IntroductionWhether you want to persue a career in game development or want to just discover the process of how to create a game, a good start would be to learn amazing Unity engine which has a lot to offer. Actually, game development nowadays consists of exploiting this power to create 2D/3D games and focusing more on the concept and the design rather than just the physics engines.
In this article, you will learn how easy it actually is to get your feet wet with Unity and the essentials of starting a project using this game development platform. The chain of processes will be presented in more of a hands-on manner where each task answers a given question.
How to create a blank project?
After downloading Unity, and when you first start it, you will be prompted by the launch wizard which will give you the ability to create a new project or browse previous projects and download tutorials. To create a new project:
- Click on “New”
- Choose a name for your project
- Choose a location for your project, in which all assets and needed files will live.
- Click on “Create project.” Once that’s done, you will need to wait until Unity generates the files needed for beginning your new project.
How to open a project?
From your launch wizard, you can select “Open” in order to browse using your file explorer for a desired existing project. Then you can choose “On Disk” to browse local files in your computer or in the cloud.
What is the project files’ hierarchy?
In order to set our folder structure in Unity, from our Project window (location of all assets and from where we add objects to the scene view) we right click the mouse and hit Create >> Folder and then give it a name. Now, this folder we created for our assets officially is created under the path we chose for the project. Exactly here: {path of project}/Assets/{created folder}
Note that every change in the folder structure from the project manager affects the project folder and vice versa.
How to import packages?
The Unity asset store and completed Unity projects provide Unity packages, things you are likely to need while building your very own project. In order to import such packages (UAS):
- Select Window>> Asset store.
- In the search bar type the type of assets you need, you can use the filtering feature to find what best suits your needs.
- After selecting the desired package, click on the button download and agree to the terms of service.
- Once the downloaded package is ready, you can import it using the import.
- After the previous step, you will notice the assets in the project window. To explore them, you can double-click the added folder.
To import a specific installed package, you need to right click in the project manager area >> import package >> {wanted asset folder name}, after that the same steps above apply.
What are 3D assets?
When creating your gameplay, you will actually need to add some sort of assets and environments, such as placeholder objects. That can be done by:
- Choosing create from the hierarchy
- Selecting “3D Object” >> {an object}
- After choosing the desired shape, modifying the dimensions can be done using the Scale tool by dragging the colored cubes.
Once you have a boundary (floor), you can add a character. A standard practice when prototyping games is to insert capsules (3D primitives) to replace/represent casual players, instead of 3D modeling the shape of the character and UVing it and using something like PhotoShop to create the final look and importing everything as assets (animation clips).
How to import them?
After setting up the 3D model, and making sure it fits the Unity scale, add the pivot point then export it to the Unity project ‘s asset/Meshes folder location in FBX. From the FBX pipeline, make sure you check the animation option if your model is animated. Make sure that the scale is set to 1.0 under the advanced options. A game object must be added in the Meshes folder which, when selected, adds the import option by dragging it to the scene. Now that the inspector window is there, you can modify the properties of the imported object like the scale factor.
I hope that you liked this first article, this was Muhammad Habib Jawady. As always, keep asking !!