Unity probuilder

3D Modeling in the Unity Editor

By Alejandro Romero

Description

ProBuilder is a Unity extension that allows users to natively edit 3D models in the Unity editor, instead of importing a model from another program. This extension works seamlessly with the ProGrids and Polybrush Unity extensions, which allow for object snapping along a grid and surface sculpting, respectively.

Home Page

https://unity3d.com/unity/features/worldbuilding/probuilder

Core Features

Supports selection of:
- Edges
- Objects
- Vertices
- Faces
Features:
- Generate primitives
- Create a poly shape (define vertices and extrusion and construct your own mesh)
- Smoothing
- Material Editor
- UV Editor
- Vertex Color editing
- Orientation editing (local vs global)
- Conform/flip normals
- Export mesh
- Triangulate mesh
- Center mesh pivot
- Lightmap UV editor
- Mirror Objects
- Merge Objects
- Freeze transform
- Set object collider or trigger

Metrics

Accessibility: How user-friendly is the software?

ProBuilder is now built into Unity, so access once in Unity is very simple
Flexible options allow for workflow customization

Power: The engine's power - i.e. how much one can do with this

Surprisingly deep editing capabilities directly in game engine
Does not support sculpting, painting, or snapping into positions (solved with additional extensions, namely ProGrids and Polybrush)

Usage: Evaluation of software's effectiveness in certain use cases

Save time by editing basic geometry directly in Unity rather than other software

Installation and Getting Started

Getting Started

Open Unity. If you do not have Unity installed, see the Unity3D wiki page
Go to Window > Package Manager and make sure All-packages is selected in the dropdown in the top left of the Package Manager window
Simply look up ProBuilder and hit install on the bottom right
In the Editor, go to Tools > ProBuilder > ProBuilder Window
This will open the ProBuilder window! Its functionality is outlined in the main Features section above
You can right click on this window to change between icon and text views
That's it! Have fun!

Video Tutorials

Basic ProBuilder Tutorial - 1678947252698.mp4

This video will walk you through the installing ProBuilder and adding it to your project. From there, it will take you through how to interact with the premade PolyShapes ProBuilder has as well as how to create and merge your custom PolyShapes.

In addition, the video briefly goes over how to change the materials of your Game Objects (applies to any Mesh Game Object in Unity!).

One warning of ProBuidler's Merge Objects function that is stated in the video: the extrusion of your new merged PolyShape is based off only the extrusion of one of the shapes. If you want to change extrusions of parts of the merged object, you'll need to return to the previous state of having separate objects, change the extrusions, and merge again.

Liza Kolev '23