Best Resources to Learn Unity

Created by Unity Technologies, Unity is one of the popular cross-platform game engines released in the year 2005. Tech professionals use the engine to build AR, VR, 3D, and 2D games. However, apart from video gaming companies, other industries also have started using the engine. You can find the release of different versions of the engine, Unity.

Tutorials and Courses

Enter a new world of possibilities by learning how to program in Unity. There are a variety of tutorials available online but here is a selected list of the best resources to learn Unity.

You can choose any of these websites to find a paid or free course on Unity.

1. Unity User Manual – One can download the Unity editor from the website itself and can have a go with Unity with the tutorials available in these documents. It guides a user and starts from the bottom with the basics. The Editor can be used to make 3D and 2D games and apps as well. This can act as a manual for all intermediate users as well.
2. Make A Game – Make a Game is an online tutorial course that is a series of videos on YouTube. It is designed to help the users perceive and lend them a helping hand in overcoming the various problems and techniques in developing games with Unity. A lot of beginners would be interested in this, and this would be helpful as well.
3. Introduction To Game Development – This is also another YouTube web series, which includes many videos that provide tutorials for any aspiring game developer. But what’s great about this tutorial is that each video is modeled to provide a step-by-step guide to programming with Unity before getting to the real deal.  This tutorial is welcome to any beginner without any prior knowledge of Unity too.
4. Audio Visualisation Unity Tutorial – This is another excellent tutorial that is available on YouTube with a series of videos that guides a user to programming with Unity. This web series teaches an individual to use Fast Fourier Transform, scripting buffers, and apply scripts to models, etc. It has a collection of great tutorials which every beginner will find interesting and every enthusiastic Unity programmer will learn something new each time.
5. Unity Learn – This official section provides award-winning free tutorials, sample projects, and full courses for mastering real-time 3D development skills. The Unity Tutorials has been awarded the Developer Choice Awards and that reasons enough for making this a widely popular choice for learning Unity. The whole tutorials are broken up into step-by-step tutorials and thus making it easy for people to grasp every concept.
6. NerdLevels – NerdLevels provides you with a paid training course on Unity to let you learn the game development process. A free trial of the course is available for you. The comprehensive course enables you to deal with the Unity Engine and find out useful features. The trainers will also instruct you on the way of creating graphics and art.
7. Noobtuts – Noobtuts offers free Unity tutorials to learners. You can learn 2D game tutorials (Arkanoid games, pong games, snake games, and Bomberman games). Moreover, you will know about Unity packages- Unity Asset Store, prefabs, scrip editor, and game components.
8. Game Academy Courses: This will lead a person who has never had any experience in using a game engine. This tutorial will provide the right basis for developing games by understanding the project interface of Unity. The course level is available for all beginners as well, and certificates are awarded as well which makes it a great win-win situation for the individual.
9. Complete C# Unity Developer 2D: The Complete C# Unity Developer allows a user to learn C# from scratch. This provides a solid background for game development and design. Any beginner would be able to ease into the tutorial as the tutorial breaks the basics into modules which would help a user understand and grasp the basics perfectly.
10. Become A Game Developer/Designer: By the end of completing this Master Series, an individual would be able to create games in 2D and 3D with a proper concept of the Unity game engine. This tutorial does not only concentrate on game design but software development and film design as well. For any person who is serious about game designing, this course would assess that individual in achieving that dream.
11. Become a Game Designer the Complete Series Coding to Design – You can find a paid training course on the Unity game engine. You will know the technique of building your apps and games. With basic computer skills, you may apply for this course to become a game designer.
12. Make Your First Unity2D Pong Game – The tutorial helps you to design your Unity2d game in a few steps. It is a free course, enabling you to develop different graphics, create collision detection, insert background music, and record keyboard input.
13. Bitdegree – Beginner Guide to How to Make a Game with Unity – Beginners can choose this free course to learn about the download and installation process of Unity. The course includes tutorials on Unity Lighting and different other components to help you in knowing the fastest game development process. The tutorial also shows you the step for adding materials and colors to gaming objects.
14. Unity 2D – Over 20 videos that cover the basics of making a 2D game, AI, path navigation, VFX, etc…
15. Make Tower Defense Game – Learn to make a tower defense game by creating towers, enemies, waves…
16. Shader Graph for Beginners – Through this course, you will learn how to use the drag-and-drop system provided by Unity to give your materials different, advanced effects, all through an easy-to-understand interface. 

DOTS Tutorials

• Entity Component System – In this series of 6 videos, you will be introduced to the components of Unity’s data-oriented technology stack including ECS, C# Jobs System, and the Burst Compiler.
• Building a turn-based game prototype using ECS – Get a high-level overview of the Entity Component System (ECS) and turn-based game loops, and see a proof of concept built using ECS.
• Getting started with Unity DOTS – Read about the DOTS starting with ECS.
• Entity Component System for Unity – This tutorial from Raywenderlich will teach you to make a basic shooter scene using ECS.
• Unity DOTS Physics – Handling collisions with Job.

Unity Game Templates

These kits will help you kick-start many game projects with ease. You can read these kits’ details here.

