What you need to know

about Unity 5

Learn the techniques and explore the new features

of Unity 5

Francesco Sapio

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
What you need to know about Unity 5

Copyright 2016 Packt Publishing

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 About the Author

Francesco Sapio obtained his computer science and control engineering degree
from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, a couple of semesters in advance, scoring
summa cum laude. Now he is studying a master of science in engineering in artificial
intelligence and robotics.

He is a Unity3D and Unreal expert, a skilled game designer, and an experienced user
of the major graphics programs.

Recently, he authored the book Unity UI Cookbook (Packt Publishing) that teaches
readers how to develop exciting and practical user interfaces for games in Unity.
Furthermore, he has also been a reviewer for the following books: Unity Game
Development Scripting (Packt Publishing) and Unity 5.x by Example (Packt Publishing).

Francesco is also a musician and a composer, especially of soundtracks for short

films and video games. For several years, he worked as an actor and dancer.
He was a guest of honor at the theatre Brancaccio in Rome.

In addition to this, he is a very active person, having volunteered as a children's

entertainer at the Associazione Culturale Torraccia in Rome. He also gives private
lessons in mathematics and music to high-school and university students.

Finally, Francesco loves math, philosophy, logic, and puzzle solving, but most of all,
creating video gamesthanks to his passion for game designing and programming.

You can find him at https://linkedin.com/pub/francesco-sapio/b8/5b/365.

I'm deeply thankful to my parents for their infinite patience,

enthusiasm, and support throughout my life. Moreover, I'm
thankful to the rest of my family in particular to my grandparents
because they always encouraged me to do better in my life with
the Latin expressions "Ad Maiora" and "Per aspera ad astra".

Finally, a huge thanks to all the special people around me whom

I love in particular to my girlfriend; I'm grateful for all your help
in everything.
 About the Reviewer

Lauren S. Ferro is a gamification consultant and designer of game and game-like

applications. She has worked, designed, consulted, and implemented strategies for a
range of different purposes from professional development, recommendation systems,
and educational games. She is an active researcher in the area of gamification, player
profiling, and user-centered game design. Lauren runs workshops both for the general
public and companies that focus on designing user-cantered games and game-like
applications. She is also the developer of the game design resource Gamicards, which
is a paper-prototyping tool for both games and game-like experiences that is centred
on the users' preferences.
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 Table of Contents
An Introduction to Unity 1
Getting ready 1
Creating and opening projects 2
The interface of Unity 3
The Scene View panel 4
The Game view 5
The Project panel 6
The Hierarchy panel 8
Inspector 8
Other parts of the interface 9
Placing objects 10
Navigating in the interface 13
Transforming objects 14
Parenting game objects 16
Setting Up a Scene Part 1 18
Using the Terrain tool 18
Changing scenes 21
Creating a material 22
Adding lights to our scene 24
Including audio and music 27
Setting Up a Scene Part 2 30
Handling physics 30
Adding special effects 31
UI basics 33

[i]
Table of Contents

Giving Life to the Scene 35

Animations 35
Importing animations 35
Creating animations 35
Mechanim 36
Scripting objects 37
Going Further and References 39
Exporting the project 40
Summary 42
What to do next? 43
Broaden your horizons with Packt 43

[ ii ]
 What you need to know
about Unity 5
This eGuide is designed to act as a brief and practical introduction to Unity 5. It is
full of practical examples that will get you up and running quickly with the core
functions of Unity 5.

We assume that you know a bit about what Unity 5 is, what it does, and why you
want to use it, because this eGuide won't give you a history lesson in the background
of Unity 5. What this eGuide will give you, however, is a greater understanding of
the key basics of Unity 5 so that you have a good idea of how to advance after you've
read the guide. We can then point you in the right direction of what to learn next
after giving you the basic knowledge to do so.

