It's now time to create the entire fenced area of your level in SketchUp. You can then import it to Unity. You learned how to do that in Chapter 6, Importing to a Professional Game Application: Unity 3D, so we won't cover it again here. Doing the repetitive work of copying and manipulating multiple versions within SketchUp is much quicker than doing it in a game engine. This is especially true when you are trying to quickly scope out a level to see if it works visually and spatially.
Note
Instances
Copying the asset around in the game engine, however, is likely to give you speed gains within the game, as engines are designed to handle copies as instances. This is where an asset is loaded into the memory of the computer just once, even though you can see it multiple times.
The workflow for copying around any large number of objects is similar to the following. This method will allow you to fill your level with stuff very quickly:
- Import the master object into the SketchUp level
- Copy it wherever you need it
- Select a few and make them unique
- Swap them for another version
- Repeat the last two steps with further versions
- Create further variation by scaling or mirroring some objects