Alright, so yesterday was wild. I had this crazy dream, like a full-blown war movie playing out in my head. I woke up all sweaty and disoriented, but the visuals were stuck in my head. Immediately I thought, “Gotta try and make this into something, right?”
First thing’s first, I grabbed my laptop and started scribbling down notes. I’m talking bullet points of the main scenes, the feeling of the dream, the weird details that didn’t make sense but felt important. Basically, I needed to wrangle this chaotic mess into some kind of structure.
Next up, I fired up Unity. I’m no expert, but I know enough to throw together a basic scene. I envisioned a desolate, war-torn landscape. So, I started with a terrain object, messed around with the heightmap to get some hills and craters going. Threw in some basic textures for dirt and rocks. Nothing fancy, just wanted to get the atmosphere right.
Then came the harder part: bringing the “war” aspect to life. I’m definitely not a 3D modeler, so I went hunting for free assets. Found some decent-looking tanks, soldiers, and ruined buildings on the Unity Asset Store. Downloaded a bunch, imported them into my project, and started placing them around the scene. It was kinda like building a diorama, but in a virtual space.
To get that sense of movement and chaos, I messed around with particle systems. Created some smoke effects for explosions, dust clouds kicking up from the tanks. Tweaked the colors, sizes, and emission rates until it looked somewhat believable. It was a lot of trial and error, tweaking numbers and hoping for the best.
Sound was crucial, of course. Found some free sound effects online – explosions, gunfire, screaming. Imported them into Unity and added them to the scene. I used audio sources and triggers to make the sounds play at specific moments, like when a tank “fires” or a building “collapses”.
Here’s where things got a little more technical. I wanted to have a simple camera movement, like a slow pan across the battlefield. So, I wrote a basic script to control the camera’s position and rotation. It was super simple, just using `*` and `*`, but it did the trick.
Finally, I added some post-processing effects to give the scene a more cinematic look. Bloom, color grading, vignette – the usual stuff. Played around with the settings until I got the mood I was going for: bleak, gritty, and unsettling.
I spent a good chunk of the day on this, tweaking, adjusting, and trying to get it as close as possible to the feeling of the dream. Was it perfect? Hell no. But it was a fun exercise in translating a bizarre mental experience into something tangible. Plus, I learned a few new tricks in Unity along the way.
Here’s a quick rundown of the steps I took:
- Wrote down notes about the dream.
- Created a basic terrain in Unity.
- Imported free assets (tanks, soldiers, buildings).
- Added particle effects for smoke and dust.
- Implemented sound effects (explosions, gunfire).
- Wrote a simple camera movement script.
- Applied post-processing effects.
I’m thinking of expanding on this idea. Maybe add some interactive elements, or even try to turn it into a short film. But for now, I’m just happy to have captured a little piece of that crazy “war in a dream”.
