The job seeker's journey with Unity

What is Unity?

What can Unity do?

The real-time production cycle

Roles and careers for real-time creators

How our established creators learned Unity

Develop your learning plan

Next steps on your journey

In this tutorial, you’ll learn about the Unity engine: why it’s sometimes referred to as a game engine, how it came to be, and how it has evolved over the years.

Overview

What is a game engine?

What do you do in a game engine?

What don’t you do in a game engine?

The Unity Story

Next steps

In this tutorial, you will learn about career and job opportunities in real-time production, ranging from entry- to director-level positions. You will learn about the disciplines of Art and Design as well as Programming. You will see what a typical workday looks like for someone in each of these fields. You will also learn what it looks like to work as a Unity generalist, never specializing exclusively in one particular discipline. 

Careers in Art and Design

Careers in Programming

Careers as a generalist

What will be your path?

Summary

By now, you might have some thoughts on potential projects or careers that would put your Unity skills to good use. You’re embarking on a journey of learning Unity, and along the way you want to challenge yourself — but not take on too much. In this tutorial, our established creators will talk about their early projects, the challenges they overcame, and the career paths they followed.  

Be realistic

Be patient

Stick with it

Join the communities

Explore game jams

In this tutorial, you will learn more about setting goals for learning Unity, To help you reach your goals, we invite you to create a learning action plan.

Inspiration for identifying your goal

Identify your goal

Complete your plan

Share your Plan 

Interested in learning more about jobs in real-time 3D? New to Unity, and wondering how to start a serious course of learning? Then you're in the right place.

In this course, you'll learn how to learn Unity the way professionals do. You'll also find out about some real-time 3D industry practices, roles, and responsibilities. Along the way, you'll hear from real-time 3D creators who have been at the beginning of their journey, just like you are — and have become professionals.

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Job seeker's guide to learning Unity

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Use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions. 

Level 1 Design process

Ellen Flaherty

Senior Learning Architect - Unity

Vid 3B-28_V2.mp4

Vid 6B-57_V3.mp4

Vid 3C-31_V2_1.mp4

Unity Essentials: Where could someone find communities of other Unity users?

Designed for post-secondary and K-12 educators at accredited academic institutions teaching Unity in the classroom, the Unity Educator plan provides you with free access to the same real-time 3D development tools used by professionals to support your students.

Included in this plan are Unity Pro, cloud-based collaboration, cloud build, free Unity assets, and much more!

Unity Essentials Pathway Facilitator Kit.zip

Unity Essentials Pathway Facilitator Kit (Google Drive)

Unity Educator Hub

The Unity Essentials Facilitator Kit includes everything you need to successfully bring this Pathway into your learning context including a syllabus, complete lesson plans, standards alignment, teacher preparation guide, and more. 

Games

Film

Automotive

Explain the importance of defining and understanding your audience

Investigate opportunities to deliver more value to users

Devise user personas

Apply the iterative design process

Practice putting the user first

Veronica Brown

In this live series you will get up and running with Unity and gain foundational knowledge preparing you to create your own interactive worlds. First, you will install Unity and explore the LEGO® Microgame. Then you will work on and customize a classic 2D platformer. Finally, you will modify and customize a Kart Racing game, all while mastering the basics of Unity.  Unity Essentials Live begins Monday, February 14, 2021 at 9 am PT and will take place Mondays and Thursdays through February 24, 2021.   

Unity Essentials Live: Session 4: February 24, 2022

Editor Essentials

thomas-winkley

Learn Unity

In this tutorial, our expert creators will describe their early experiences in learning and using Unity. The objective is to get you thinking about your own ideas and the next steps in your learning journey — then we’ll help you set the goals that will get you there. 

When beginning creators start their first project in Unity they often make a common mistake — they decide to create a project that’s both too big and too hard to make, and then they get frustrated and quit. Basically, they didn’t scope their project properly. To scope a project means to decide exactly what the project will include, and what it will not include, so that you will have a firm end point that does not move out of reach ("scope creep") while you are working. 

Most of our established creators have made this mistake themselves, and they have learned from it.

Achieving your goals won’t happen overnight. It will take commitment and perseverance. Let’s hear from some of our experts on how long it took them to feel comfortable with the Unity engine.

Inevitably there will be moments when you will be frustrated — you won’t know how to create a certain interaction in a project, or you’ll run out of ideas for fixing something that just isn’t working. Let’s hear how our established creators dealt with these moments.

When you’re feeling stuck or overwhelmed, remember to review and assess your mindset, and keep going!  

Discuss: Using the comment feature here on Learn, share some reasons why you want to stick with learning Unity! 

At Unity, community means that each of us has an investment in the best possible outcome for every other person we connect with. Every fellow Unity creator you meet wants you to be successful in any way that you define success. When you help others become successful in their own way, you are helping to build community.

Let’s hear from our established creators on why and how they use the community and the spaces and places they encourage you to check out.

Here are a few of the more well-known resources in the Unity creator community:

YouTube: There are many channels and videos dedicated to learning Unity. Some popular channels include Game Dev Unlocked (created by our established creator, David Wehle), iHeartGameDev, Code Monkey, Dani, and VR with Andrew.

Unity Discord: Discuss Unity in real time.

Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow: These open communities help creators in diverse fields to get their questions answered with a reputation award process. Stack Overflow is dedicated to programming. On Stack Exchange, check out questions tagged “unity” in the gamedev exchange.

Reddit: A network of communities based on people’s interests. Take a look at the Unity, Unity3D, and Unity2D communities just for starters.

Twitch: A live streaming platform for gamers to watch and chat.

No matter what type of projects or industries you are pursuing, game jams can help you learn Unity and expand your creator network.

Game jams are contests where individuals try to make a video game from scratch. Game jams usually have a time constraint such as a weekend. Some are organized for individuals while in others you can participate as a team. If your goal is to create a game, then attending a game jam — in person or virtually — is something to consider.

Learn more in Get started with game jams. 

In this tutorial, you learned what it takes to learn Unity. You heard some advice for keeping your expectations realistic and for those times when you might feel overwhelmed. Next, we’re going to help you set specific goals in a Learning Action Plan to help keep you focused and on track. Then you’ll have what you need to become a Unity creator.

How our established creators learned Unity

1. Overview

2. Be realistic

3. Be patient

4. Stick with it

5. Join the communities

6. Explore game jams

7. Next steps

Complete this tutorial