More Unity Video Tutorials

If everyone who reads this forum were to go to Lynda.com or vtc.com and make a request to see some video tutorials on Unity they would create a demand for them and then they would make them.

I personally would love to see a ton more Unity video tutorials available. SnapzPro X for OSX is a great tool for this if anyone's interested in making a few more available. Don't get me wrong though, Unity's documentation is awesome compared to other game engines, but video based training and/or interactive based training is the wave of the future for education and it's in my opinion the fastest way to learn.

 

If you haven't already, check out the eleven or so videos from the Unite conference that UT posted on Christmas eve. They cover just about every area of Unity 2. I learned more from the GUI video in a half hour than I did with trial and error and the docs. Good stuff.

Ricko

 

Please do give the new Resources area a look for the Unite videos as there should be some good material in there for you. Besides that I can confirm that we're always wanting to expand the tutorial set so there will be even more new content to share as time goes on.

Enjoy.

 

Thanks, the Unite videos are great... if your already a programmer. I keep watching them over and over again hoping that it's going to all sink in and make sense at some point... especially the GUI and optimization videos. The funny thing is that I've designed hundreds of great GUI interfaces for Flash based stuff, but I feel crippled when trying to do the same thing in Unity because I can't really do anything really cool GUI wise in Unity without first mastering the programming side of things. I prefer drag and drop GUI elements. I can't seem to get used to not being able to just drag a GUI element on the screen to where I want it. A set of step by step video tutorials on how to design and code a cool looking GUI in Unity would be very useful for those of us who aren't expert coders yet.

 

I would embrace some tutorials about GUIs.
e.g. interacting between various scenes.

 

@ JoeyJr:

You can create any GUI you want by using the current gameObjects and rendering them with a 2nd camera over the main camera.

This way is a much more artist friendly approach and your gui always scales with the game's resolution without all the silly math that the GUI api needs.

This is the way I do my gui's on CuttleCandy.com

Cheers,

 

I would second the request for more video tutorials

I was looking at the manual, for 3 hours, and was not able to move even the camera around; then i was checking on all the stuff downloaded form the site and i found these 6 videos in m4v format...not even 5 minutes each, and i was able to move around, import and add props to the scene and also to change parameters for the camera!

i would save 3 hours if i would watch the vids first I am the kind of guy that love to read manuals while working and learning, but for some things i am more visual and require to see how you do that

If i can suggest something, would be nice to have more and longer vids, dedicated to how to start a project from the beginning (without the modeling part of course ) for example; in this way everyione would be able to pick how to use the interface, how to add props, modify them and how to integrate physics and other stuff like interface and similar; then to learn scripting is enough to have a book; for coding i prefer much more a book with good step by step examples instead of a video

 

Sorry, made a dupe

 

Go checkout these free Unity3D video tutorials that are perfect for beginners

http://www.willgoldstone.com/tutorialdemo/menu.html

Big thanks to Will Goldstone. OTEE should link to these from their resources page as not everyone whos buys Unity is or wants to become a programmer :wink: .

Victom, thanks for the tip about the GUI creation... think you just saved me a whole lot of headache.

 

Thanks a lot! useful info!

 

Ditto:

Big thanks to Will Goldstone.

The terrain tutorial is excellent. Can't wait to view the other two.

Does anyone know where to download the source movies for those tutorials? My streaming playback is a little finicky.


Josh

 

Yeah, the tutorials from Will Goldstone are excellent!

Will, if you read this: please some more!!!!

...and the source is downloadable! excellent as well!


i appreciate everything which helps a beginner doing further steps.
The official tutorials are fine, but i would have prefered some simpler , shorter projects...
anyway!

 

Teaching the basics of UNITY?
Are there any authorized freelance trainers?

Thank you

Benjamin Pastrana
Puerto Rico

 

In case you didn't know, Ennanzus Interactive have created a tool for ease creation of GUIs in Unity called GUI Extended: http://www.ennanzus-interactive.com/developer/GUIX/

 

seems that the tool cost more than the engine itself

for me the greatest thing is to have step b step tutorials that teach you how to do something; so once you got the basicsyou can start toe experiment with new stuff, but i think that the basic issues are always the same, and tutorials like the one made by Will are pure pleasure to follow and watch over and over

I am surprised that the only videos available for Unity are so few....Will demonstrated that it doesn't take too much to make great tutorials (not minimizing his work, just showing p that it doesn't take a marketing department to create good stuff )

 

Not quite. Unity Indie is $199. GUIX is $97.

