Start Here: Official Learning Resources for Unity

I want to make a game in Unity.

Where do I start?

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Start here:
http://unity3d.com/learn

This is the Official site for learning Unity.

The Learn pages are divided into four main sections:


Start with the Tutorials.

This is where we share our short focused lessons, longer step-by-step assignments and our much longer and more complex projects.

The Tutorials section is broken down into topics, like 2D, Scripting, Graphics, Physics and more.

These tutorial lessons are meant as much for reference as for initial learning. If you have a questions about a topic, like "How do Cameras work?", check out the "Cameras" lesson. If you have learned a topic, but want to be reminded of something, like "What did a rigidbody do again?", check out the lesson on "Rigidbodies".

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How can I learn scripting, programming or coding?

It's not important what it's called. We use the term "Scripting" and we have a section for it. The Scripting section gives a quick primer on how to script in Unity. All of our Learn material is in the language C#. Unity also understands other languages, but we exclusively use C# for our learning materials.

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I just want to muck in and get my hands dirty! What should I do?

Look at our longer projects, and follow them step by step. The Projects section can be found under the "Projects" tab in the tutorials section:


Start with the very simple "Roll-a-ball" tutorial. If this makes sense, move on to the "Space Shooter" tutorial. Lastly, you can really get into the meat of it with "Stealth", which is the most complex of the current beginner projects and does require a small amount of experience with Unity.

When working with Projects, remember that you can always refer to the Lessons to understand more about specific details, and the current Project page you are on will usually include links to the most relevant lessons:


Live Training and the Archive

We regularly present Live Training Sessions. These can be simple Q&A/AMA sessions, or sessions that cover one topic, or sessions where we make a simple game. Drop by, watch live and ask questions! Each session is embedded inside that session's page and can be watched directly from the Unity Learn site.

If you have missed a class, you can watch it from the Live Training Archives, where all of the past sessions are stored. Past sessions are uploaded to the archive section within a few days of the original stream.

For more information on Live Training, or for comments, suggestions or help with Live Training, see the Official Live Training thread.


The Documentation

If this is last in the post, it's definitely NOT least! Our documentation is awesome. You need to check it out. The documentation is available directly from inside the Unity editor, and from inside Unity's companion application MonoDevelop. It is also available on the Unity Website in the Documentation section.

The documentation is divided into two sections: The Unity Manual, and the Scripting Reference Manual. The Unity Reference describes how items work in Unity and the Unity editor. The Scripting Reference describes how items work in code and often have code examples or "snippets" explaining their use attached to the page. This example code can be displayed in any of the languages supported by Unity. To know how to use a Rigidbody in Unity, use the Unity Manual to look up Rigidbody. To know how to code for the Rigidbody in a script, use the Scripting Reference to look up RigidBody. If, as is the case of Rigidbody, there is information in both the Unity Manual and the Scripting Reference, it is easy to switch between the two using the "switch to ..." button in the upper right of the page:

It is worth noting that in the upper right of the page, it is possible to change the language of the example code to any of the languages supported by Unity.

The documentation is available in the Unity editor from "Help > " and choosing either the Unity Manual or Scripting Reference:


The scripting reference is available from inside MonoDevelop by selecting any item you want to know about and using < CMD + ' > on the Mac or < CTRL + ' > on Windows. That is the command and the single quote keys on the Mac or the control and the single quote keys on Windows. This will open the scripting reference in a default browser and search for whatever was selected.

Enjoy using Unity, and if there are any issues, please search this Forum or the Answers site for more information.

 

@Adam

I've had a look at the live Q&A sessions. Would there be a possibility in the future of the topic of Unity for serious games or for use in training and development?

I'd also like your opinion if the above mentioned official site for learning Unity gives a broad overview of how to use the tools rather then only focusing on making games.

Thank you kindly.

Nicholas

 

I never messed with mechanim before and i wanted to learn and checked the tutorial videos there. aand Its a mess!
Animation tutorials are no good at all.

At one point the guy is trying to teach how to combine a idle and hand wave animation and then suddenly he starts talking about his tail, wtf.

 

@aubergine


What's mechanim?

 

Thats what i wanted to know too.

 

In the Legacy animation system(Before unity 4.0),we used to manually write code to control the animation.We were either using animation.CrossFade(); or animation.Play().After the advent of unity 4.0 ,things changed drastically(in a positive way).Unity introduced something called MECANIM.


UNITY : ANIMATE YOUR CHARACTER USING MECANIM

Mecanim, Unity’s uniquely powerful and flexible animation system, brings your human and non-human characters to life with incredibly natural and fluid motion.