What you need to know about Unity 5 will:

Cover the fundamentals and the things you really need to know, rather than
niche or specialized areas.
Assume that you come from a fairly technical background and understand
what the technology is and what it broadly does.
Focus on what things are and how they work.
Include practical examples to get you up, running, and productive quickly.

[ iii ]
Preface

Overview
Before we start, let's spend some time on what we are heading toward.

Unity is a game engine that is free and also for commercial use. However, a Pro
version exists with some advance features. This engine started to become very popular
for the creation of games because of its simplicity. Furthermore, it is possible to create
mobile games as well. In fact, Unity can export both for Android or iOS devices.

In Version 4.6, a new UI system was introduced, but it was finalized with Version
5.x. In this recent version, you can experiment with all of its features. Due to its
simplicity, making UIs in Unity has never been easier.

You can see more on the official website.

[ iv ]
 An Introduction to Unity
In this introduction guide, we will explore the potential of Unity and show you the
basics. Rather than a complete guide, consider this as an introduction to the main
topics with the respective references to the official documentation of Unity.

In this first chapter, we will see how to create a new project and move inside the
Unity Interface. At the end of this chapter, we will also learn how to transform
and parent game objects.

Getting ready
Let's start by downloading Unity from the official website.

You can install either the free version as well as the Pro version. In this eGuide,
we won't use any advanced features that are contained in the Pro version, but feel
free to choose the one that you prefer.

If you decide to use the Pro version, you need to know that there are two ways that
we can activate an installation: online or manually. Once you download, install, and
run the Unity Editor, you will be asked to select the version of Unity that you want.
In this case, select Unity Professional.

Manual activation is a slightly more complicated process than online

activation, and more details regarding the steps involved can be found
at https://unity3d.com/unity/activation.
What you need to know about Unity 5

Creating and opening projects

The first time you open Unity, you will see a screen that contains your recent
projects, and they can be opened by clicking on one of them. If you want to create a
new project, click on New, and you will see the following screen:

Here, Unity asks you where to store the project on your computer, the name of your
project, and whether it is in 2D or 3D. This last choice will change how Unity will
import your file because it needs to know how to deal with the files that you want
to import. It's good practice to set it here. However, it is always possible to change
how assets are imported later on.

To create your project, click on the Create Project button.

[2]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

The interface of Unity

After we create our project or open an existing one, we can see many panels,
as shown in the following image:

This may be a bit overwhelming in the beginning, but at the end of this chapter,
everything will be a lot clearer. Let's go through these panels to see in detail what
we can do with them.

[3]
What you need to know about Unity 5

The Scene View panel

The Scene view panel is the most important one. You can see it highlighted in the
following image:

This allows you to change and modify your scene. A scene is where your game takes
place. In a scene, you can create your 2D or 3D world where the player will move or
interact. It's worthwhile to keep in mind that a game can also have more than one
scene. In fact, each game that is created using Unity has different levels called scenes.
Each scene can contain different objects that populate its environment. Using very
simple scripts, the player can move in the game between scenes. However, every time
a scene is loaded, it starts from the beginning. For instance, if a player has moved an
object, and then reloads the scene, the object will be where it was in the first place.
Retaining changes is possible, but they need to be stored in memory and then loaded
back in runtime by using scripts.

You can learn more about the Scene view in the

official documentation.

[4]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

The Game view

This view may not be immediately visible from the beginning because you need to
click on the Game tab. You can find both the View and Game tabs highlighted in the
following image:

In this view, we can take the guise of the player and see their perspective. This
view is very useful to test your game and check whether everything is working as
it should. You can run a simulation by clicking on the Play button on the top of the
Unity Interface. Along with it, you can find the Stop and Pause buttons as well, as
shown in the following image:

They will be always visible due to their importance to test or simulate the game.

Additional information can be found in the official documentation.

