Book Image

Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials

By : Will Goldstone
Book Image

Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials

By: Will Goldstone

Overview of this book

Game Engines such as Unity are the power-tools behind the games we know and love. Unity is one of the most widely-used and best loved packages for game development and is used by everyone, from hobbyists to large studios, to create games and interactive experiences for the web, desktop, mobile, and console. With Unity’s intuitive, easy to learn toolset and this book – it’s never been easier to become a game developer. Taking a practical approach, this book will introduce you to the concepts of developing 3D games, before getting to grips with development in Unity itself – prototyping a simple scenario, and then creating a larger game. From creating 3D worlds to scripting and creating game mechanics you will learn everything you’ll need to get started with game development. This book is designed to cover a set of easy-to-follow examples, which culminate in the production of a First Person 3D game, complete with an interactive island environment. All of the concepts taught in this book are applicable to other types of game, however, by introducing common concepts of game and 3D production, you'll explore Unity to make a character interact with the game world, and build puzzles for the player to solve, in order to complete the game. At the end of the book, you will have a fully working 3D game and all the skills required to extend the game further, giving your end-user, the player, the best experience possible. Soon you will be creating your own 3D games with ease!
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

External modeling applications


Given that 3D design is an intensive discipline in itself, it is recommended that you invest in a similar tutorial guide for your application of choice. If you're new to 3D modeling, then here is a list of 3D modeling packages currently supported by Unity:

  1. Maya

  2. 3D Studio Max

  3. Cheetah 3D

  4. Cinema 4D

  5. Blender

  6. Carrara

  7. Lightwave

  8. XSI

  9. Modo

These are the nine most suited modeling applications as recommended by Unity Technologies. The main reason for this is that they export models in a format that can be automatically read and imported by Unity, once saved into your project's Assets folder. These application formats will carry their meshes, textures, animations, and character rigging across to Unity, whereas some smaller packages may not support export of character rigs upon import to Unity.

For a full view of the latest compatibility chart, visit: http://unity3d.com/unity/features/asset-importing.

Common settings for models

In the Project panel, expand the Book Assets folder to...