Custom Assets Guidelines

Purpose of these guidelines is to explain how to make textured custom 3D models and import them into Unity and still keep them look like the default assets provided by Citadel Studios.

Shading

Unity uses new physically based shaders, which allow a bunch of input textures, Base Color, Normals, Metallic, Ambient Occlusion and what not.

Shards online is not using these shaders and only uses the diffuse color and on occasion a bit of specular gloss (Unity Shaders: Legacy/Diffuse and Legacy/Specular) on some armorm like Plate.

When you are using an external 3d painting program, like Substance Painter the preview is rendered with a shader specific to that program.

Substance painter has the option to use physically based shaders which are pretty much the same like what's used in Unity nowadays, but you will see a result which is not what you want.

Basically you have to switch off all the fancy physically based shading and only work with the Diffuse/Albedo map.

You are still free to use any shader - even the old legacy shader, just keep in mind the more fancy stuff you are using the more likely the object might look alien in a bad way within the game.

Texel Resolution

The Texel resolution is determined by the size of your object and the resolution of its UV maps.

The Inn Table in shards online has a UV map resolution of 512*512 and the UV along its long side, which is 2 Units is 390 pixels long, so this results in a resolution of 195 texel or roughly 200 texels per Unity Unit = Meter.

So - if you want to make an asset with a similar resolution / amount of detail, now you have a guideline.