[5]
What you need to know about Unity 5

The Project panel

You can find this panel highlighted in the following picture:

In this panel, we can view all the files that we have imported to the project. They
may be ordered into folders. We recommend that you keep your files ordered as
much as possible, especially if your project is large. As a result, you will be able to
find what you need much faster, especially as your project begins to develop.

An example of ordered folders to store all the assets that can be sorted by levels is
as follows:

[6]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

However, this structure is good for small projects or games. For bigger projects, a
better structure will order all the assets by type, as in the following image:

You can find more information about the Project panel at http://docs.unity3d.
com/Manual/ProjectView.html.

[7]
What you need to know about Unity 5

The Hierarchy panel

In the following image, the Hierarchy panel is highlighted:

Do not confuse this with the Project panel. Here, you can see all the objects or Game
objects, as Unity calls them that are present in the scene. For instance, you may
import a tree into your project. However, in your scene, you can also place two trees
of the same type. In the Hierarchy panel, you will see two trees even if there is only
one in your project.

More information about this panel can be found at http://docs.unity3d.com/

Manual/Hierarchy.html.

Inspector
Along with the Scene View panel, the Inspector is the most important tab. In fact,
it is the core of Unity, where you can change all the settings and options for each
single object in your scene or project. It is highlighted in the following screenshot:

[8]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

As you can see, it is now empty. However, once an object is selected, it will display
its details, parameters, and variables, which you can change to suit your needs.

In the official documentation, you can find out more about Inspector.

Other parts of the interface

Of course, we only scratched the surface of what kind of panels or interfaces are
available in Unity. Some of them may be accessed from the top bar, others from
Inspector, such as the Sprite Editor. However, we don't need to worry about them
now. I'm sure that after this introduction course in Unity, you will be able to explore
Unity and discover new functionalities on your own or with the help of a guide.

If you want to explore the other parts of the interface, feel free to look at the official
documentation at http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UsingTheEditor.html and
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Sprites.html.

[9]
What you need to know about Unity 5

Placing objects
This section assumes that you are familiar with the panels that we presented before.
If not, take your time to learn them because they are important, and we will use them
throughout the rest of this eGuide.

Let's begin by creating a Game object in our scene. There are different ways to do this.
Right-click on the Hierarchy panel, select whether you want a 2D or 3D Object, and
then select the kind of object that you want. For instance, you can choose 3D Object
| Cube:

Another way to do this is using the top bar menu, arriving to a similar menu for the
choice of which object to place:

[ 10 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

Another important way to place objects inside your scene is to drag them from the
Project panel. However, to do this, you need to import at least one asset. To import
an asset, you can select Import New Asset from the Assets menu:

[ 11 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

Alternatively, you can do this by right-clicking on the Project panel, and then
clicking on Import New Asset:

Once you place something in the scene, you will see the object appear in the
Hierarchy panel like in the following image:

[ 12 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

It will also appear in the Scene view, as shown in the following image:

As you can see, this is in perspective. Thus, we may want to look at our objects from
different positions, so let's learn how to do this in the next section.

Navigating in the interface

The term navigation refers to the ability to look around from within the Scene View
panel. If you never used a program with a 3D view, you may find this a little bit
difficult in the beginning, but with a tiny bit of practice, this is very easy to master.

By holding the right-mouse button down on the Scene View panel, it is possible
to rotate your camera or point of view. While still keeping the right-mouse button
pressed, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to fly around the scene. Hold
down the Shift key with an arrow to move faster. Therefore, we can watch the cube
that we placed in a different perspective.

Before we move to the next section, we recommend that you spend some time
mastering the navigation because this is really important.

[ 13 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

Transforming objects
Now that we know how to move around, let's learn how to manipulate game objects.

There are different ways to achieve this. First of all, we can use the Inspector. If we
select an object in a scene, you should see a section called Transform in the Inspector.
Here, you can modify the position, the rotation, and the scale along each single axis,
as they are represented as vectors.

