Get started with lighting

Get started with lighting in Unity

Configure the Directional Light and skybox

Add light sources to your scene

Configure shadows in your scene

Bake a lightmap for your scene

Improve your lighting with Light Probes

Examine and complete the indoor scene

Refine and troubleshoot the indoor scene

Improve reflections in your scene

Showcase your work with lighting

Challenge: Complete a cinematic lighting study

Apply lighting to your guided project

Creative Core: Lighting quiz

Discover the fundamental principles of lighting for real-time experiences, and gain practice lighting indoor and outdoor scenes in the Unity Editor.

Whether you’re exploring the architectural design of your new house, sneaking through a haunted castle in a stealth game, or immersing yourself in the world of a cinematic animation, good lighting takes a real-time experience to the next level. From the basics of illuminating a space to telling evocative stories through your design: lighting will help you get there.

In this mission, you will light an indoor and outdoor space in the Unity Editor and learn about the fundamental principles of lighting for Unity experiences along the way. You’ll finish by applying what you’ve learned to complete your own lighting study.

By the time you complete this learning experience, you’ll be able to:

Implement appropriate lighting in a scene in a manner that will simulate the real-world behavior of light

Decide the appropriate lighting system in order to achieve common outcomes in a Universal Render Pipeline (URP) project

Configure light sources and shadows in order to functionally light a scene

Configure ambient (diffuse environmental) lighting in order to convey mood or enhance realism

Generate a lightmap in order to implement baked lighting in a scene

Configure Light Probes in order to increase the realism of baked lighting

Configure Reflection Probes in order to achieve accurate reflections

Troubleshoot common lighting errors in order to appropriately light a scene

Lighting

Creative Core

The Unity Creative Core Pathway 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.

This free learning path will teach you all the core elements you need to bring your imagination to life with Unity. Once you’ve completed Unity Essentials as an introduction to the fundamentals of Unity Editor, take this pathway to learn VFX, Lighting, Animation, Audio, UI and other creative skills, no programming required.

Creative Core Pathway - Master Unity 3D Art, Design & Animation | Unity Learn

Ready for more? Level up your core understanding of Unity with the creative aspects of the engine.

Creative Core is your next step towards becoming a Unity creator. This free learning path will teach you all the core elements you need to bring your imagination to life with Unity. Once you’ve completed Unity Essentials as an introduction to the fundamentals of Unity Editor, take this pathway to learn VFX, Lighting, Animation, Audio, UI and other creative skills, no programming required.

 assets to craft dynamic environments, enhance character movements from basic to advanced, and create stunning visual effects that captivate your audience.

Welcome to the Creative Core Pathway

Meet the Creators

Select your guided project

Get started on your guided project

Copyright for creators

Get started with Unity documentation

Develop your critical evaluation skills

Guided project setup checkpoint

Start here to learn about the topics covered, the activities required, and the skills you will gain in the Creative Core pathway.

This mission is your first step on the Creative Core pathway. Start here to learn about the topics covered, the activities required, and the skills you will gain along the way.

Learn about the topics covered in Creative Core.

Select a guided project in which to apply your new skills.

Create a new project in Unity, and make some technical decisions about that project.

Learn how to use other people’s works in your projects responsibly.

Tour Unity’s technical documentation as another resource for your learning.

Conduct critical evaluation in decision making for creative projects.

Introduction to Creative Core

Get started with shaders and materials

Explore meshes and rendering

Explore shaders

Manage materials in a project

Simulate solid surfaces

Map materials with textures

Create translucent and transparent effects

Add physical texture with bump mapping

Refine surfaces with more texture maps

Get started with Shader Graph

Challenge: Create your still life composition

Apply materials and shaders to your guided project

Creative Core: Shaders and materials quiz

Learn how to use shaders and materials to define how 3D objects look: their colors, reflectivity, and physical texture. 

Shaders and materials let you define how your 3D objects look: their colors, reflectivity, and physical texture. With shaders and materials, you can bring realism into your projects or express your own artistic style. 

In this mission, you will explore concepts of light and reflection, including common terms that many 3D artists use every day. You’ll apply these concepts to create your own materials and shaders that simulate real-world objects — and even some other-worldly objects. You’ll complete this mission by creating a still life composition in which you can demonstrate a variety of shaders and materials. 

By the time you complete this learning experience, you will be able to:

Explain how surfaces in Unity are defined and rendered.

Select a type of shader for your own project.

Create materials for a common shader, using a wide variety of properties.

Create your own simple shader using Shader Graph.

Shaders and Materials

Get started with animation

Create your first 3D animations

Refine your animation

Control animation with an Animator

Import animation

Challenge: Bring the scene to life

Apply animation to your guided project

Creative Core: Animation Quiz

Learn to bring motion and the illusion of life to characters and environments by creating and configuring animations in the Unity editor.

The world around you is in constant motion. The same is true for digital worlds. A static environment tends to appear unfinished, or cold and unfeeling; animation is all about creating the illusion of life.

In this mission, you will learn how to create animations in the Unity editor and how to configure animations imported from an external program. You’ll apply these concepts to add animation to objects and characters in your scenes, and even control when the animation gets played.

