Tip: Don’t do a sci-fi scene ever in your life if you can avoid it. There is too much detail.
The first thing I had to do was figure out the composition. This was the main screenshot I used as reference.
I went back to this scene repeatedly to get a better understand of how the bunker was structured. I did end up doing a kind of reconstruction of the YouTube video I reference in the post about the proposal. Because in the original anime, the bunker is actually filled with some kind of fluid. So I got rid of the fluid and we’ll pretend like it was never there.
Once I had a better idea of the construction of the scene, I had to find a free model for Unit 01. There are a couple out there and originally I wanted to use this one because it’s got all these materials and it comes pre-rigged. It was 30 dollars when I first found it: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/eva-at-the-beginning-of-eva-evangelion-eva-yihaoji-machine-3d-model-1827579
But I was determined to find a free model. So I turned to sketchfab. I ended up using this model which was not rigged but had some materials: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/evangelion-unit-one-07081cd3a70e494095271c43a591af81
This model was not perfect and it actually gave me some issues in terms of the way it was posed. It’s not standing perfectly straight which made it difficult to construct the scene around the model accurately. The hands are also not my favourite but it was free. And I think I ended up hiding the hands anyways.
So composition is built by me. And the final elevator platform model is also built by me. But all the other sci-fi details are made with pre-built assets. Here’s a list of the different models I used through out my scene.
Sci-fi panels: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/free-scifi-panel-002-public-domain-cc0-2a33d7889ae041d8a4698d539623250f
Railing: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rusty-railing-8bf0e725e33a4e6d90f6803610118eaa
Engine model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/old-engine-c9130ed48cee420186e06b83c4c880af
Sci-fi floor: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/sci-fi-floor-section-kb035-aa880d94a17c44ea96426dbb79c892c6
During my process, I went back and forth between Unity and Blender to add more detail. I also had to go back and forth on how the scene itself was actually scaled because it was pretty hard to figure out. But as I worked on the scene I added new things here and there. Scale was probably the most difficult thing to play around with when you’re not actually in the scene. I would recommend adding a scale reference into your scene. Make like a pole or a plane that is about the size of the player. You can delete this eventually but its good for when you need to add things that the player will interact with. Because turns out, constructing things like buttons and elevator platforms when your only size reference is a gigantic robot is not very helpful. So just do that in the beginning and it will help you out tremendously when you’re modeling.