Rotation is not actually stored as a 3D vector like the other two, but
it is stored as a Quaternion (a 4D Vector). A Quaternion is another
representation of a rotation in the 3D space with four values. This is
because with Euler Angles, the representation of the three angles for
each axis (the 3D Vector with three values) cause different numerical
instability in the 3D space. However, this process is quite invisible
if you tweak the angles in the Inspector, but it needs to be kept in
mind when you script.

I encourage you to change these values and see what happens in the Scene View
panel. For instance, as an exercise, you can try to achieve something like the following:

As you can see, this appears to be a rectangular polyhedron (more specifically,

a hexahedron). However, in Unity, this is just a cube scaled differently along each
axis and then rotated a little bit. If you can achieve this very quickly, you are on
your way; otherwise, keep practicing.

[ 14 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

Another way to modify objects is directly in the Scene View panel. If you look above
the Hierarchy panel, you can see the following five buttons:

This is an ordered list form left to right of what they do:

Move: This allows you to pan in the scene. It may be useful to navigate
through the scene but not to transform objects. It may change into Orbit
or Zoom, according to the navigation settings and shortcuts.
Translate: This allows you to view the three position axes on the selected
object. By dragging one of these axes, you can move the object along this
specific axis. If you drag the square between two axes, you can move the
object on the plane generated by these axes.
Rotate: This allows you to view the three rotation axes on the selected object.
By dragging one of these axes, you can rotate the object on this specific axis.
Scale: This allows you to view the three scale axes on the selected object. By
dragging the cube at the end of one of these axes, you can scale the object on
this specific axis. If you drag the cube in the center of the object, you can scale
the object uniformly.
Rect: This is used to translate, rotate, and scale 2D objects, such as UI
elements. We will look at this one later on in this eGuide.

There are two other important toggles that help transforming the objects in the scene.
They can be found next to the previous buttons, and they are the following:

With the first button, you can decide whether you want to transform the object
starting from its center or its pivot point. They are often the same, but when you
import your custom 3D models, the pivot point can differ from the center.

[ 15 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

With the second button, you can decide whether you transform the object according
to its own frame or the world one. In order to understand the difference between
these two, let's take the object of the previous exercise and select the positioning tool.
Now, let's compare them, as follows:

On the left, we can see the axis on the world frame, whereas on the right-hand side,
we can see the axis in its own frame.

Parenting game objects

Now, imagine we have a complex scene, and we want to move a building with
all of the furniture inside that we have carefully placed. We would like to avoid
repositioning everything. For this reason, Unity allows you to parent an object to
another one, where the first one is called child, and the second one is called parent.

By moving the parent, all of its children (and the children of the children and so
on) will move along with it. So, in the previous example, all of the furniture will be
parented with the building. As a result, when we move the building, all the furniture
will move with it. However, if we want to move only a closet, we can do this without
moving the building by selecting only this object in the Hierarchy panel. Therefore, this
makes the parenting system a powerful way to handle scenes with multiple objects.

[ 16 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

Parenting an object in Unity is really simple. Select the future child in the Hierarchy
panel, and drag it over another game object that becomes the parent. This is it. You
can iterate the process and create a real tree of parenting, such as the one in the
following image:

[ 17 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

Setting Up a Scene Part 1

In the previous chapter, we saw how to create a new project in Unity, and we learned
the fundamentals of the interface. In this chapter, we will take a better look at how to
create scenes in Unity.

Using the Terrain tool

One of the fastest ways to create a 3D environment is to use the Terrain tool embedded
inside Unity.

To begin, let's create a new terrain by right-clicking on the Hierarchy panel and then
3D Object | Terrain. As you can see, a large rectangle has now appeared in your
Scene View panel (you may want to navigate in the Scene View panel to find the
angle that you prefer):

[ 18 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

This is our terrain, even if it appears flat now. Next, we can click on Terrain in the
Hierarchy panel to select it:

We can then see the Inspector change and assume this form:

[ 19 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

Note that inside it, there is a bar with different icons, and these are different brushes
that we can use to paint our terrain. What this means is that we can raise up our
terrain with just few clicks and create mountains very easily. Let's click on the left-
most button, leave the default settings for the brush (the settings just below the bar
with the different brushes), and bring our mouse in the Scene View panel.