1. Tower Defense Toolkit 4 (TDTK) – TDTK is a C# coding framework for the easy construction of tower defense games of any kind. It comes with a bundle of scripts that are flexible and configurable to fit a variety of TD gameplay scenarios. It’s mobile-compatible.
2. Tower Defense Template Kit – It includes all the tools needed to create an amazing Tower Defense game. Using this template, you can create 2d games such as Royal Revolt 2, Kingdom Rush, Castle Defense, and Bloons TD.
3. UFPS : Ultimate FPS – UFPS is a professional, kinematic character controller designed to include the smoothest first-person controls and to excel in all areas: PC, mobile, console, AI, networking, and VR.
4. Top Down Shooter ToolKit (TDS-TK) – TDS-TK is a C# coding framework for the easy construction of any top-down shooter games, including space shooter, 3d shooter, 2d shooter, and bullet hell.
5. Turn-Based ToolKit (TBTK) – This toolkit is used to help the development of turn-based strategy games faster. It supports movement, skills, enemy AI, and more.
6. City-Building Kit – Complete Version – Develop mobile city-building strategy games with PvP battles. Add your own game features, menus, and art. 100% source code included. 
7. ORK Framework – RPG Engine – ORK Framework is a massive and highly flexible RPG system. This Unity editor extension allows you to create your own game without writing a single line of code. Set up your status system, characters, enemies, equipment, and everything else you need in the ORK editor.
8. uMMO – uMMO is the best tool for rapid prototyping, especially for open-world MMOs. You can host a local server for testing and later host the actual live server yourself.
9. uMOBA – uMOBA is a simple and powerful project that contains all the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena core features.
10. Hexa Puzzle Block – Hexa Puzzle Block is a Tetris-style puzzle game, an addictive block puzzle. The goal is to drag pieces to the board and fill up all grids. It comes with 4 difficulties ranging from Beginner to Expert and there are 240 levels in total.
11. Jelly Garden Match 3 Complete Project – This complete match-3 tool is one of the first complete match-3 projects on Unity Asset Store, which has stood the test of time.
12. iRDS – Intelligent Race Driver System – iRDS is a Race Game Toolkit that would help you to develop your Racing Games. It includes an AI system to compete with human players and its own Car physics.
13. Adventure Creator – This lets you make traditional 2D, 2.5D, and 3D adventure games – those that emphasize storytelling, exploration, and puzzles – such as Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead.
14. Trivia Quiz Game Template – Trivia Quiz Game is a full Unity template that gives you a quick and easy way to create a trivia game, along with a timer, lives, varying bonuses, and some nice audio-visual feedback.
15. 2D+2.5D Platformer Corgi Engine – It’s built around a tight (nonphysics-based controls) character controller that will give your game the best possible experience. It’s very fast and works on desktop, mobile, and everywhere you want.
16. 2D+3D Infinite Runner Engine – The Infinite Runner Engine is a highly customizable, optimized, and easy-to-use solution that will provide you with everything you need to create your very own endless game.

Must-Have Assets

1. UBER – Standard Shader Ultra – A shader tool that supports various Parallax techniques (full Z-Write!), tessellation variants, refraction with chromatic aberration, translucency (based on DICE’s model), dynamic weather (snow/rain), tri-planar selective (fast approach), vertex blend painting (2 layers mode), well sorted out and clean interface, fully configurable vertex color usage, presets functionality
2. Amplify Shader Editor – The asset is a node-based shader creation tool that provides a familiar and consistent development environment that seamlessly blends with Unity’s UI conventions and Shader use.
3. ProBuilder – ProBuilder is a unique hybrid of 3D modeling and level design tools, optimized for building simple geometry but capable of detailed editing and UV unwrapping too.
4. UModeler – With UModeler, you can craft a static mesh asset as well as a prototype at a game level without any other external DCC tools.
5. Octave3D-Level Design – Octave3D is a collection of prefab snap and paint tools, seamlessly integrated into a single Level Design package to allow developers to make levels and maps at ease.
6. Gaia – GAIA 2 is an all-in-one terrain and scene generation system which also automates the setup of your render pipeline, character, sounds, water, skies, post fx, and lighting,
7. Surforge – Surforge is a modeling toolset, kitbash library, map render, and material composer.
8. Archimatix Pro – Archimatix is shipped with many game-ready example models featuring interactive handles that let you manipulate forms in real-time, which helps you quickly create mutable props and rich, variable environments
9. Final IK – This asset is the go-to Inverse Kinematics solution for Unity. It is fully compatible with PuppetMaster.
10. Playmaker – Playmaker is a visual script editor for Unity with visual state machines. They are intuitive and powerful for beginners and pros.
11. Bolt – Bolt brings complete visual scripting to Unity, empowering artists, designers, and programmers to create gameplay mechanics and interactive systems without writing a single line of code.
12. Core GameKit – Save time making games with this kit! It covers most of your bases with full pooling & combat systems, pickup support (for coins/health packs, etc.), Player (and enemy) stat modification, enemy wave set up, and level design tools with all the options you need! 
13. Easy Save – This package makes saving & loading in the game easier.
14. A* Pathfinding Project Pro – This is the only asset you need to create pathfinding mechanics in your game. It supports grid, navmesh, point, and hexagonal graphs.
15. Odin – Inspector and Serializer – Odin puts your Unity workflow on steroids, making it easy to build powerful and advanced user-friendly editors for you and your entire team.
16. Ultimate VFX – This package consists of a massive collection of unique Shuriken particle system prefabs with varying levels of layered complexity to create amazing visual effects.
17. iOS Project Builder for Windows – With this asset, you no longer need to switch to your Mac and fire up Xcode to build your games for iOS. However, you need to build your project on Mac once to get some XCode files and the provisioning profiles.

Model Assets

18. SURIYUN SD RPG Packs – SURIYUN offers 3D character models with different classes and jobs. They have a lot of monsters with animation as well.
19. Fantasy Customizable Pack – You can use this package to create many unique characters with over 1000+ pieces. 
20. Mech Constructor – The pack contains 63 prefabs of different modules, that will allow you to create numerous combinations of animated and ready-to-fight mechs and vehicles.

Blog Posts

Related posts:

Best Resources to Learn Laravel Best Resources to Learn jQuery Best Resources to Learn Unreal Engine Best Resources to Learn Java Best Resources to Learn Flutter & Dart Best Resources to Learn Git