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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Meet the creators

First encounters with Unity

Why learn Unity?

What do you want to create? 

What do you need in order to learn Unity?

Unity’s Learning Ecosystem

Create and manage Unity versions and projects in the Hub.

Creating and Managing Unity projects

NealEdu

Product Manager at Unity

Take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in their learning goals and using that knowledge to prepare for work.

Level 1 Job Preparation

Ellen Flaherty

Senior Learning Architect - Unity

Vid 1A-3_V3_Sep2021.mp4

U_Essentials_Vid1_Overview_Sep2021.mp4

Vid 3A-32_V2_WhyUnity.mp4

Vid 3A-33_V2_Flexible.mp4

Vid 6D-60_V2_Balance.mp4

Vid 2L-23_V3_Mindset.mp4

Vid 2B-8_V2_Skills.mp4

In this tutorial, you’ll hear from some of the established Unity creators who will guide you through this entire journey. You’ll see and hear how various professionals are using Unity today. They started at the beginning — just like you are doing now.

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. 

Evaluate the computer against Unity’s minimum system requirements.

Locate and download the Unity setup wizard from the Unity website.

Identify and select the appropriate Unity plan.

Install the Unity Hub and the latest LTS version of Unity using the provided wizards.

Launch the Unity Editor from the Unity Hub.

1.1 Evaluate the computer against Unity’s minimum system requirements.

1.2 Locate and download the Unity setup wizard from the Unity website.

1.3 Identify and select the appropriate Unity plan.

1.4 Install the Unity Hub and the latest LTS version of Unity using the provided wizards.

1.5 Create a Unity ID.

1.6 Launch the Unity Editor from the Unity Hub.

Install the Unity Editor for the first time

Identify the main challenges and opportunities on a Unity learning journey

Identify the key elements of the Unity Learn ecosystem, and their purpose

Create a personal learning action plan

Use the Unity Learn platform

Plan your Unity learning journey by setting goals

Start learning

Unity for Artists Curricular Framework Resources

AI, ML Curricular Framework Resources 

Meet some of Unity's creators — these are a few of the established professional Unity users who will share their experiences with you throughout this course.

Creators come to use Unity in their work in a wide variety of ways. To illustrate this point, we met with several established creators to learn about their journeys discovering and learning Unity, and how it makes an impact on their work today.

Watch the video below to learn more about our established creators, what they do in their day-to-day work, and how they came to use Unity.

Unity is a real-time engine that empowers you to turn your vision into a fully interactive experience. It has many powerful features — which can be both inspiring and daunting to a new user.  

In the videos that follow, you’ll hear our established creators talk about the joys and frustrations of learning Unity, and why it’s worth it! 

Unity is also a very flexible tool and this makes it very appealing to creators. Let’s here about how this flexibility helps our creators:  

Now that you’ve heard from our established creators, think about your own reasons for learning Unity. For example, What do you think Unity will allow you to do that you couldn’t do before? What do you think will be your favorite way to express yourself in Unity? Think of more questions that will help you figure out what you want to do with Unity.  

Please add your thoughts in the comments, and read the reasons others have for learning Unity. Identifying and discussing your reasons will help you choose the best pathway for learning it.

There are so many things to do in Unity that it might be hard to know where to start. You might know some of the things you want to create, or a job role you want to get. And it’s okay if you don’t know yet — but we hope you’re thinking about it. 

Let’s hear from some of our established creators on how they decided what to create, while being realistic about their skills and resources.

The key is to start simple, start with the basics, and let yourself be motivated by that special idea — the idea that will keep driving you forward to learn more.

Learning how to create real-time experiences in Unity can feel like it has a steep technical learning curve, so let’s take a few minutes to consider the skills you actually need to be ready to learn Unity.  

When it comes to learning Unity, we believe creators need the right mindset. A mindset can be described as those beliefs that guide you when you are solving problems or handling situations. Our established creators share their recommendations for the mindsets to bring to learning Unity. 

Think about the mindsets our established creators mentioned: 

Which of these mindsets do you think you have already? Which ones do you think you need to work on? Consider these mindsets throughout your creative journey, and how you might cultivate the mindsets that have helped established creators get to where they are now! 

Prerequisite skills for success with Unity

Your mindset is one thing, but what about hard skills that help creators to succeed? We asked our established creators what skills they needed before learning Unity, and we were a little surprised at what they said. 

Although one or two of our established creators mention skills in art or programming, the consensus is that all you need is that positive mindset of curiosity, patience, problem-solving, and belief that you can succeed! In fact, many Unity creators have said, “If I can learn Unity, anyone can!” 

There are many ways and places to learn. We think of all of these as the Unity Learning Ecosystem.

 In addition to the Unity Learn platform that you're using now, the Unity Learning Ecosystem includes: 

Unity Play: A place to share your Unity creations.

Unity Discussions: Here you can ask questions and search answers.

Unity Documentation: The Unity User Manual and Unity Scripting API Reference helps you learn how to use the Unity Editor and its associated services.

Unity Asset Store: A marketplace for buying or downloading assets, or sharing and selling what you create.

Unity Blog: Provides news, announcements and a glimpse inside Unity Technologies. 

Unity YouTube Channel: The official YouTube channel with videos to learn more about Unity, tutorials, demos, and more. 

A collection of thumbnails representing elements of the Unity Learning Ecosystem: Learn, Play, Asset Store, Documentation, Discussions, Blog, and YouTube.

We hope you’re feeling inspired and motivated to embark on a learning journey with Unity. In the next tutorials, you'll learn about the real-time 3D industry, professional practices, and how to build job skills.

The job seeker's journey with Unity

1. Meet the creators

2. First encounters with Unity

3. Why learn Unity?

4. What do you want to create?

5. What do you need in order to learn Unity?

6. Unity’s Learning Ecosystem

7. Next steps

Complete this tutorial