Unity Video Tutorials by Alec

Hey dudes,

I've been putting together some video tutorials on Unity3D.

Let me know if you find them useful and/or if there are things you'd like me to improve!

#01 is here: http://infiniteammo.ca/blog/impromptu-unity3d-intro-tutorial/

#02.1 is here: http://infiniteammo.ca/blog/tutorial-tuesday-schpooter/

#02.2 is here: http://infiniteammo.ca/blog/tutorial-tuesday-collision-and-messaging/

 

Well, first thing's first, I'd say, if you're going to make tutorials about Unity, you should get its name right!

 

What?

 

I tend to use "Unity3D" and "Unity" interchangeably. I'm sorry if this upsets you.

If you happen to come up with any useful feedback after watching the videos, let me know.

 

Please stop.

I can watch them in a couple hours. I'm not trying to be mean. I'll give you something more positive when I can.

 

Hehe, it's not unity3D it's just unity

The website is just named unity3d.com because they couldn't or something ?

I don't know, but yeah, it's not unity3d

Anyway, nice tutorials .......

 

Lol. I think it's okay. The proper name is Unity, however a lot of people use Unity3d for search engines, and search engine optimization, because Unity is a very common word on the Internet. It's the name of several organizations.

While I understand some users are very adamant about this, I don't think we need to be cold, or rude about it. This person made a tutorial, but all that as said in response was "change it" and "please stop".

Unity is very much about community. New users (and experienced users) will tend to call it Unity3D now and then. Let's move on, and see this topic for what it really is...new tutorials!

Thanks for adding these tutorials to the forum. I'm sure many will find them useful. Keep up the good work.

 

I frequently call it Unity3D because that's the most distinctive version of the name. I usually say Unity, but I think unity3d is okay too.

These tutorials are excellent Alec, I think they're a real boon for the entire Unity3D community and I hope you keep doing them.

 

I don't care about positive vs. negative, I said "useful". i.e. Feedback relating to the content that I've created to help people learn how to use Unity.

For example, useful feedback might be like: "Maybe you could elaborate more about this" or "Hey you missed this useful function that makes what you're explaining a lot easier" (I know I missed the built-in Destroy function timer in one of them)

I appreciate you pointing out the name difference, but I don't think people are going to be too confused about which engine I'm referring to - even if I don't use the 100% accurate official name 100% of the time. (actually I find "Unity" a really hard word to enunciate for some reason, lol... usually it comes out like "Unidy")

 

The name Unity3D is already taken by a different engine; it is in fact a registered trademark of another company. But indeed it's not necessary to be rude about it...maybe Unity Technologies should buy them out just to put a stop to this.

--Eric

 

Thanks for making the tutorials available Alec.

 

If there is an issue with brand name recognition, the only people to blame here are the people that put this product out.
Simply put, the site is Unity3d.com, it's incorrectly referenced on numerous sites as "Unity 3d", including wikipedia, and it comes up number 1, 2, and 3, at least, when searching "Unity 3d", and it's an engine that handles 3D geometry, with a name that is Unity.

If Unity the company is so concerned about differentiating their product from the "other" Unity3d engine that apparently exists (but a cursory search of google could not find), I highly suggest they either:
a) Buy the Unity.com domain from whomever owns it
b) Change the domain name to something else, like Unitytechnologies.com.
c) Change the game engine to Unity3d by buying out whatever trademark there is on the "other" engine (if there is one).
d) Change the name altogether so we don't have to concern ourselves with this minutia, and they don't either.

 

http://www.battlegroundeurope.com/i...ticle/3012-playnet-announces-unity-3d-upgrade

--Eric

 

Please STOP making good tutorials. :wink:

 

I certainly do that, because usually what I want is on unity3d.com. I've started using unityanswers recently too.

I saw pedagogical material combined with misinformation and I was offended. Personally, I love it when people tell me that I'm doing things in an "incorrect" manner, because it increases my level of awareness. Blow me off if you like though; I've gotten advice that I thought was garbage before – nobody is above giving garbage advice – and I didn't incorporate it into my own life. But at least it increased my knowledge of how other people think.

I usually say it that way. A British guy I know is offended by (or at least finds stupidity in) the t=d in American English, but d takes less time to say. His favorite example is "duty" being pronounced "doodie". So there's certainly potential for ridiculousness.

This segues nicely into my first comment on your video content: there were a couple words that took my girlfriend and me a moment to understand, given your pronunciation. These were "JavaScript" and "skeletal". Is that Canadian pronunciation? If so, leave it. There are plenty of "Canadian words" you used, including organization, initialization, optimization, about, out, and zed, which I understood immediately, just fine, from conditioning. But sometimes we read words at some point and the wrong pronunciation gets stuck in our heads, until one day, it gets pointed out, and we have the chance to improve comprehension speed for our listeners, and perhaps ourselves. I can think of a number of times that happened to me. For example, in the region I'm from, some people say "pellow" and "melk", including my mom. So I talked like that. At some point, that became ludicrous to me. I'm happier now that the letters I read actually reflect what I hear in my head. On the other hand, when I hear my mom say that stuff, I cringe. :?

There's also the matter of how you say "instantiate", but I'm with you on that one, even though I'd never heard it before. Having a t near the end of that word is stupid. The root word is not instant; it's instance.

