Installation and Initial Setup of Unity
Unity is a powerful development tool. But to use it, you first have to install and set it up to fit your needs.
Installation
First you will need to get Unity. Assuming that you have not done so, go to unity.com, click on Get Started and choose the Individual tab and then the Personal option for download.
If you’re a first-timer or new to this application, choose your path to adventure, accept the terms and download Unity Hub. With the hub you can install any of the current or previous releases of Unity.
For this tutorial I’ll be choosing the latest version. You can choose whatever will suit your needs. But, if you’re following a tutorial it may require a specific version of Unity to operate as intended. You can have multiple versions of Unity installed at once, so this is not a problem. Just click Add and then choose the version that you wish to install.
You can also choose what types of build engines you’ll be using. In my example, support for Android, Windows, and Web are selected and will be installed with this version.
You can monitor the install using the progress bar at the top of the version you are installing.
Setup
Now to get things into a state that is useful to you. Unity starts out with a default panel layout….boorrrrring…
This, will, just, not do. So, you rearrange things. You can grab any tab and move it to another location, much in the same way as flyouts and tool bars can be arranged in Adobe products. You can drag window boundaries, change tab orders, etc.
But, ultimately, I recommend this layout as your final form…
The top row, from left to right, is the scene view, hierarchy, and the inspector. The bottom row is the game view, project panel, and the consol. It provides you a view of both your scene and game views, making it possible to see, in real time, the results of any changes that you make in your scene view. You can also clearly see the content of your Hierarchy and Project panels as well as components within the Inspector and any messages that the Console might throw at you while testing in Game mode. As I said, though, this is a recommendation. You can set it up for whatever works best for you. Unity is versatile in this respect and can be molded to your needs.
