In this article by Tommaso Lintrami, the author of the book Unity 2017 Game Development Essentials – Third Edition, we will see that when starting out in game development, one of the best ways to learn the various parts of the discipline is to prototype your idea. Unity excels in assisting you with this, with its visual scene editor and public member variables that form settings in the Inspector. To get to grips with working in the Unity editor.

In this article, you will learn about:

• Creating a New Project in Unity
• Working with GameObjects in the SceneView and Hierarchys

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

As Unity comes in two main forms—a standard, free download and a paid Pro developer license.We’ll stick to using features that users of the standard free edition will have access to.

If you’re launching Unity for the very first time, you’ll be presented with a Unitydemonstration project. While this is useful to look into the best practices for the development of high-end projects, if you’re starting out, looking over some of the assets and scripting may feel daunting, so we’ll leave this behind and start from scratch!

Take a look at the following steps for setting up your Unity project:

1. In Unity go to File | NewProject and you will be presented with the ProjectWizard.The following screenshot is a Mac version shown:

   

   From here select the NEW tab and 3D type of project.

   Be aware that if at any time you wish to launch Unity and be taken directly to the ProjectWizard, then simply launch the Unity Editor application and immediately hold the Alt key (Mac and Windows). This can be set to the default behavior for launch in the Unity preferences.

   

2. Click the Set button and choose where you would like to save your new Unity project folder on your hard drive.  The new project has been named UGDE after this book, and chosen to store it on my desktop for easy access.

   The Project Wizard also offers the ability to import many Assetpackages into your new project which are provided free to use in your game development by Unity Technologies. Comprising scripts, ready-made objects, and other artwork, these packages are a useful way to get started in various types of new project. You can also import these packages at any time from the Assets menu within Unity, by selecting ImportPackage, and choosing from the list of available packages. You can also import a package from anywhere on your hard drive by choosing the CustomPackage option here. This import method is also used to share assets with others, and when receiving assets you have downloaded through the AssetStore—see Window | Asset Store to view this part of Unity later.

3. From the list of packages to be imported, select the following (as shown in the previous image):

   •     Characters
   •     Cameras
   •     Effects
   •     TerrainAssets
   •     Environment

4. When you are happy with your selection, simply choose Create Project at the bottom of this dialog window. Unity will then create your new project and you will see progress bars representing the import of the four packages.

A basic prototyping environment

To create a simple environment to prototype some game mechanics, we’ll begin with a basic series of objects with which we can introduce gameplay that allows the player to aim and shoot at a wall of primitive cubes.

When complete, your prototyping environment will feature a floor comprised of a cube primitive, a main camera through which to view the 3D world, and a point light setup to highlight the area where our gameplay will be introduced. It will look like something as shown in the following screenshot:

Setting the scene

As all new scenes come with a Main Camera object by default, we’ll begin by adding a floor for our prototyping environment.

On the Hierarchy panel, click the Create button, and from the drop-down menu, choose Cube. The items listed in this drop-down menu can also be found in the GameObject | CreateOther top menu. You will now see an object in the Hierarchy panel called Cube. Select this and press Return (Mac)/F2 (Windows) or double-click the object name slowly (both platforms) to rename this object, type in Floor and press Return (both platforms) to confirm this change.

For consistency’s sake, we will begin our creation at world zero—the center of the 3D environment we are working in. To ensure that the floor cube you just added is at this position, ensure it is still selected in the Hierarchypanel and then check the Transform component on the Inspector panel, ensuring that the position values for X, Y, and Z are all at 0, if not, change them all to zero either by typing them in or by clicking the cog icon to the right of the component, and selecting ResetPosition from the pop-out menu.

Next, we’ll turn the cube into a floor, by stretching it out in the X and Z axes. Into the X and Z values under Scale in the Transform component, type a value of 100, leaving Y at a value of 1.

Adding simple lighting

Now we will highlight part of our prototyping floor by adding a point light. Select the Create button on the Hierarchypanel(or go to Game Object | Create Other) and choose point light. Position the new point light at (0,20,0) using the Position values in the Transform component, so that it is 20 units above the floor.

You will notice that this means that the floor is out of range of the light, so expand the range by dragging on the yellow dot handles that intersect the outline of the point light in the SceneView, until the value for range shown in the Light component in the Inspector reaches something around a value of 40, and the light is creating a lit part of the floor object.

Bear in mind that most components and visual editing tools in the SceneView are inextricably linked, so altering values such asRangein the Inspector Light component will update the visual display in the SceneView as you type, and stay constant as soon as you pressReturnto confirm the values entered.

Another brick in the wall

Now let’s make a wall of cubes that we can launch a projectile at. We’ll do this by creating a single master brick, adding components as necessary, and then duplicating this until our wall is complete.

