September Showcase: Explainer 3 of 8

Let's import a 3d gallery asset into Unity!

Posted by By pixel perfect 7 Min Read September 11, 2023

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Create a Unity project and import a gallery scene

Overview

Name of explainer: Create a Unity project and import a gallery scene

Creative theme: Showcase month

Software used (for this explainer): Unity

User level: INTERMEDIATE

This is explainer 3 of 8 in this series

This series includes:

  1. Edit photos to include in the 3d gallery
  2. Edit video clips to include in the 3d gallery
  3. Create a Unity project and import a gallery scene
  4. Add photos and videos to the 3d gallery
  5. Add 3d objects to the gallery
  6. Add sound to the 3d gallery
  7. Export a gallery tour as an mp4 video
  8. Export the gallery to a VR headset

The Software

This series of explainers uses the following software:

Photoshop for image editing. Similar results can also be achieved using Paintshop Pro (available for a one-off fee) or GIMP (free). See image editing month for full details about these applications and step-by-step explainers.

Premiere Pro for video editing. Similar results can also be achieved using VEGAS Pro (available on subscription or for a one-off fee)or Shotcut (free). See video editing month for full details about these applications and step-by-step explainers.

Unity for working with a 3d gallery scene. See Virtual Reality month for full details about Unity and step-by-step explainers for getting up and running. We’re also using Modern Gallery, a PAID Unity gallery asset to import into our project and navigate in VR:

Finally, we’re using AMBIENS AT+ videoclip, a PAID Unity asset that lets us export Unity camera movements as MP4 videos at up to 4k resolution:

At time of writing, the combined cost of the gallery and camera recording assets is approximately 80 GBP / 100 USD. You may also find FREE 3d assets that will work just fine! Have a look at Sketchfab, CGTrader and TurboSquid, making sure to search for FREE or low-cost assets. The Unity asset store has regular sales so keep an eye out for discounts on the above!

The gallery at the end of this series

Here’s how sections of your gallery could look at the end of the project. Tap an image to view it in a larger window:

If you choose to export a gallery tour as a video file (explainer 7) or send the entire gallery to a VR headset (explainer 8), here’s how your gallery could look! The VR section is streamed from a Quest 2 headset:

The pre-requisities

This is an INTERMEDIATE explainer series overall, though the individual image editing and video editing explainers are suitable for beginners.

If you’re new to IT / computing, the explainers in this series relating to UNITY are not likely to be suitable. To get started with 3d software in a beginner-friendly environment, we recommend the free Tinkercad. See makeuseof for a helpful overview of 3d design.

Why would I do this?

We could model a gallery from scratch (A project favoured on many introductory 3d modelling courses to get students up and running with 3d primitives). See this video as a start point for how you could do this:

As this is not a modelling explainer series, we’re going to import a ready-made gallery asset and focus on adding our own images, videos and 3d objects to it. We import the gallery into UNITY, which is free for personal use.

Let’s do it!

Click the play icon to watch this video. Subtitles are available – Click the settings cog at the bottom right for options. You can also watch this video full-screen by clicking the full-screen icon at the bottom right.

Good to know

This is a recap explainer. See Virtual Reality month for full step-by-step explainers for setting up Unity, editing a 3D VR scene and exploring it in a Meta Quest VR headset.

We’re using the paid 3d Unity gallery asset ‘Modern Gallery’ as the basis for this explainer. You’ll need to add it to your Unity account to use it inside Unity:

At the time of writing there are over 150 gallery / room assets available in the Unity asset store, with new ones added regularly. Of course, your gallery could be set anywhere you like, from a space station to a theme park!

Where to next?

If you like the idea of creating your own gallery from scratch, it is possible to model inside Unity using an asset such as uModeler.

3D modelling specialists are likely to use dedicated software such as Maya (paid) or Blender(free), but if you’ll be using Unity as a primary creative platform UModeler is a great place to start!

Remember, this is part of a series of explainers – Join us again for the other explainers in the series 🙂

Notes and updates

There are no notes or advisories at this time. This video explainer was last updated in June 2022. This page was last updated in September 2023.

We at pixels.cool are not responsible for the content of any external webpages or software downloaded from third party sites. Links are included in good faith at the time of writing. All explainer content is compiled in good faith using processes and methods used by the team. Modern software offers users many ways to accomplish a single task, and for reasons of clarity we choose not to refer to multiple options. All computer users should run up to date virus / security software at all times to minimise risks of data loss.

This is number 3 of 8 explainer videos in this series. Make sure you check out the others!