As you can see, the terrain is a little bit blue where your mouse cursor is. It shows
you how big your brush is. If you click on this area, you will see your terrain change
shape and rise up like in the following screenshot:

[ 20 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

If you want to lower your terrain instead, hold Shift while clicking on the terrain
with your brush. In addition to this, we can change our previous shape into the
following one:

If you want to learn more about the Terrain tool and its other brushes, check out the
official documentation of Unity.

Changing scenes
If we go through the top bar menu and select File, we should see some options that
are related to our scene:

[ 21 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

If we like what we created, we can click on Save Scene and choose where to save it.
It's good practice to have a folder in your project called Scenes where you can save
all your scenes. On the other hand, if we are not interested in saving it, just click on
New Scene; and when Unity asks us whether we want to save our Scene, just click
on Don't save. As a result, our Hierarchy panel is now almost empty (it contains the
main camera and the directional light as default) and so is our Scene View panel.

Creating a material
Now that we are in a new scene, let's create a new material. Materials are very
important because they allow us to make the world of the player colorful, instead
of just an opaque white.

Right-click on the Project panel and then navigate to Create | Material. We will see
it appear in our Project panel, and we need to type in a name. In this case, we can go
with myMaterial and then press Enter on your keyboard:

If we select it, like in the previous image, then we will see many details in the
Inspector, as shown in the following screenshot:

[ 22 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

The most important one is Shader. It affects how a material will be rendered, this
means how it will appear to the player and in the game. For this eGuide, let's stick
with the default Standard option. An option that we may want to change is Albedo.
If we click on it, Unity will display a Color Picker where we can choose a color, for
example, red:

If we also have a texture, such as a brick texture (possibly with also a normal map),
we can import them into the project, and then place them respectively in the Albedo
and Normal Map parameters by dragging and dropping them.

If you are not familiar or you don't know what these are, you can learn more about
them in the official documentation of Unity.

[ 23 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

Now, let's create another cube like we did in the previous chapter. Now, from the
Project panel, drag and drop myMaterial on the cube in the Scene View panel (also
on the Hierarchy panel works). As a result, our cube will assume the color that we
picked for the material (and the texture if you had placed any), in this case, red:

Getting lit up
In order to better understand how lights in Unity work, let's create a scene like the
following one:

[ 24 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

As we can see, the scene is affected by a directional light, which comes as a default in
every new scene.

If we delete the default directional light and switch to the Game View panel, we can
see that our cube looks really dark. This is because there are no more lights in our
scene.

To add a light to our scene, let's right-click on the Hierarchy panel and then select
Point Light from Lights. If we select it, we can move it like any other object in
the Scene View panel. Furthermore, you will see some special settings for lights
in Inspector:

The two most important parameters that you may want to tweak in your game level
are Intensity and Color. As these names suggest, the first one controls how much
light is emitted, and the second one controls the color.

[ 25 ]
What you need to know about Unity 5

For instance, by selecting a blue color and placing the light just above the cube,
we achieve this kind of result in the Game View panel:

We suggest that you always experiment with these values and understand how they
influence the appearance of the scene.

Another kind of light is a spotlight. This is an example of it in our scene:

Of course, feel free to use as many lights as you want and find different combinations
among them to illuminate your scene.

[ 26 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

However, even if lights are really beautiful inside games, they are really expensive
from a computational point of view. This means that you cannot use too many of
them if you want your game to run smoothly and with a high frame rate.

Of course, there are also other kind of lights, and you can experiment with them
before you move on to the next section. You can read more at http://docs.
unity3d.com/Manual/LightingOverview.html.