 

This is a dupe post from another thread in this topic.

 

While I'm at it, I tho't I'd post some more links so they were in a compact location.

From this thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=12399

The old FPS tutorial
(Please note this is for an older version of unity and is technically OBSOLETE, but may contain something worth panning for...)
http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/fps-tutorial-part1.html

A link to other Older Version OBSOLETE tut's and info.
http://unity3d.com/support/resources/assets/unity1xresources

 

I've found that most of the Will Goldstone Unity3D videos have severe trailing/artifacts at various points in the videos. This is the case when viewed from either my Mac or Windows PC.

Is there any way to fix this?

 

You can tell him to record new versions there is no way to recover them, at the same way you can't separate audio tracks once that you mix them together; since the artifacts were rcorded while he was doing the tutorial (probably his machine was too overloaded).

They worth gold even with artifacts, believe me learned more with his tuts than in 2 months reading the manual LOL

 

It's easy to do video tutorials for graphical stuff, but not so easy to do good programming tutorials -- by the nature of the two things, and also by the magnitude of variation in people's ability to grok abstract concepts.

I speak as someone who has taught a semester course in Advanced Lingo and part of a course on 3D Modeling and Animation, trained lots of people in production environments, and produced numerous video and comic-style tutorials for Cheetah 3D.

 

Since no one had pointed out the video problem I was holding out hope that there was another source for the videos or that my configuration had something to do with the problem.

My email reply from Will Goldstone:

thanks for the email. Basically the first 3 were shot with snapz pro, which conflicted heavily with my video card / macbook pro setup, so its not solvable until I redo those lessons i'm afraid, you'll notice that lesson 4 is a marked improvement, if only in visual quality! I'm battling with time to teach and add items to the site, so sadly I can't go over them just yet - hopefully my attempts at talking through the steps will help you spot what i'm doing when it gets screwed up onscreen. Sorry for that, if you sign up to the rss feed i'll post on there when i've changed the videos.

Best Regards

Will

 

Podperson, agree with you, but i would not preclude the video tutorials for programming stuff; since many times what is needed is a good manual and a video that shows you why you do that and how. (and sorry to say, but unity in this has to work on it, even if is better than other manuals, that ends up being a collection of API procedures, methods and events like MSDN)

I love Buzz3d site; he has amazing tutorials and also a video tutorials on XNA, where you make real stuff, not explain abstract concepts...i've learned C# with his tutorials (well, i already know C++ since many years ago, so maybe for me is easier than for a newbie, can't say if is true or not) and i love the idea of learning programming from a video.

Somebody else maybe will disagree, but a video sometimes is much better than a book only

 

good point; but in general if something is free you NEVER argue, complain or even worry about saying something, unless is a friendly request of improvement or to add more tutorials This is probably the reason why the fellow Unite users got that tuts as they are

Glad to hear that he has plan for the future

 

I struggled for some time with just the manual as well, and his videos had me working in no time at all. But, I'm a designer, not much of a coder. I can do HTML and basic javascript / Action Script, but I'm having the hardest time accomplishing very simple tasks in Unity. It's not about the code per se... I understand most of it. What vexes me is _what_ to put _where_. For example, I want a simple text box to appear when I walk up to an object. Once in proximity (or colliding) a simple box pops up and says "this is a lantern". So, I dig through tons of GUI docs, scripting references, etc. and I can understand most of it, but I have a hard time knowing where to put scripts and when to do what. (I'll post a more appropriate version of this question somewhere else)

I'll keep at it. And I throw in my vote for more tutorial videos.
Unity folks, you're doing great work! thanks much!
kevin

 

The bigger problem with Unity is that people think that no former knowledge of programming is needed to make something, since there are scripts around on the wiki, plus the interface is all graphical, etc....sadly is the same for me but in the opposite way, since i am a programmer but striggle with 3d modelling and similar

now, your problem is simple....you gotta learn the API interface

let's make an example: you want text pop out when the 1st person controller prefab hit the object X? simply make a couple of labels that let you identify the object X and your 1st person prefab, then you make a script that says

if (label "whatever is the name of the 1st person prefab)) .collide (label (object X)
gui.print( "is a lantern")
end if

this is a very rudimental concept of programming (decisional cycles with if, then else) that resolve your problem; now if you check the docs,you will see that there is a print method that let you print text on the screen, simply check how it works and then add it in a script, that you will attach to the 1st person prefab. so you avoid to even call the object by name, when you can refer to it specifically since is attached to the script...and basically you are done

sounds complex? yes...same for me when someone says "make a model, put the normal mapping, bump mapping and trans map and then rig it... is easy"

