Unity Cookbook

By : Matt Smith, Shaun Ferns, Sinéad Murphy

4.7 (27)

Buy this Book

Unity Cookbook

4.7 (27)

By: Matt Smith, Shaun Ferns, Sinéad Murphy

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Unleash your game development potential with Unity Cookbook, 5th Edition, designed to equip you with the skills and knowledge needed to excel in Unity game development. With over 160 expertly crafted recipes empowering you to pioneer VR and AR experiences, excel in mobile game development, and become a master of audio techniques. In this latest edition, we've meticulously curated a collection of recipes that reflect the latest advancements in Unity 2023, ensuring you stay at the forefront of game development. You'll discover dedicated recipes for First/Third Person (Core) templates, create engaging mobile games, delve into Virtual and Augmented Reality, and go further with audio by exploring advanced techniques. Additionally, the book has been fully updated to incorporate the new input system and TextMeshPro, essential elements for modern game development. From exploring C# scripting to crafting stylish UIs, creating stunning visual effects, and understanding shader development through Shader Graph, every chapter is designed to take you closer to your goal of becoming a proficient Unity developer. So, whether you're aiming to develop the next hit game, enhance your portfolio, or simply have fun building games, this book will be your trusted companion on your journey to Unity proficiency.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

Technical requirements to get the most out of this book

Get in touch

Displaying Data with Core UI Elements

Creating a Font Asset file for use with TextMeshPro

Displaying a “Hello World” UI text message

Displaying a digital clock

Displaying a digital countdown timer

Creating a message that fades away

Displaying an image

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Free Chapter

Responding to User Events for Interactive UIs

Creating a UI Button to reveal an image

Creating a UI Button to move between scenes

Animating UI Button properties on mouseover

Organizing image panels and changing panel depths via buttons

Displaying the value of an interactive UI Slider

Displaying a countdown timer graphically with a UI Slider

Setting custom mouse cursors for 2D and 3D GameObjects

Setting custom mouse cursors for UI controls

Interactive text entry with Input Field

Detecting interactions with a single Toggle UI component

Creating related radio buttons using UI Toggles

Creating text UI Dropdown menus

Creating image icon UI Dropdown menus

Displaying a radar to indicate the relative locations of objects

Further reading

Inventory and Advanced UIs

Creating a simple 2D mini-game – SpaceGirl

Displaying single object pickups with carrying and not-carrying text

Displaying single-object pickups with carrying and not-carrying icons

Displaying multiple pickups of the same object with multiple status icons

Using panels to visually outline the inventory UI area and individual items

Creating a C# inventory slot UI to display scripted components

Displaying multiple pickups of different objects as a list of text via a dynamic List<> of scripted PickUp objects

Displaying multiple pickups of different objects as text totals via a dynamic Dictionary<> of PickUp objects and enum pickup types

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Playing and Manipulating Sounds

Setting up the Third Person Character Controller project

Playing sound when a scene begins

Removing redundant AudioListener components

Enabling and customizing 3D sound effects

Adding effects with Audio Reverb Zones

Playing different one-off sound effects with a single AudioSource component

Playing and controlling different sounds, each with its own AudioSource component

Creating just-in-time AudioSource components at runtime through C# scripting

A button to play a sound with no scripting

Preventing an audio clip from restarting if it is already playing

Waiting for the audio to finish playing before auto-destructing an object

Creating audio visualization from sample spectral data

Synchronizing simultaneous and sequential music to create a simple 140 bpm music-loop manager

Recording sound clips with the free Audacity application

Further reading

Textures, Materials, and 3D Objects

Creating a scene with 3D primitives and a texture

Creating material asset files and setting Albedo textures

Exporting Blender files as FBX for use in Unity

Importing FBX models into a Unity project

Highlighting GameObject materials on mouseover

Fading the transparency of a material

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Creating 3D Environments with Terrains

Creating and texture-painting terrains

Unity terrain tools and samples for powerful height-painting

Adding terrain holes

Adding trees and vegetation

Realistic water features for HDRP projects

Further reading

Creating 3D Geometry with ProBuilder

Getting started with ProBuilder

Transforming an object through scaling and coloring

Creating a house with ProBuilder

Exploring ProBuilder Boolean operations to add a window to our house

Organizing level geometry as empty GameObject children

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

2D Animation and Physics

Flipping a sprite horizontally – the DIY approach

Flipping a sprite horizontally – using Animator State chart and transitions

Animating body parts for character movement events

Creating a three-frame animation clip to make a platform continually animate

Making a platform start falling once stepped on using a Trigger to move the animation from one state to another

Creating animation clips from sprite sheet sequences

Creating a platform game with Tiles and Tilemaps

Using sprite placeholders to create a simple physics scene

Editing polygon Colliders for more realistic 2D physics

Creating an explosionForce method for 2D physics objects

Clipping via Sprite Masking

Further reading

Animated Characters

Unity’s Third Person Character Controller assets

Adding a Third Person Character Controller to a scene

Adding a clothing accessory pickup for a character

Swapping the Third Person Armature for a different character

Creating a 3D character with Autodesk Character Generator

Selecting and downloading a character from Mixamo

Selecting and downloading an animation clip from Mixamo

Creating an animated NPC in Unity using a character and animation clip

Using scripts to control 3D animations (old input system)