Probe lights are particular because they can achieve amazing effects, and they are
cheap because they are baked. However, you need to adjust a range of settings
as well as baking the lights in the scene before using them. Especially because
the objects in your scene may have particular materials that are affected by probe
lights. You can read more about them at http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/
LightProbes.html.

Including audio and music

A great way to surround the player with a nice atmosphere is to include audio and
music into your game. If this is your first time in game development, you need to
know that there are mainly two kinds of audio sources: 2D and 3D. It doesn't matter
if your game is set in 2D or in 3D, but rather if the sound's source is 2D or 3D. A 2D
source means that the player will listen to the sound independently whether they
are in the game level. Usually, we use these kind of sources for music. On the other
hand, 3D source is a sound that has a specific position in the map. Imagine if a door
opens; the player should listen to its sound only if they are nearby.

Besides the kind of source that you choose, you need to attach an Audio Listener to
an object in the scene, usually the player. This component allows listening to audio
sources in the scene. When a new scene is created, an Audio Listener is always
attached to the Main Camera.

As we have the Main Camera in the game, we don't need to attach an Audio
Listener. Instead, let's create a new object by right-clicking on the Hierarchy panel
and then clicking on Create Empty. You can also rename it MusicObject. Now,
navigate to Add Component | Audio | Audio Source to add an Audio Source.

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What you need to know about Unity 5

To easily and quickly identify where the Audio Sources are in your scene, Unity
places an icon called Gizmos. You can see it in the following image:

Now, you should import some music in your game. Keep in mind that Unity only
supports the following formats:

.mp3
.ogg
.wav
.aiff/.aif
.mod
.it
.s3m
.xm

If you have trouble finding music for your game, there are a lot of online
libraries where you can download sounds and music. Some of them are free
even for commercial use. Some examples are https://www.freesound.org
or http://soundbible.com/.

In any case, always remember to check the licenses and their conditions.

[ 28 ]
 What you need to know about Unity 5

After you import your music, you can drag and drop it in the Inspector (after you
select the MusicObject from the Hierarchy panel) inside the AudioClip variable.
If you have any trouble understanding this passage, you can look at the following
image for clarity:

Finally, we can click on Play, and we will see our cube with the light and listen to the
beautiful music that you imported.

To learn more about the audio in Unity, you can refer to the official
documentation.

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What you need to know about Unity 5

Setting Up a Scene Part 2

In the previous chapter, we saw how to create a terrain and set materials. Furthermore,
we also saw how to use lights and music in our project. In this chapter, we will look at
other features that we can use to create scenes in Unity.

Handling physics
Unity implements a physic engine on its own. As physics is generally expensive
in a Game Engine, not everything is simulated into the physics of the game. Thus,
in some way, we need to tell to Unity what we want to be affected by physics.

Two main components allow us to specify a behavior with the physic engine of Unity.

The first one is Collider. This can have different shapes, and it specifies which
kind of form the object has in the physic engine. Usually, custom shapes are more
expensive, but we may want to approximate a human body with a Capsule Collider,
which we can see in the following image:

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 What you need to know about Unity 5

Even if it is an approximation, it works in most cases, except if we try to achieve

something very specific.

The second component is RigidBody. This tells Unity that the object where this
component is attached should act as a rigid body. This means that it is affected by
gravity and drag. For instance, create a cube and attach a rigid body on it (a cube
collider is attached by default). Then, create another cube below the first one and
scale it to create a kind of plane. Now, if we press Play, we can see that the first cube
falls by the effect of gravity on the second one. However, the second one won't move
due to the fact that it is not a rigid body (a rigid body is not attached on it).

These components are quite intuitive to use; therefore, feel free to tweak the
parameters to see what happens. Finally, the official documentation is always a
good place to quickly learn what a specific parameter does. You can consult it at
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PhysicsSection.html.

