Checking out a new Unity asset developer – Phoenix3D

Some of the best-known asset makers for Unity are so well known they are sort of ‘default assets’ that everyone turns to. This is good, they get to this position through great support and excellent quality, but it has a bad side too: sometimes people don’t even search and discover newer assets.

Today I want to highlight a brand new publisher, Phoenix3D, since they’ve only started releasing this year but have a couple of things that have caught my eye. Right now 3/5 of their assets have new-release discounts so it’s the perfect time to talk about them.

So let’s discuss their 5 released assets. We’ll quickly skip over some textures and then end with a full evaluation of their biggest pack.

First I’ll link to all of the packs from here:

• Indoor Floor Tile Textures
• Indoor Wall Tile Textures
• Outdoor Wall Tile Textures
• Outdoor Ground Tile Textures
• Medieval Farm Town Buildings and Tools

P3D: Indoor Floor Tile Textures Pack 1

I started about by taking a look at the floor package. I actually have a bunch of assets with floor textures and I always have the same issue when evaluating them – how close should you be able to get without seeing distortion? I don’t really know the answer but this asset stays at good fidelity a metre away which I think is about the right minimum to test.

I was quite impressed with the quality of a few of these, two of which I’ve pictured because it’s hard to write about a texture.

I do have to throw a little bit of shade at this first package though – since one of the materials accidentally looks exactly like the AMD logo! I guess that’s perfect if your game is about making GPUs and CPUs

P3D: Indoor Wall Tile Texture Pack

The next pack to discuss is the wall tile textures. These are all similarly good quality to the floors above but mainly fit a more modern theme than my ancient or medieval settings. Two textures though perfectly fit inside a Roman bath or Egyptian hall, so there is a very good chance I’ll be using those

P3D: Outdoor Wall Tile Texture Pack

The outdoor walls work perfectly in HDRP and like all of the texture packs, they tile well (most of them seamlessly). they have good quality up to a close distance and have good height detailing.

They work great as-is and I imagine they will really pop if used with any shader like BetterLit or MicroSplat that can add tesselation or other height details.

P3D: Outdoor Ground Tile Texture Pack

There’s not much different I can say about the outdoor ground, it’s just as good as the other packs. One thing that stood out with the ground textures is there can be a couple of variations of the same tile type, which is really useful if you have a partly degraded structure (and great with something that does height blending – like MicroSplat again)

P3D: Medieval Farm Town Buildings And Tools

The biggest pack that Phoenix3D currently has is the medieval farm. I’ll go through each type of asset included in the pack, one at a time.

Windmills

The windmills are probably the main selling point of the pack. The outside quality of these is excellent and the blades are separate from the body, allowing them to turn. I’ve actually looked at 4 different packs with windmills in the past year (and a bunch more on CGTrader). Surprisingly a bunch of them did NOT have the blades separated which in my opinion was a big oversight.

The roof textures of the windmills also stand out as very good – in fact I will probably reuse them for my castle towers – they remind me of the old-town towers in Tallinn

The insides of the windmills are good also, but not as good as the outside in my opinion – the doors move, with proper pivots in place. When you enter, the interior is spacious, but does not have added details like mezzanine. This is good or bad depending on your needs – since sometimes they have hard-attached staircases which aren’t easily usable.

They also let in a good amount of light with well placed windows that are actually translucent (they have a dirt pattern), something else some other packs missed by having fake windows.

My big gripe about these windmills is also true of all the other packs – they all lack an internal mechanism that moves – there should be a centre pole, connected to the blade pole and turned vertically, so it rotates one of two stone plates at the bottom (to mill wheat)

Since I want a fully working medieval simulation I asked the author of Phoenix3D about this and they suggested they are going to create a working windmill internal mechanism in the next few days and then add it to the pack. So if you already own this pack, I suggest you reach out to them, and if you don’t then you can expect this to be the best functional windmill after Unity approves their next update

The Barn

The barn outside is excellent, the overhang is exactly what I’ve been looking for and the materials are very realistic – a big thumbs up. The inside has hits and misses – the gaps for light to filter in are great and the layout is realistic, but the fence post tops seem a bit too artificial to me – they are just too zig-zaggy. I would prefer to see it a little more understated (see below for the current design)

Tools & Fences

The fences are equally realistic but as a bonus they have nice locking mechanisms and visible hinges visible which could make the difference from the fences included in some other packs.

Barrels & Scarecrows

The Barrels and Scarecrows are a surprise favourite of mine. There are also a bunch of other tools which are of good quality as you’d expect, but the barrels and scarecrows stand out as especially good quality with realistic textures. Better than many scarecrows and targets I’ve seen.

Plants

Plants are not the core of this package and I think it shows. They are definitely good quality and better meshes than similar ‘stylized’ plants, but I found the wheat a little too low resolution when I was close to it, if one thing in this pack could be improved, I would suggest that one – but of course, if you want really realistic of photogrammetric plants, you’ll prefer something like NatureManufacure packs.

Well/Hut

The Well (named Hut in the pack) is high quality. It’s the first well I have seen that has a moving crank which puts it above some others I have. The textures are also high quality.

Conclusion

Phoenix3D definitely gets my recommendation, especially if they come through with the working windmill. I encourage you to go check them out on Unity

If you have any questions you can leave me a comment below or come join us in Discord – https://discord.gg/k3PZQ7Wwb5