Building the master brick

In order to create a template for all of our bricks, we’ll start by creating a master object, something to create clones of. This is done as follows:

1. Click the Create button at the top of the Hierarchy, and select Cube. Position this at (0,1,0) using the Position values in the Transform component on the Inspector. Then, focus your view on this object by ensuring it is still selectedin the Hierarchy, by hovering your cursor over the SceneView, and pressing F.
2. Add physics to your Cube object by choosing Component | Physics | Rigidbody from the top menu. This means that your object is now a Rigidbody—it has mass, gravity, and is affected by other objects using the physics engine for realistic reactions in the 3D world.
   

   Finally, we’ll color this object by creating amaterial. Materials are a way of applying color and imagery to our 3D geometry. To make a new one, go to the Create button on the Project panel and choose Material from the drop-down menu. Press Return (Mac) or F2 (Windows) to rename this asset to Red instead of the default name New Material.

   You can also right-click in the Materials Project folder and Create| Material or alternatively you can use the editor main menu: Assets | Create | Material

3. With this material selected, the Inspector shows its properties. Click on the color block to the right of MainColor [see image label 1] to open the Color Picker[see image label 2]. This will differ in appearance depending upon whether you are using Mac or Windows. Simply choose a shade of red, and then close the window. The Main Color block should now have been updated.

   

4. To apply this material, drag it from the Project panel and drop it onto either the cube as seen in the SceneView, or onto the name of the object in the Hierarchy. The material is then applied to the Mesh Renderer component of this object and immediately seen following the other components of the object in the Inspector. Most importantly, your cube should now be red! Adjusting settings using the preview of this material on any object will edit the original asset, as this preview is simply a link to the asset itself, not a newly editable instance.
5. Now that our cube has a color and physics applied through the Rigid body component, it is ready to be duplicated and act as one brick in a wall of many. However, before we do that, let’s have a quick look at the physics in action. With the cube still selected, set the Yposition value to 15 and the Xrotation value to 40 in the Transform component in the Inspector. Press Play at the top of the Unity interface and you should see the cube fall and then settle, having fallen at an angle.
   

   The shortcut for Play is Ctrl+Pfor Windows andCommand+Pfor Mac.

6. Press Play again to stop testing. Do not press Pause as this will only temporarily halt the test, and changes made thereafter to the scene will not be saved.
7. Set the Yposition value for the cube back to 1, and set the X Rotation back to 0.

Now that we know our brick behaves correctly, let’s start creating a row of bricks to form our wall.

And snap!—It’s a row

To help you position objects, Unity allows you to snap to specific increments when dragging—these increments can be redefined by going to Edit | Snap Settings.

To use snapping, hold down Command (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) when using the Translatetool (W) to move objects in theSceneView. So in order to start building thewall, duplicate the cube brick we already have using the shortcut Command+D (Mac) or Ctrl+D (PC), then drag the red axis handle while holding the snapping key. This will snap one unit at a time by default, so snap-move your cube one unit in the X axis so that it sits next to the original cube, shown as follows:

Repeat this procedure of duplication and snap-dragging until you have a row of 10 cubes in a line. This is the first row of bricks, and to simplify building the rest of the bricks we will now group this row under an empty object, and then duplicate the parent empty object.

Vertex snapping

The basic snapping technique used here works well as our cubes are a generic scale of 1, but when scaling more detailed shaped objects, you should use vertex snapping instead. To do this, ensure that the Translate tool is selected and hold down V on the keyboard.Now hover your cursor over a vertex point on your selected object and drag to any other vertex of another object to snap to it.

Grouping and duplicating with empty objects

Create an empty object by choosing GameObject | Create Empty from the top menu, then position this at (4.5,0.5,-1) using the Transform component in the Inspector. Rename this from the default nameGameObjecttoCubeHolder.

Now select all of the cube objects in the Hierarchy by selecting the top one, holding the Shift key, and then selecting the last. Now drag this list of cubes in the Hierarchy onto the empty object named CubeHolder in the Hierarchy in order to make this their parent object.The Hierarchy should now look like this:

You’ll notice that the parent empty object now has an arrow to the left of its object title, meaning you can expand and collapse it. To save space in the Hierarchy, click the arrow now to hide all of the child objects, and then re-select the CubeHolder.

Now that we have a complete row made and parented, we can simply duplicate the parent object, and use snap-dragging to lift a whole new row up in the Y axis. Use the duplicate shortcut (Command/Ctrl + D) as before, then select the Translate tool (W) and use the snap-drag technique (hold command on Mac, Ctrl on PC) outlined earlier to lift by 1 unit in the Y axis by pulling the green axis handle.

Repeat this procedure to create eight rows of bricks in all, one on top of the other. It should look something like the following screenshot. Note that in the image all CubeHolderrow objects are selected in the Hierarchy.

Summary

In this article, you should have become familiar with the basics of using the Unity interface, working with GameObjects.

Resources for Article:

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Further resources on this subject:

• Components in Unity [article]
• Component-based approach of Unity [article]
• Using Specular in Unity [article]

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