Adding special effects

A great way to add atmosphere to your game is using some special effects, such
as explosions or dust in the air. You can do this using something called a particle
system. This simulates some particles in the 3D space, and by varying how they look
and behave, it is possible to create many special effects. Unity implements a particle
system using a Particle System Component.

To quickly create a particle system, just right-click on the Hierarchy panel and then
click on Particle System. As a result, we will see some moving white particles in the
scene above the cube that we left from the previous chapter:

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What you need to know about Unity 5

If we go to the Inspector panel, we will be overwhelmed by a lot of tabs. Each of

them contains many options about the particle system, as shown in the following
image. In fact, this is a very complex component that requires a little of bit of
practice to get started.

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 What you need to know about Unity 5

We don't have the time to go through each parameter, but let's look at the most
common ones:

Duration: This allows us to set how long a particle will live, which means
how long a single particle will be displayed onscreen.
Looping: This is a checkbox that determines whether this particle system
will loop or not. For instance, an explosion is not a loop effect (it is one shot),
whereas dust in the air is.
Start size and Start color: These two respectively set how big and what color
the particles are. The name of these parameters begins with Start because
particles can change shape and color over time.
Rate: This important parameter is found inside the Emission tab. It allows us
to set how many particles will be emitted over time.

With this said, you can learn more about particle systems in the official
documentation.

However, the best way to learn particle systems is to have an effect in mind and try
to recreate it, so the secret is just practice.

UI basics
UI means User Interface, which can include leaderboards as well as inventories,
score, health, minimaps, and so on. Unity implements it using UI components.

You can create a UI by right-clicking on the Hierarchy panel, and then select Text
from UI. As you noticed, Unity added some components to your scene. For the
moment, we can just ignore them. However, it is really important that all the UI
is parented to the Canvas object; otherwise, it will not be displayed.

We just added a UI Text. If you select it, you can change its text variable to what
you prefer in the Inspector.

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What you need to know about Unity 5

We should see the following in the Scene View panel:

If you want to move it, you should first select the Rect tool because they are 2D
objects, and using the Rect tool makes it much easier. You can find this tool in the
top-left corner of the Unity interface:

Once the UI object is selected, you can focus on it by pressing F, and switch to the
2D mode, by clicking on the 2D button in the Scene View panel:

If you want to switch back to the 3D mode, just click this button again.

We invite you to try our other UI components and experiment with them. However,
there are a lot of places where you can learn more about the UI. The first place that is
full of useful information is always the official documentation.

Lastly, you should definitely consider buying a book that is specifically about UI.
For instance, the Unity UI Cookbook, Packt Publishing, has a perfect set of recipes that
are ready to use. You will find all the basic concepts and much more, and you can
get it at https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/unity-ui-cookbook.

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 What you need to know about Unity 5

Giving Life to the Scene

Except for the particle system that we saw in the previous chapter, our scene is quite
static. Unity supports different ways to animate a scene, and we will briefly look at
some of them here.

Animations
Unity allows us to both import custom animations made by other software and
create our own animation inside the engine itself.

Importing animations
If we already have all our animation done with other software, it's really easy
to import them. In fact, they can be imported as any other asset in your project.
In Inspector, you can tweak some parameters, such as the play speed. However,
some problems may happen because there is an entire workflow to properly
import animations if they have something of particular value. We don't have room
here to break through it, but you can learn a lot in the official documentation.

Creating animations
Of course, Unity is not an animation software, so don't expect it to create sophisticated
animations. However, if you need just to open or close a door, the Unity animation
system can help!

You can open the animation panel by selecting Animation from the Window toolbar.

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What you need to know about Unity 5

A screen like the following will appear:

By selecting objects in the Hierarchy panel and then using the Rec button, you can
record what you do with this object with keyframes. This may seem odd if you have
never used any video editing tool, but the principle is the same.

You can learn more about the Animation system in the official documentation.

