Digital Design: Unity Basics
Installation
Introduction to Unity
Unity is a cross-platform game engine, which gives users ability to create games in both 2D
and 3D, and the engine offers a primary scripting API in C# programming language.
Installation
To download the latest version of Unity from here. -
Check the accept terms
- Click Next to continue installation
- The below options are checked by default, which is enough for our labs. And click
Next to continue. (Make sure both of Android Build Support and Vuforia
Augmented Reality Support are checked. If you are using iOS and Mac, please also
select them.)
- At the end, click Finish to finish the Unity installation
Interface
Learning the interface
To create a GameObject into the scene, you can click on either the Create button under the
Hierarchy Window or GameObject on top left menu
The main editor window of Unity is made up of tabbed windows which can be rearranged,
grouped, detached and docked.
The most common and useful windows are shown by default as below:
Scene View allows you to visually navigate and edit your scene. The scene view can show a
3D or 2D perspective, depending on the type of project you are working on.
Hierarchy Window is a hierarchical text representation of every object in the scene. Each
item in the scene has an entry in the hierarchy, so the two windows are inherently linked.
Game View is rendered from the Camera(s) in your game. It is representative of your final,
published game.
Project Window displays your library of assets that are available to use in your project.
When you import assets into your project, they appear here.
Inspector Window allows you to view and edit all the properties(known as components) of
the currently selected object. Because different types of objects have different sets of
properties, the layout and contents of the inspector window will vary.
You can add or remove components to adjust objects’ properties in the inspector.
Toolbar provides access to the most essential working features. On the left it contains the
basic tools for manipulating the scene view and the objects within it. The buttons to the right
give you access to your Unity Collaboration Services, Unity Cloud Services and your Unity
Account, followed by a layer visibility menu, and finally the editor layout menu (which
provides some alternate layouts for the editor windows and allows you to save your own
custom layouts).
For manipulating objects in the scene view, there are three the most basic hotkeys.
Keystroke W - move
Keystroke E - rotate
Keystroke R - scale