 

@vmachupalli

Thanks for the heads up on Mecanim. Appreciated.

 

Nicolas: Mechanim is great for animating everything, not just characters. It is (and will continue to grow) as the animation solution within Unity. You can see this while animating UI elements here:
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/06/30/unity-4-6-new-ui-world-space-canvas/

There are a number of resources related to mechanim that can be found on both the learn site and the main website:
http://unity3d.com/unity/animation

 

Aubergine: We can always get better at what we do. Can you tell us what it is that was the biggest hurdle to get over? Can you also let us know what it is you wanted to find, but didn't? Were you stuck on the basics? Implementation? Characters? Other animations? What?

We'll try to get improved material up as soon as we can.

 

Speaking of Animation and Mecanim, I'm assuming that you have seen all of these:
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/animation

This should give a good start in animation and mecanim.

 

Yes ive seen them all and thats what i am talking about, its not a good tutorial at all.

This tutorial here however, is atleast more through and detailed than those. Still not detailed enough.
I consider myself slightly advanced when it comes to any aspect of unity and i could work my way on mecanim even without the tutorials if given the time, but if you consider unexperienced users, those tutorials teach nothing at all.

When it comes to online tutorials for such big companies, i suggest anyone who tries to teach something to check the Autodesk Learning Channel on youtube about how a tutorial should be prepared.

Generally the whole thing.

 

Every Unity beginner tutorial uses shorthand when incrementing variables but none of them tell you that

Code (CSharp):

1. var += var1

is shorthand for

Code (CSharp):

1. var = var + var1

and

Code (CSharp):

1. var ++

is shorthand for

Code (CSharp):

1. var = var + 1

.
How about a short video about it on this page?

 

Thanks for the suggestion. We are always adding new material to our pages. I'll see what I can do about adding a page on "incrementing and decrementing values".

 

Just to clarify for Unity 5 users, I think this is a good "learning roadmap":

1. Do the Editor lessons
2. Do all the projects, from easiest to hardest.
3. Make your own video game.

 

Hello guys,

This is pretty much interesting topic, place were i can learn new things. Thanks.

 

There is no link to this tutorial on scripting tutorials page.

 

The link to the Stealth tutorial is broken; here is the correct one: Stealth Project

Stealth is a very good intermediate project; I'm having a great time doing it. Come with me!

 

I thought it is only for people with unity 4.

 

You can do it with 5x; I'm doing it, almost finished and it goes great. I post my progression on the forum thread.

 

@TheWebmaster: please could you create tags on which we could click and regroup all the lessons, projects and the like by level?

For example: this lesson is described "Difficulty: beginner" but it's not a link. Making it a search tag on which we could click, all the projects, lessons, etc. that have that same tag would display as links on a page that we could save for further reference, making finding our way here more efficient.

Please, feel free to ask away if it's not clear.

I hope someone in charge of the site will read this...

 

I know this is kinda obvious, but the section "I just want to get my hands in the muck" is kind of outdated. And there are way more projects. Also, another link of where to start is here

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/where-to-start.292511/

 

I'm new to game development and played around a little with Unity 4.x but at the time it was beyond my abilities. Now that I've gained some experience I'm ready to get serious with Unity and installed Unity 2017. As suggested I started with the tutorials and quickly became disappointed. All the tutorials are videos. I live overseas and don't have a high-speed broadband connection. So trying to watch the videos and follow along in Unity quickly became very frustrating. The main issue I had was buffering. The video would play for a few seconds then buffer. When it continued to play the audio quality was poor and it seemed like the instructor was two steps ahead of where I was when the buffering started. Why isn't there a text version of the tutorials that could be downloaded and followed like a book? I've purchased some Unity books which are essentially that format (making a game while learning) and much easier to understand. The problem with the books is that they are not based on the current version of Unity. I understand the timeline to write and publish a book so being a little behind is going to happen. But I would think that a short text-based version of the online tutorials you have should be feasible. Your thoughts? Thank you.

 

Any chance the Working Day tutorial from Unite 2017 will be posted? We already have the ones from 2014 (Survival Shooter), 2015 (Tanks!), and 2016 (Adventure Game), I know it's been a little more than a month, but I'm looking for a new tutorial for my students.

 

All of these great tutorials, archived live sessions, manuals i am really confused which order to follow.
I started with Interface & Essentials and suddenly found myself watching Unity tips and tricks which is quite usefull for experts. Which tutorial group should i go on next?

What is the best roadmap in your opinion? I think i am stuck.