If you never touched a programming language, i would suggest to leave Unity for a wile, get some time and few books of one of these languages: Java, C# or C++; if you wanna stay on mac, go for Java or Obj-C; while if you want to migrate on windows platform, go for C# or C++; and once that you are able to write a decent console app that does something else more than output on screen with "hello world", then you will realize that the things that you do in Unity are the same of every other language...you simply have to learn how to do it (like when you get a new car and need time to get used to how it shift, turns and accelerate....same thing).

If you need help i am sure that me or anyone else can script something for you, but if you don't jump and learn to fly you will never get that nasty pleasure of doing somehting that works and you created it from A to Z

 

just a couple of books for newbies:

1) c++ in 21 days - SAMS
2)C# in 21 days - SAMS
3)beginning c++ game programming - Thompson media

price between 19 and 39 dollars, and once that you get any of these you can tell yourself that you have a base of programming....then is all a matter of learning while doing it

When i started working as programmer, my company gave me a couple of books, a computer with a compiler and tetris on it (66 MHz) and told me that in 3 months they wanna see something made by me...that's how i learned how to program (my BS is not in computer science, so fear not...you don't need a degree to know how to program; the degree simply tells others that you spent a lot of money in a college and that you get more money than who doesn't have a specific degree )

 

I can play the tutorials below in Quicktime but there is no audio.

Can someone tell me how to watch the tutorials with audio?

Thanks,
Ron333

 

probably they are without audio

 

as far as I can tell, these have no audio.
for future reference, the best audio player I've found that seems to work when others don't is VLC. It's cross platform too:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

MediaInfo revealed that the files don't contain any audio. Bummer

 

Hey all,

Several people commented on how helpful Will Goldstone's video tutorials are, and I want to say amen, Will really lays it out clearly, and I'm looking forward to his book coming out this fall.

I also want to mention that I created a tutorial on how to bring characters into the game and make them move around. My character comes from 3ds Max, but some of you may still benefit from the way the cycles and controlling scripts are added in Unity. It's free, hi res, and 15 minutes long.

http://www.3dcognition.com

 

Thanks, downloaded it a few days ago !
Might consider the book too.

 

Scratch what i just wrote i should have looked further in the forums then posting this guys.

BUMP

Rikor
Looken to make some good evolution games an beyond.

 

How about making the official tutorials right on these pages work? I can't watch them in chrome and I can't watch them in ie. I'm not going to install a third browser just for that.
One would think they are also on official unity youtube channel, but I couldn't find them.

 

Agreed. It's getting old scrounging these forums looking for vids, only to find them not working. Plenty of old posts pointing to things that don't exist anymore. Seriously? How hard would it be to have ONE page with nothing but vids from beginning to end that actually plays in a format that the majority of people on planet earth uses? It's like pulling teeth. Guess i'll go rummaging through Youtubes barely relevant browser.

 

@Animuso, I put some videos on my site unitypro.co.uk they are youtube video's for unity C# only.

The reason I've done this is sometimes youtube tutorials are all mixed up so you might be watching part1 then you have to go searching for part ect.
All the video streams play with 720hd so you don't have to change settings.

The site needs a lot of work and better organization. The menu has the name of the authors that have made the tuts.

what I'm going to do is have different menu so you can click View FPS tuts ect

All the videos are mainly how to make a game instead of bits. I think tonight I will start making some changes to the menu. I lost motivation because Unity's lack of care in this video tutorials area. shocking they don't do anything you help their users. All they seem to do is have moderators saying "no we do care bla bla" they only care about their image, because that's where the money is.

 

I've found time to work with Unity again and loving it. Right now I have the following tutorials up on my site (all free):

Unity import 3ds Max bones character
Unity import 3ds Max biped
Unity flying box
Unity particle flame for flying box
Unity flight simulation tutorial (with script that will fly anything)
As well as many 3ds Max modeling, rigging, and animation tutorials.

Many of these are available on Youtube too but I'm trying to add helpful info in each post, for example, .js code for the flight simulation example.

Also I am going to sponsor a contest during the month of April to see what kind of cool flying vehicle / environments people can come up with, so stop by!

3dcognition.com