be safe I keep this at
2013 if we come over to our units we can
see that we're doing you'll want to keep
the scale factor at one and keep this
checked automatic and you can see here
that the file units converted to
centimeters so that's pretty important
if you're if you're inside your Maya
scene and you're working with the
default centimeters you'll want to just
go ahead and make sure that you just
keep this as a scale factor of 1 and you
saw that what happened there in when we
scaled this hydrant down was we were
just manually controlling this scale
factor ourselves so we're keeping this
at 1 we know what the unit are we know
what our unit is inside of unity and
we're just matching that unit inside of
Maya with the scaling of our fire
hydrants so again just make sure that
you're working in the centimetres
default centimeters in Maya and then
just keep this scale factor at 1 and set
to automatic that should be the default
anyways and then we'll go ahead and just
export this selection so now we're back
in unity I'm going to scroll here to the
top where my assets folder is and now we
have this fire test I'm going to go
ahead and select this and we want to
make sure that we set our scale factor
to the correct value so right now it's
set at point 0
and this is not correct so before when
we export it in Maya we export it with
the scale factor of 1 and Maya's units
are on par with units units if you use a
scale factor of 1 so what we want to do
is go ahead and make sure that we just
set this to 1 so you're going to want to
do that with all your meshes and then
we'll go ahead and click apply onto this
and now we'll have the fire hydrant set
correctly so now if we just
drag-and-drop this out here into our
scene you can see that our fire hydrant
object if we just kind of move this up
here a bit right and we'll place it
right here under on the doorway here and
you can see that it's now placed
correctly let's go ahead and just check
our distance tool on this so let's see
we will zoom out let's just go ahead and
move our fire hydrant here a little
closer and let's go ahead just grab one
of these nodes here on my distance tool
actually I've got to come up here and
select it here it is so let's see we'll
just say we'll keep that one here at the
base and let's grab the top node and
we'll just drag this guy down here let's
just go ahead and scoot him all the way
over just so you can see it right at
that line and as you can see whoops
deselected it here let's just close our
environment here at this distance tool
and so now as I start to just bring this
guy down and place them right on top of
what the fire hydrant is you can see the
distance tool let's get it right about
where it should be you can see that the
distance tool is now reading that it
should be 0.8 roughly here and if we go
back into Maya you can see that that's
where we were working here with our
distance tool inside of Maya so here we
have 0.8
you