Using scripts to control 3D animations (new input system)

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Saving and Loading Data

Saving data between scenes using static properties

Saving data between scenes and games using PlayerPrefs

Reading data from a text file

Loading game data from a text file map

Writing data to a file

Logging player actions and game events to a file

Reading data from the web

Setting up a leaderboard using PHP and a database

Unity game communication with a web server leaderboard

Further reading

Controlling and Choosing Positions

Using a rectangle to constrain 2D Player object movement

Player control of a 3D GameObject (and limiting movement within a rectangle)

Choosing destinations – finding a random spawn point

Choosing destinations – finding the nearest spawn point

Choosing destinations – respawning to the most recently passed checkpoint

Moving objects by clicking on them

Firing projectiles in the direction of movement

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Navigation Meshes and Agents

NPC to travel to destination while avoiding obstacles

NPC to seek or flee from a moving object

Point-and-click move to object

Point-and-click move to tile

Point-and-click raycast with user-defined, higher-cost navigation areas

NPC NavMeshAgent to follow waypoints in sequence

Creating a movable NavMesh Obstacle

Joining several NavMeshes with a single NavMeshSurface

Non-horizontal NavMeshes with multiple NavMeshSurfaces and NavMeshLinks

Further reading

Cameras, Lighting, and Visual Effects

Creating the basic scene for this chapter

Working with a fixed Main Camera

Changing how much of the screen a Camera renders

Adding a top-down orthographic minimap Camera

Creating an in-game mirror using a RenderTexture to send Camera output to a Plane

Saving screenshots and RenderTextures to files

Using Cinemachine ClearShot to switch cameras to keep the player in shot

A Camera to always look at and follow the Third Person Controller

Adding film grain and vignette effects with URP postprocessing

Creating an HDRP project with an HDRI skybox

Creating and applying a cookie texture to a spotlight

Baking light from an emissive material onto other scene GameObjects

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Shader Graphs and Video Players

Playing videos with the Video Player API

Playing videos by manually adding a VideoPlayer component to a GameObject

Using scripting to control video playback on scene textures

Ensuring a movie is prepared before playing

Outputting video playback to a RenderTexture asset

Using scripting to play a sequence of videos back to back

Creating and using a simple shader

Creating a glow effect with Shader Graph

Toggling a Shader Graph color glow effect through C# code

Further reading

Particle Systems and Other Visual Effects

Exploring Unity’s Particle Pack and reusing samples for your own games

Creating a simple Particle Systems from scratch

Using Texture Sheets to simulate fire with a Particle System

Making particles collide with scene objects

Simulating an explosion

Using Invoke to delay the execution of an explosion

Using a Line Renderer to create a spinning laser trap

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Mobile Games and Applications

Setting up your system for Android mobile app development

Setting up your system for Apple iOS mobile app development

Deploying the Third Person Character Controller Starter project for an Android device

Deploying the Third Person Character Controller Starter project for an Apple device

Creating and deploying a mobile game with Unity’s Runner Game project template

Further reading

Augmented Reality (AR)

Exploring the Unity AR samples

Creating an AR project with the AR (Core) template

Adding the AR Foundation package and GameObjects to a 3D scene

Detecting and highlighting planes with AR Foundation

Creating an AR furniture previewer by detecting horizontal planes

Creating a floating 3D model over an image target

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

Virtual and Extended Reality (VR/XR)

Setting up the Oculus Quest 2 for Unity development

Creating and running a Unity project on a VR headset

Beginning with the XR Interaction Toolkit

Creating a 360-degree video VR project

Exploring and building the Desert WebXR demo project

Using GitHub Pages to publish your WebXR project for free

Creating a simple WebXR scene from scratch

Further reading

Advanced Topics – Gizmos, Automated Testing, and More

Using a gizmo to show the currently selected object in the Scene panel

Creating an Editor snap-to-grid drawn by a gizmo

Generating and running a default test script class

Making a simple unit test

Parameterizing tests with a DataProvider

Unit testing a simple health script class

Creating and executing a unit test in PlayMode

PlayMode testing a door animation

PlayMode and unit testing a player health bar with events, logging, and exceptions

Reporting Code Coverage testing

Running simple Python scripts inside Unity

Further reading

Learn more on Discord

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Unity Cookbook

By : Matt Smith, Shaun Ferns, Sinéad Murphy

Unity Cookbook

By: Matt Smith, Shaun Ferns, Sinéad Murphy

Overview of this book

Displaying Data with Core UI Elements

Unlock full access

Continue reading for free

Unity Cookbook

By : Matt Smith, Shaun Ferns, Sinéad Murphy

Unity Cookbook

By: Matt Smith, Shaun Ferns, Sinéad Murphy

Overview of this book

Displaying Data with Core UI Elements

Unlock full access

Continue reading for free

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