Unity is an industry standard tool for the development of virtual environments in 2D and 3D. Alongside game development, Unity can be leveraged to visualise 3D simulations and complex data as well as present gamified learning experiences. We've teamed up with the Graduate School at Imperial College London to bring you an introduction to Unity 3D.
In this course you will start by setting up a 3D Unity project, and work your way up to creating a simple game using some Unity components and simple C# code. You will learn how to add and manipulate 3D objects in the Unity scene, give these objects physics, and bring them to life with player input and code.
When you’ve completed this course you will be in a good position to start making simple games and exploring Unity on your own.
<aside> 💡 ViRSE uses Unity at its core, so it’s also essential to have an understanding of Unity to develop VR teaching and learning applications in ViRSE. This course should prepare you to start our follow up ViRSE Course.
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Developing a 3D scene within Unity
You will make use of the C# programming language to create interactive and dynamic behaviours in Unity. While we aim to keep things simple and to teach you some C# along the way, it is still helpful to have some basic experience with programming. If you know about if statements, variables and functions in any programming language, you should be ready to go.
Before starting the course, you'll need to install Unity 2022.3. See the Installations and Setup page for help. You only need Unity for this course; don’t worry about the Git or ViRSE setup for now.
If you're based at Imperial College London, register with the Graduate school to take advantage of in-person lessons, and gain a course credit for taking this course. Visit the Graduate School Introduction to Unity 3D page to register now.
Otherwise, it's possible to take this course fully online using the resources available in these docs. Just keep reading!
<aside> 💬 We have a Discord server! You can use this for any questions about the course (content, exercises, course logistics, etc) or to talk about Unity in general! You can also contact the course lead through email - [email protected]
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This course will consist of six lessons, each of which will take up to 2 hours to complete. Teaching will be delivered primarily through videos, although written reference material will also be provided along with the exercises. When you’ve read through this page and are happy that you have the pre-requisites, click on Lesson One to get started.
Lesson One - The Unity Editor, GameObjects, Transforms and Lighting