Mechanim
It is worthy to mention that Unity has an animation system when using more
than one animation is required. This tool is called Mechanim, and it allows us to
create entire graphs with conditions to trigger a transition from one animation to
another one.

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 What you need to know about Unity 5

You can open this editor by selecting Animator in the Window menu. You will see
something like the following:

You can learn more in the official documentation.

Scripting objects
One of the most powerful features of Unity is the ability to write custom scripts,
both in JavaScript and C#. This allows us to fully customize the game that we are
creating, as we want. This topic is so vast, you can find entire books only focusing
on one part of the kind of code you can write.

In this section, we will see just how to add a very simple script to make the cube in
our scene float.

Let's begin by creating a new script. Right-click on the Project panel and then select
C# Script from Create. We can rename it as myFirstScript. If you double-click
on it, we use another program, and this is Monodevelop by default, which is a
development environment to write code. As we can see, our script is not empty,
but there is something. In particular, there are two Start() and Update() functions.
The first one is called the first time the script commences execution, and the second
one is called every frame. We will use the last one. In fact, at every frame, we need
to tell the cube where it will be.

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What you need to know about Unity 5

Therefore, inside the Update() function, let's write the following:

void Update () {
transform.position = new Vector3(0, Mathf.Sin(Time.time), 0);
}

As you can see, we have a sin() function that makes our object move up and down.
As we are changing the y coordinate. Furthermore, we used Time.time, which is
the time from the beginning of the game, so we know where the cube should be in
every frame.

Save the script, and you can attach it to our cube by dragging and dropping it from
the Project panel to the cube in the Hierarchy panel.

Finally, if you press Play, the button above the Scene View panel, we can see our
cube goes up and down.

You can learn more about scripting in the official documentation.

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 What you need to know about Unity 5

Going Further
and References
In this last chapter, we will look at how we can export our project so that it can be
played by those who don't have Unity installed. At the end of this chapter, some
further readings and references will be given in order to allow the reader to go
further in this amazing world of Unity.

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What you need to know about Unity 5

Exporting the project

In order to export your project, you need to go on the top bar and select Build
Settings from File. As a result, you will see the following screen appear, where
you can set the building settings:

First, we need to add a scene. We only have one scene, so we add it by clicking on
Add current scene. Then, we choose a platform, such as PC or Android. If you want
to really go deeper in the settings, you can click on the Player Settings button, and
you will see this screen in the Inspector panel:

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 What you need to know about Unity 5

Here, you can granularly set how your game will be exported. Now, we can just
leave the default settings, but if you are interested in learning more, you can check
the official documentation.

Therefore, if we want to export the project in the previous screen, we just have to
click on Build and Unity will ask us where to save it.

Congratulations, you just exported your first project!

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What you need to know about Unity 5

Summary
This is the end for this short guide. We hope that you enjoyed going through it and
you learned something as well.

We saw how to create a project in Unity and explored part of the interface where we
can create our games. You learned the basic concepts of placing objects in our scene
and how to navigate in the Scene View panel.

Then, we saw how to quickly shape environments with the Terrain tool. After this,
we moved to creating materials and applying them to game objects. We enriched
our scene with lights, music, and particle systems. You also learned how to handle
physics inside Unity.

We looked at how to create User Interfaces (UIs), and how to import and use
animations. We also wrote a small script to make an object float.

Finally, we saw how to export our project and how to change its settings.

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 What you need to know about Unity 5

What to do next?
Broaden your horizons with Packt
If you're interested in Unity, then youve come to the right place. We've got a diverse
range of products that should appeal to budding as well as proficient specialists in
the field of Unity.

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What you need to know about Unity 5

To learn more about Unity 5 and find out what you want to learn next, visit the
Unity tech page at https://www.packtpub.com/tech/unity

If you have any feedback on this eBook, or are struggling with something we haven't
covered, let us know at [email protected].

Get a 50% discount on your next eBook or video from www.packtpub.com using
the code:

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