Need the Right Unity Textbook

Taking a stab here: Looking for the best non-project-based textbook you know for teaching Unity3D. I just need something that covers using the engine, explains game objects and prefabs, handles a little C#, etc. But I don't need the static of teaching around a project we aren't going to do. Any candidates? And I already know about Jeremey Bond's new edition. Looking for some hidden treasures here. Thanks.

 

I started with a few books back when Unity was at version 3.57. That got me going really good. But it was also when Unity was not being updated so fast and furiously. Any book you get these days will be outdated in a half year. I think you can learn enough by going through all the Unity tutorials and more recent Live Trainings. Then there are many non-official but very good Unity how-tos on Youtube. Also watch the many Unite videos for the last few years.

 

Thanks for the feedback, but this is literally for a classroom. We have a limited amount of time so my students need reference materials that don't take hours of searching through links and discussions. You are right about how fast Unity keeps changing (not complaining) but they have to start somewhere. A good Unity 5 book would serve us well.

 

I keep up with the Unity books coming out and all the ones I know are designed around building a few games. But stay away from any books published by Packt. They are usually terrible.

 

Here are a few Unity 5 books not by Packt that may be useful. These have a Kindle format which means you can download samples, take a look at them to see if they might fit your needs, and then buy the physical versions if they do:

Unity From Zero to Proficiency (Foundations)

How to Cheat in Unity 5: Tips and Tricks for Game Development

 

I'd say skip C# coding. A little bit is just confusing - you'd have to make it half the class to be able to do anything useful. "Scripts do stuff, you can use prewritten ones for now. Drag them on lie this. They allow you to set things in the Inspector. If you want, you can learn C# form books" works OK.

Students also hate books they don't completely read and follow. "Here are some handouts" is often appreciated. I think you could get by listing pages from the Unity site, explaining how they're just to get background for when you show them for real. You'd have to spend 15 minutes finding good ones a few days in advance of each lecture.

There's also a _lot_ to cover and you never know what will work. Maybe they're really into models, materials, textures and shaders. Making particle systems can be a week or two (including making an alpha-layered texture.) Terrain, animation w/mechanim, the physics system, 2D games w/sprites... . What you though you wanted to cover may be different than what works out with the students. Really, for the first class there are decent reasons to wing it.