GEOG 497
3D Modeling and Virtual Reality

Adding the Model to the Scene

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Adding the Model to the Scene

The next thing we are going to do is place the Old Main model in the Scene and make a few more changes to the Scene.

  • 5.1 To add the model to the Scene, drag it from the Assets pane to the Hierarchy Window and drop it somewhere into the area below the “Main Camera” and “Directional Light” GameObjects. Most likely, things will look a bit strange in the Scene view because the building model is so large that it contains the current viewing position as well as the locations of the camera and lighting source. So as a first step to fix this, double-click the OldMain object in the Hierarchy Window and then zoom out a bit until you see the building somewhat similar to what is shown in the screenshot below.
    Hierarchy window, image of old main
    Credit: Unity 3D
  • 5.2 While we now can see the entire building in the Scene Window, the camera and lighting source are still inside the building. So what you should do is scale down the “OldMain” object by a factor of 0.04. You can do this by selecting “OldMain” and directly editing the scale values in the Inspector Window. An alternative approach would have been to use the Scaling Tool as explained in one of the videos earlier in the lesson. But since we want a factor of exactly 0.04, directly editing the numbers is easier here. In addition, we want to turn the building around the Y axis by 180° so that the side facing the sunlight is the front side.
    Inspector window
    Credit: Unity 3D

  • 5.3 If you select the “MainCamera” and look at the Preview (or try out Play Mode), you will see that this is now quite a bit away from the building. So let us place the camera such that we have a nice view of the building from the sunny side and the building roughly fills the entire picture. Remember that one way to do this is by changing the Scene view to the desired perspective and then use “Align With View”.

    Hierarcy window, main camera selected, image of old main
    Credit: Unity 3D
  • 5.4 Finally, press Play to enter Play Mode and have a quick check whether things are looking good in full size. You can click on the small drop-down icon at the top right of the Game Window and click “Maximize” to maximize the window. Stopping Play Mode will switch back to the Scene Window and the normal layout.
    Maximize window
    Credit: Unity 3D