Simulator Prototype - HDRP

📖 Project Overview

Simulator Prototype (HDRP) is a non-playable technical exploration project focused on achieving photo-realism and high-fidelity simulation using Unity's High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP).

Unlike my gameplay-focused projects, this prototype serves as a showcase of my skills in Technical Art, Level Design, and Environmental Storytelling. It demonstrates the ability to build immersive worlds using advanced lighting, procedural generation, and C# scripting for environmental dynamics.

⚙️ Technical Deep Dive (Technical Art)

This project pushed the boundaries of Unity's graphical capabilities, requiring a deep understanding of the rendering pipeline and optimization techniques.

🌤️ Global Illumination & Lighting

Instead of standard baked lighting, I configured a hybrid approach suitable for dynamic times of day.

• Physical Sky System: Implemented a procedurally generated sky that reacts to the sun's position (controlled by C# scripts), creating realistic atmospheric scattering.
• Volume Framework: Architected a hierarchy of Global and Local Volumes to control Exposure, White Balance, and Tonemapping dynamically as the camera moves through different biomes.

🏔️ Terrain & Procedural Generation

• Terrain Architecture: Sculpted the landscape using a combination of manual brushes and Terrain Stamps to create realistic geological formations.
• Procedural Texturing: Utilized layer-based procedural texturing tools to blend grass, rock, and sand textures naturally based on slope and height maps.
• Foliage System: Managed density and placement of 3D trees and 2D grass billboards, utilizing Billboarding techniques to maintain performance.

🌊 Visual Effects & Volumetrics

• Interactive Water: Configured realistic water shaders with refraction, reflection, and wave simulation dependent on wind variables.
• Volumetric Fog: Designed local fog volumes to create depth and mood in valley areas, optimizing the Volumetric Quality settings to balance visual fidelity with GPU cost.

🎨 Asset Pipeline & Optimization

The visual fidelity was achieved through a mix of custom modeling and efficient asset integration.

• Blender Workflow: Modeled specific hard-surface props and architectural elements in Blender, handling UV mapping and texture baking before importing to Unity.
• LOD (Level of Detail): Configured aggressive LOD transitions for foliage and complex props to keep the vertex count manageable.
• Occlusion Culling: Set up static occlusion areas to prevent rendering objects blocked by large terrain features.

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