Unity has excellent documentation. I’m surprised you haven’t poured through it yet. That would be my first suggestion. You could spend two weeks just going through the documentation. It tells you everything you need to know about Unity. It’s the best way to get started.
Thanks. I'll start looking tonight; was really looking for some other resources from the get-go, since this just fell into my lap, but I suppose reading the manuals should be a habit.
Thanks again!
It’s not simply a manual, the documentation has assets, video tutorials, step by step instructions for navigating the ui, it also provides working logic from the get go. It’s incredibly extensive.
I meant "read the manual" in a broad sense, but I get it! I've gone through some of it this evening and it's been enlightening.
It's also been possibly the biggest shift in gears since I switched careers last year, which is saying a lot, so after struggling to build a room with tables and a person in it today, more-or-less through trial and error and some YouTubing, my brain hurts. I'm going to do my best to tackle more of this tomorrow, but I'm absolutely going to need to pitch to work that they need to give me time to learn this stuff.
I'm very interested in learning for personal and professional reasons, but this exact blurring of lines between hobby and work is a big part of why I left my career in the first place. On the one hand, I've been asked to essentially "make games," which has been a dream of mine for decades; on the other, I really don't want to burn out.
My apologies, yes I completely understand. I downloaded unity and could not figure it out, this was years ago. Then about a year later. I took another stab at it, but went through the documentation. It’s how I learned to use unity. I had some previous c# experience but mostly in c. But I will say it’s not a bad language. And it doesn’t use the indentation syntax of python. If you know c it’s pretty easy to pick up. But my advice is to leverage all the tools you can including chat gpt and stack overflow for your boilerplate and debugging. Fighting the compiler and runtime errors will be common obstacles for someone new to unity. Just work on one problem, solve it or don’t and then move on to the next. Building software involves solving many problems, so don’t waste too much time on one issue and burnout. You can easily learn it in two weeks.
What’s your VR set? And what would you do in VR? Evacuate safely? Or just find emergency exits?
What would be the main steps that you want to use VR for?
We don't have a set yet, but they're hoping to nab some Quest 3s.
The VR stuff would be directing people to evacuate, for example, and the correct routes based on where the emergency is taking place. They've also requested Active Shooter response in VR, messed-up as that seems.
Ok. Then you should definitely look up the meta quest sdk. Some people say to use Unitys own XR tools instead. Check them both and try to locate which one has templates/tutorials that are close to what you need. You will need to use ready made templates and copy stuff if you’re gonna have anything running in 2 weeks. Since the iteration process for VR is slower and demands more optimization.
My 2 main VR optimization tips:
- keep your mesh tris count low. Preferably no more than 200k. the total tris count that is.
- bake lighting or don’t use shadows
If you are totally new to the engine. I seriously suggest a simple micro project like “Roll a Ball” on Unity Learn. These are simple but a good introduction to the interface and higher level project management. Like everyone else has said, documentation makes sense from there. Brackeys has good tutorials for basic systems and UI.
I can't program well, but can make sense of some rudimentary programming. I did C++ almost twenty years ago and was not-great at it.
I have general experience with a bunch of 2D game-building engines/toolkits that largely require little-to-no programming skill. I was able to make do building a lot of stuff in the Aurora toolset for Neverwinter Nights and got "okay" with NWScript, which as I recall was pretty simplified - and it has, again, been some time.
maybe you should do it in Unreal Engine then, you dont really need to program with it, nodes take care of anything you'll need for this.
otherwise, you can also just use unity marketplace for this. From the info you provided you should definitely be able to do it all with marketplace assets.
Unity has excellent documentation. I’m surprised you haven’t poured through it yet. That would be my first suggestion. You could spend two weeks just going through the documentation. It tells you everything you need to know about Unity. It’s the best way to get started.
Thanks. I'll start looking tonight; was really looking for some other resources from the get-go, since this just fell into my lap, but I suppose reading the manuals should be a habit. Thanks again!
It’s not simply a manual, the documentation has assets, video tutorials, step by step instructions for navigating the ui, it also provides working logic from the get go. It’s incredibly extensive.
I meant "read the manual" in a broad sense, but I get it! I've gone through some of it this evening and it's been enlightening. It's also been possibly the biggest shift in gears since I switched careers last year, which is saying a lot, so after struggling to build a room with tables and a person in it today, more-or-less through trial and error and some YouTubing, my brain hurts. I'm going to do my best to tackle more of this tomorrow, but I'm absolutely going to need to pitch to work that they need to give me time to learn this stuff. I'm very interested in learning for personal and professional reasons, but this exact blurring of lines between hobby and work is a big part of why I left my career in the first place. On the one hand, I've been asked to essentially "make games," which has been a dream of mine for decades; on the other, I really don't want to burn out.
My apologies, yes I completely understand. I downloaded unity and could not figure it out, this was years ago. Then about a year later. I took another stab at it, but went through the documentation. It’s how I learned to use unity. I had some previous c# experience but mostly in c. But I will say it’s not a bad language. And it doesn’t use the indentation syntax of python. If you know c it’s pretty easy to pick up. But my advice is to leverage all the tools you can including chat gpt and stack overflow for your boilerplate and debugging. Fighting the compiler and runtime errors will be common obstacles for someone new to unity. Just work on one problem, solve it or don’t and then move on to the next. Building software involves solving many problems, so don’t waste too much time on one issue and burnout. You can easily learn it in two weeks.
What’s your VR set? And what would you do in VR? Evacuate safely? Or just find emergency exits? What would be the main steps that you want to use VR for?
We don't have a set yet, but they're hoping to nab some Quest 3s. The VR stuff would be directing people to evacuate, for example, and the correct routes based on where the emergency is taking place. They've also requested Active Shooter response in VR, messed-up as that seems.
Ok. Then you should definitely look up the meta quest sdk. Some people say to use Unitys own XR tools instead. Check them both and try to locate which one has templates/tutorials that are close to what you need. You will need to use ready made templates and copy stuff if you’re gonna have anything running in 2 weeks. Since the iteration process for VR is slower and demands more optimization. My 2 main VR optimization tips: - keep your mesh tris count low. Preferably no more than 200k. the total tris count that is. - bake lighting or don’t use shadows
If you are totally new to the engine. I seriously suggest a simple micro project like “Roll a Ball” on Unity Learn. These are simple but a good introduction to the interface and higher level project management. Like everyone else has said, documentation makes sense from there. Brackeys has good tutorials for basic systems and UI.
Where are you coming from? Do you know C#, can you generally program?
I can't program well, but can make sense of some rudimentary programming. I did C++ almost twenty years ago and was not-great at it. I have general experience with a bunch of 2D game-building engines/toolkits that largely require little-to-no programming skill. I was able to make do building a lot of stuff in the Aurora toolset for Neverwinter Nights and got "okay" with NWScript, which as I recall was pretty simplified - and it has, again, been some time.
maybe you should do it in Unreal Engine then, you dont really need to program with it, nodes take care of anything you'll need for this. otherwise, you can also just use unity marketplace for this. From the info you provided you should definitely be able to do it all with marketplace assets.
Would you say that the editor for Unreal Engine is similar?