Complete Beginner

As a complete beginner, I am wondering how long will it take to familiarize myself with Unity's gaming interface?
I have no previous experience with coding or gaming. My graphic background working with Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop/InDesign is what I'm most familiar with. Although I want to expand my creative outlet to the gaming industry since I've always wanted to learn and Unity seems like a good place to start (I am 23 years old). As an artist, I want to combine what I'm familiar with and reach to uncharted territories to expand my abilities.
If anyone has any tips or suggestions for a complete beginner, it would be appreciated. Especially for basic coding mechanics. I'm very motivated to learn the mechanics of gaming. For now I am doing Unity in-game tutorials, looking through Unity Learn, and Noobtuts.

 

Heya there. Hope you enjoy unity as much as the rest of us. Its a helluva tool, for sure.

i don't have any particular references / articles / videos etc, i can recommend to you, as i find that *most unity tutorials are centered around you downloading a buncha of pre-built stuff and opening projects that can truly leaving you feeling lost, even as you are being guided through one particular point of interest. Not to mention , but of the 99,999,999 tutorials i have watched (exaggerated for point), almost 99.9% of them have errors due to edited videos and no recaps , or other issues with the instructors presentation, that lead all to often to people experiencing breakages through out the lesson. And lastly, with so many versions of unity, and changes over time, not ALL content is even relevant anymore.

I truly find these kind of tutorials bothersome, and often, completely counter productive. Leaving more questions and unexplained than answered.

That said, there is a few *decent tutorials around, but i recommend trying to find tutorials that start from ground up, or at the very least, from the ground you last touched on, especially as a beginner. Especially, if the coding is the part you are lacking.

My biggest advice though, more so than all the tutorials in the world, is find/ make a few friends around here, where ever, that do use unity as well, so that you have active minds to bounce ideas knowledge, and learn from each others. Feel free to pm me if you want to chat. i'm actually exactly the opposite of you. More code oriented, not so much art oriented.

Good luck and have fun mate. Unity is awsome-sauce (though i have been known to rant about it a few times... but hey, one doesn't rant about anything if they aren't invested in it somehow. )

 

I think reading the manual is more valuable than general tutorials. Also learning C# basics. After that understanding the GameObject and Component system Unity uses, and how to navigate that in your C# scripts. Once you've got that much you're ready to start playing around with your first self made game mechanics rather than copying someone else. Then see tutorials or forum threads when you hit various pain points. (So you're not following a general How To Make A Unity Game tutorial, instead you're following a How To Open A Dynamic UI Window tutorial, or How To Make A Character Slide Like On Ice tutorial, etc)

How long it takes depends on how quick you are at learning this kind of stuff.

 

Hey there! I just signed up to Unity and already fell for the download all of these assets to make your own game trap. though it does teach me to navigate my way around Unitys Assets and integrating them into the game. Modeling assets using Blender or Autodesk Maya is another feature I want to look into. Hopefully the coding part won't be too difficult but its like learning a new language to me.

Thanks for your advice and recommendations

 

Third party assets can be very helpful, but they can also be problematic, especially for a beginner. They may have scripting requirements that are outside of your current skill set, or have problems working together with another third party asset. Also, while many asset developers are helpful and try to fix issues, there is no obligation for support. So you may end up self supporting an asset you don't understand.

 

Last thing I want is running through complications from scripting. Let me know if you have any recommendations on basic C#. For now I'm taking your suggestion and going through Unity's manual. It's a tedious process but it does help knowing what I'm working with before jumping right into the game making tuts.

 

Back when I learned C# we would chop down forests, slice up the trees into thin sheets, bind the sheets together, then print information onto them. I'm sure there are a good number of online tutorials that work just as well today without the need for clear cutting, but I can't provide an example from experience.

I've used Udemy courses for other topics, so I'd guess they would have good ones on C#. The tutorial doesn't need to be related to Unity specifically.