Unity Fundamentals

Naturally, to properly use Unity you're going to need to become accustomed to its interface. This video gives you a general rundown of the interface as a whole, before going into specific areas in later videos.

In this video we take a look at the two different types of viewports used in Unity, being the Scene View and the Game View, showing the differences between the two.

If you're a Maya user, then you'll be happy to know that you can navigate Unity's viewports in the same way you navigate Maya's perspective view!

If you play a lot of first-person shooter games, then perhaps you'll be more comfortable using the FPS-style navigation, which we demonstrate in this video.

The scene gizmo is another way in which you can navigate the Scene view, allowing quick access to tumbling controls and to look down a particular axis.

To help you better visualize some of the data available in your viewport, there are a series of draw modes you can flip through, which we demonstrate in this video.

Render modes give access to specialized visual information about the objects in your scene. In this video we show you how each one works.

Outside of draw and render modes, the viewport has some additional functionality to control what it is you're looking at. We discuss this functionality in this video.

Adjusting the game aspect allows you to see what your game will look like at various aspect ratios, so that you can see if certain critical elements work at different aspects.

This video covers the options available on the game view toolbar, showing you what each one of them does and when you can use it.

In this video we take a look at the various options that can be found under Unity's file menu.

Moving on down the main menubar, we now look at the Edit menu, which hides the critical Undo feature!

Yes! We're still looking at the main menubar! In this video we take a look at the Assets menu and the options found therein.

The GameObject menu contains a variety of commands and operations that we can perform when creating or working with GameObjects.

Need access to components? They can all be found right here inside the Components menu! Please note that we don't cover all of the components here.

Are you even reading these descriptions? I mean, probably not. You're probably just watching videos. I can't blame you. Either way, I have to write them. Oh, and this video discusses the Terrain menu.

The Window menu contains various operations that we can use when customizing our user interface.

Ah, the Help menu. So often neglected by the fledgling user, yet so important when you're trying to get started in a program.

The first few options available on the toolbar are the transform tools, including Move, Rotate, and Scale.

The toolbar gives you the ability to set any of the transform tools into local or global mode. In this video we show you those options.

The play controls allow you to immediately see how your game works during play. Be warned however, that not all changes made during playback are kept!

The layer dropdown gives you access to the layers of your scene, which can be used for visibility, collisions, and other operations.

If you have a particular interface layout that you prefer, or a custom one that you've created, you can set it here.

The project view allows you to manage and access the various assets that will be used throughout your game's project. This video provides an overview of the panel.

Your project view reflects an actual hierarchy of folders on your computer's hard drive. Here we show the relationship between the panel and these folders.

When you create objects in your scene from the project view, a link is established between the creation and it's original in the project.

There are certain objects which can be created from scratch from within the Project view. In this video we take a look at some of them and how they are created.

Looking for something in particular in the Project view? Use the search line! It can quickly help you narrow down the vast library of your project!

The Hierarchy view shows you all of the objects currently in your scene and any parenting relationships that exist between them.

This video takes a look at instance linking from the perspective of the Hierarchy view and how information is passed between objects.

Many different types of objects can be created from within the Hierarchy view. In this video we take a look at the process for doing this.

By using the search line in the Hierarchy view, we can quickly find a specific object that might otherwise be diffilcult to locate.

The Inspector view is a context-sensitive panel that gives you access to the various properties available to a selected object.

This video looks specifically at what can happen when making changes within the Inspector during playback, and why this should generally be avoided.