Where to start? 3D objects, animations, and mec in Unity

Hello my friends. I have a coworker, he is a Designer, has experience working with 3D objects, 2D Objects, textures, he can do pretty neat stuff, but he has almost no idea on how to for example:

1. Optimize objects for games (He is used to make a super real object for publicity)
2. How to Create animations. For example, he can do simple animations in some 3D editors, but how does unity works with this? how can he do animations with his 3D objects?
3. How to create a 3D object that maps with the mechanim (Already sent him a unity video explaining lots of this stuff)
4. GUI Animations? How can he create a nice button , I don't know, that just gets on fire if you put your mouse on it.

Anyways, what I'm looking for, and I know this is a LOT of information to learn, but we are starting a game company, and he wants to read and learn for several years.

So, what tutorials, books, anything, can you recomend me for him?
The best way for us would be:
1. Tutorials, so he can get his hands dirty and start trying stuff from start.
2. Books, so he can learn the deep and fundamental stuff behind object rendering, etc in games.
3. More information, so when he has 2 minutes of his time, I can throw another piece of information and tell him : "Keep learning, NOW"

Thank you very much in advance!!

 

You're right -- that's a LOT of information to learn -- but if you're not willing to tackle it, you shouldn't be in this industry.

Unity's documentation can be sparse at times, but some good pages for optimization are:

- Modeling Characters for Optimal Performance

- Optimizing Graphics Performance

- Mecanim Performance and Optimization

- Optimizing for Mobiles

You have two choices of animation systems: Legacy and Mecanim. Since you're starting fresh, my suggestion is to look into Mecanim. Mecanim allows you retarget animations, so you can use free mocap animations from Unity, Carnegie Mellon, etc. (If you go legacy, consider getting SAGE. It'll make your life much easier.) Using Mecanim (or SAGE in legacy), you'll create an Animation State Machine to control animation.

Unity's built-in GUI is easy to get started in, but oftentimes very difficult to optmize. Consider using a third party GUI such as NGUI. If you stick with Unity GUI, know that you can use the Animation View window to create animations that will animate just about any property -- such as the position or scale of a GUI element (depending on how you implement the GUI element). Third party GUIs make this a lot easier, though.

In addition to Unity's own docs, many people recommend BergZerg Arcade's Unity 3D tutorials. I also like 3DBuzz's tutorials and the articles on Unity Gems.

There's a pretty good article on Gamasutra: "0 to 60fps in 14 days". Since this is in the Animation forum, look especially at point #7.

But my go-to article for Unity is: 50 Tips for Working with Unity. There's some absolutely great information in there.

I also can't recommend strongly enough to use the Asset Store. You can save a lot of time by buying a tool instead of re-inventing the wheel. Quality varies, and you may end up replacing some of the code-oriented products with your own code down the line, but they'll get you up and running quickly. And sometimes you'll come across really solidly-built products like the aforementioned SAGE -- or the Event System for Mecanim, which is a must-have if you're using Mecanim.

These are the kinds of resources I wish I knew about when I started with Unity. I hope some of this helps!50 Tips for Working wit

 

Thank you very very much!
I'll start reading about this ASAP.
Also, if you, or someone happen to know some books that we could read about this , that would be awesome, but I think this is a really nice place to start!

Thanks again!!

 

I'm a book person, too, but unfortunately technology moves faster than print. Will Goldstone wrote a good introductory book, but it's already outdated. You're better off reading Unity's online manual.

Now, for theory and techniques, books like the Gems and Wisdom series are great. But for a moving target like Unity, books are always going to be behind.

 

Mmm I see, yeah you are right, it happened to me when I was trying to read something about multiplayer games, ended up reading one thing here, another one there, and so on Ok then, I think we will have to learn in the road then , hehe. Thanks for your help Tony, it will really help us