Unfortunately, aside from language, I don't have much else to say. I just watched every single one of your Unity videos, and the main video on your site, and they were all awesome. You present information quickly and clearly, in a manner which I prefer, which is, you present an idea, and you tell people where to get more information about it, instead of wasting too much time talking about stuff that would be better learned in practice.

Being able to see you talking to us is fantastic. It adds a friendly, personal feel. (I appreciate that kind of love just as much as the cold, rude flavor. ) What software did you use to facilitate that?

On the other hand, when you talk about trigger messages, you're in the way. You tell us where to find the page, so it's not that important, but you're still mousing around invisibly. In the future, I'd just try to be more aware of where the webcam box is, if possible.

Also, please don't play music during video tutorials. I had to fight to listen to you sometimes, because my brain was pulling in the direction of the music. I bet everybody won't have that problem, but the music doesn't help them either. This got better later on, when the music at least didn't have lyrics, but no distraction is still preferable to any distraction at all. If you need it to help you concentrate, please use headphones. FWIW, I thought it all sounded good, but, not appropriate for this sort of thing.

Lastly, you used /* + */. I'd recommend taking advantage of Command-/ to comment out code more efficiently. (Unfortunately, Unitron isn't smart enough for this to work when writing shaders, so I use multiline comments there myself).

My favorite part of all of this was seeing your inspirational family and friend base. I've never been privy to that, and your video showed me the kind of dream life I'd like to have someday. Cherish these people.

 

Oddly enough, I think referring to THIS engine as Unity3D actually hurts the OTHER engine more than anything. (it means more people who search for Unity3D will find references to Unity Unity instead of whatever the other thing is)

 

Hey Alec,

In part 3, at about 9:00, you mention something that I'm not sure is true, or maybe it's just misleading. You say we need to check "is Kinematic" on rigidbodies attached to trigger colliders. I use triggers quite often for bullet objects and I've never set that flag, but then again I am using the force functions of the rigidbody (for a bullet, just AddForce) so I don't have to write more code just to keep the bullet moving.

What I do know is that the docs say that a rigidbody of some kind is required on one end of a trigger-based collision in order to run the OnTrigger* events. I'm not exactly sure of the precise details because every time I make a new game and try to get stuff to run its OnTrigger* functions it doesn't work until I've wasted a few hours with it .

 

Hey Alec,

Just wanted to say - nice videos! Informative, nicely paced, and easy to watch.

Another great addition to the community - thanks.

Jeff

 

Yeah, I probably didn't explain it clearly enough, but basically:

If you're moving triggers by setting position, use a Kinematic Rigidbody (not 100% strictly necessary, but you can run into problems sometimes if you don't - speed is one of the potential problems)

If you're moving by applying force, you don't set kinematic. (otherwise the object will do nothing)

Kinematic Rigidbody basically means (at least as far as this case is concerned) "Hey Unity, I want the physics system to optimize this object, but don't run the physical simulation on it - because I want to set its position manually".

 

Thanks for the videos. I had actually seen them on YouTube somewhile back but it was still kind of you to put the link here.

 

Hmmmm... You sure? I believe some of the vids in the series are almost brand new (only a few days old). Maybe you haven't seen the newer ones?

Jeff

 

just wanted to say thanks for making such handy tutorials, my little brother has started learning unity and these are a great help for him beginning whilst I'm not around

also, RE: what to call unity, if people get irritated about 'unity3d' then I'm tempted to call unity 'the Fluffypants McUnicorn Game engine' and with a decent campaign I'm confident I could make it stick, so it could be much worse, don't sweat the small stuff =p

 

Well, I'm not going to argue with you, considering how much I love your song!

 

Hi Jeff

You are totally correct, I assumed they were the ones I had seen before
I suppose I was over hasty to add some gratitude to offset the ridculous debate on whether it's Unity or Unity3D. We all know it's 'Unity', the world's greatest game development system.

'What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet'

William Shakespeare

 

Alec
Thanks for taking the time to make these tutorials. For people like me who are trying to get a grasp on Js, they are very helpfull.Your style is clear and concise, and the content you are trying to teach is easy to grasp because of your teaching methods. I hope that you will continue to help the community with your infomative tutorials. 8)

 

Couldn't have said it better. I'd like to add tht I can understand all of the words you said as well,

 

Thanks for these UNITY3D tutorials Alec, it's UNITY3D.COM and these guys are goofballs!

It's Unity 3D. I don't care if that guy in the dress says different, it's STILL Unity3D.com and to find anything online you gotta type Unity3D so I'm with ya!

 

mortalhuman, nice blog, Keep up the good work.

 

Hi Alec,

thank you very much for these awesome tutorials!
It really doesnt't matter what the "correct" name for unity3d is, just forget about that and keep up the great work.

Thanks a lot and greets from Germany
Jürgen

 

I've released the source project files for my GammaIV entry "C4Ke", with an accompanying video overview!

You can check it out and grab the files here: http://bit.ly/dpB9zn

 

I love how you used pretty much all primitives to make C4ke, and its actually done more for me learning Unity than a lot of other things.

What would really be awesome though, from a learning standpoint, would be code comments. While I can figure some stuff out, as a tutorial, commenting helps me more than anything else.

Its really cool of you to release the source of this and Aquaria