Overview

In this tutorial, you will learn how to kitbash a chair that can be sat on by players.

• Skills you will learn.
  • Where to find guides.
  • Placing objects in the Hierarchy.
  • Using Client Contexts.
  • Simplified chair collision.
  • Kitbashing a simple chair.

Add Guide to Hierarchy

To get started, you will need to add a guide from Project Content. The guide is a visual 3D representation of an object that can be viewed in the Viewport window which is used to help visualize the design of your 3D object. This will help to make the chair easier, as we can follow the visual representation.

Add the Chair guide from the Seating folder found in Project Content → Guides to your Hierarchy.

Create Client Context

A Client Context folder will be used to place all the kitbashed parts. Right click on the Guide Instance - Chair object in the the Hierarchy, and select Create New Client Context from the Create Network Context.. menu.

Why use a Client Context?

Using a Client Context for all the objects will have collision turned off. Collisions between objects can be complex and computationally expensive. A kitbashed model can be built with many objects. To ensure that the game runs smoothly and does not become bogged down by collision calculations, it is often necessary to simplify the collision geometry for an object.

One way to simplify collisions is to use approximate or simplified collision shapes, such as bounding boxes, spheres, or capsules, instead of more complex shapes like meshes. These approximate shapes can be calculated more quickly and with less memory usage than more detailed meshes, and they can still provide an acceptable level of collision accuracy.

Kitbash a Chair

Using the 3D visual representation in the Viewport, drop objects from Core Content into the ClientContext folder. These objects will make up the visual look of your chair.

In the picture below, Japanese Temple Pillars were used. Feel free to copy the design, or create your own. Try and stick within the guide, this helps sell the visual to the player that they are sitting on a chair.

 ℹ️ The look of your object does not need to be a chair. Using this guide can help you make anything sittable.

Test the Chair

Test the chair to make sure the player sits on it correctly. Something you will notice is that the player can walk through the chair. This is because the collisions for all of the objects in the Client Context are turned off. This will be solved in the next part.

Create Chair Collision

Let’s give the chair some collision so that players can’t walk through it.

1. Right-click on the Guide Instance - Chair and select New Group.
2. Rename the group to Collision.
3. In Project Content search for Cube and add it to the Collision folder in the Hierarchy.
4. Scale the Cube so it matches the dimensions of the bottom part of the chair.
5. Add another Cube to the group and scale so it fits the top back of the chair.

Hide Collision

With the collision in place, it is time to hide it so that players don’t see those cubes in game.

Select the Collision group, and change the Visibility property in the Properties Window to Force Off.

Test the Chair

Test the chair again. Make sure the player can not pass through the chair now that it has collision.

Summary

Guides are extremely useful for guiding the dimensions of your design.

This is just one of many guides available to use. Experiment with different designs and see what you can come up with.