These are notes made from the Tutorial videos supplied on the Unity game engine website.
USER INTERFACE
There are five display windows in Unity:
Scene View – Shows objects and environments of your game.
Game View – A preview window where you can play the current build of your game.
Hierarchy – A list of all objects in the current Scene, organised by alphabet and parentage..
Project Panel – A list of all assets available in the current Project.
Inspector Panel – A context sensitive menu showing all options for current selected object.
Scene View
Q – Hand tool. L-Click to pan; R-Click to freelook; Alt+ L-Click to orbit; Alt + R-Click to zoom
W – Move
E – Rotate
R – Scale
F – Focus on selected object. Double clicking on Hierarchy name will also do this.
– There are toggles to switch on and off Lighting, Skyboxes and audio previews for the active camera.
– Gizmos (The visible icons for lights, sounds etc can be switched off. These will never appear in the actual game.)
Game View
– Edit > Project Settings > Player can be used to set the resolution depending on the target platform.
– Click Stats at the top right to view performance stats, and Gizmo to toggle icons on and off during play.
– Changes made in Play mode will be erased when play mode is switched off.
– Screen can be tinted to remind you when you are in play mode.
Hierarchy
– List of all objects in current scene (A-Z)
– Loose objects are positioned relative to the world. Parented objects are positioned relative to the parent. ie. Origin point 0,0,0 is the parents position. It will rotate and move relative to this rather than its own axis.
– Create Tab can be used to create lights, cameras or simple geometry to put in your scene.
– In searchbar t:Light will search for all objects which are light sources. t:Audio will search for all audio sources.
Project Panel
– For Creating/Importing assets.
– You will be editing or moving assets in the project folder, not in the actual operating system folder.
– A slider at the bottom can be used to magnify objects from lists into thumbnails.
– Asset Store can be searched from project search bar.
Inspector Panel
– A little Cog icon can be used to reset values to default.
– Objects can have tags, or be grouped into layers for easy sorting.
– Inspector can be locked to a particular Object (Padlock Icon) so you can work on one whilst selecting others.
– Objects can be disabled, and their components disabled by clicking on the checkbox beside their name.
– Disabled Objects are greyed out in the project panel.