By the end of this mission, you’ll be able to:

Describe the relationship between different animation components

Create simple keyframed 3D animation sequences

Describe key components of an animator controller

Configure Animation Clips imported from digital content creation (DCC) software or the Asset Store for use in a project

Configure a humanoid rig for use with the Humanoid Animation system

Animation

Get started with VFX

Play around with a Particle System

Create an environmental Particle System

Create a burst particle

Experiment with VFX Graph

Challenge: Add some magic to your scene

Apply VFX to your guided project

Creative Core: VFX Quiz

Learn to create your own visual effects - simulated motion effects added to enhance a scene - using Unity's Particle System and VFX Graph.

VFX are simulated motion effects added to enhance a scene, ranging from a subtle splash of water to a massive fiery explosion.

In this mission, you will learn to create your own visual effects, including fire, weather effects, and a puff of smoke. 

Decide whether to use Unity's Particle Systems or VFX Graph in order to produce an effect in your scene.

Produce environmental and burst effects by configuring Unity's Particle System object.

Get started with cameras

Select your camera projection type

Control what your camera sees

Explore camera views

Explore camera shot types

Challenge: Recreate the scene

Creative Core: Camera Quiz

Explore the different camera types common to interactive experiences while recreating scenes from popular media.

Cameras are your eyes into an interactive experience. They can be fully dynamic, fixed, or tied to a character. In this mission, you’ll explore the different camera types common to interactive experiences. You’ll also learn some basic camera shot terminology and practice recreating iconic scenes from popular media.

Decide which Camera setup to use, given a project’s requirements

Configure a single Unity Camera in a 2D or 3D scene

Cameras

Get started with post-processing

Create your own post-processing profile

Challenge: Create a local volume

Apply post-processing to your guided project

Creative Core: Post-processing Quiz

Learn how to use post-processing - tools and filters that can enhance the visual presentation of a scene - to achieve a particular look and feel in a real-time project.

Post-processing is just like applying filters to a photo you take with your phone. This can make your scene look more beautiful and interesting. In this mission, you will use post-processing to achieve a particular look and feel in a scene.

Evaluate whether post-processing is an appropriate tool for a given goal.

Implement a particular visual style in a project by configuring a post-processing profile.

Post-processing

Get started with audio

Create dynamic sound effects

Create 3D sound effects

Add special effects to existing audio

Accessibility considerations for audio

Challenge: Your own soundscape

Apply audio to your guided project

Creative Core: Audio Quiz

Learn how to implement audio in Unity by creating a soundscape for a scene containing ambient audio effects, event-triggered sounds, and special sound effects.

Audio is one of the most overlooked aspects of interactive development, but it’s also one of the first things that can disrupt a user’s immersion if it’s done poorly — or worse, completely forgotten about. 

In this mission, you will learn how to implement audio effects in Unity by creating a soundscape for an outdoor scene. You’ll create ambient audio effects, trigger sounds with events, and modify sounds with special effects.

Produce customized results by correctly configuring audio in a scene

Create interactive experiences by synthesizing audio experience design principles

Solve accessibility challenges in an audio design

Audio

Get started with user interfaces

Add a title to your scene

Manage screen size and anchors

Create a menu background with images

Add basic button functionality

Add toggles and sliders

Challenge: Make a worldspace UI

Apply UI to your guided project

Creative Core: UI quiz

Learn to create visual and interactive user interface components – such as images, text, buttons, and toggles – while designing your own title screen and settings menu.

A user interface is what allows a user to interact – or interface – with an application. A UI often includes images, text, buttons, toggles, sliders, or dropdowns. In this mission, you will design your own title screen and functional settings menu. 

Decide on a user interface approach for a project.

Create and configure visual UI components in a manner that will respond appropriately to different screen sizes and resolutions.

Create and configure interactive UI components such as buttons, toggles, and sliders, in order to implement simple UI functionality.

Get started with prototyping

Choose a prototype idea

Plan and scope your prototype

Create your greybox prototype

Build on your basic prototype

Enhance your prototype with ProBuilder

Enhance your prototype with Terrain

Test your prototype

 Challenge: Complete your independent project

Plan your next steps

Entry-level freelancing for creators

Creative Core: Prototyping quiz

Submit your independent or guided project

Learn about some different approaches to prototyping and explore an example we’ve created as you work on your own prototype.

Before you get caught up in developing your dream project, it’s important to start a little smaller and create a prototype. Prototyping gives you the opportunity to work out what should really be at the heart of the real-time experience you want to make and to test out different approaches to achieve that.

In this mission, you’ll learn about some different approaches to prototyping and explore an example we’ve created as you work on your own prototype. This learning experience is about process rather than a set outcome; if you’re new to prototyping, we hope you’ll find something useful no matter what you want to create!

Determine the appropriate prototyping approach for a specific project

Decide the critical project features required in order to create a functional prototype

Integrate external assets and tools into your prototype

Refine a prototype environment using ProBuilder and Terrain

Prototyping

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Overview

How does reflection work in Unity?

How do Reflection Probes work?

Place and configure a Reflection Probe

Test the Reflection Probe

Why take this approach to reflection?

Explore: Establish a mysterious atmosphere in the gallery

Next steps

You’ve almost completed your work on the indoor scene, but there’s a little more to do. Before you finish the indoor scene, you need to make the scene more realistic by addressing issues with reflection that are currently present.

By the end of this tutorial, you'll be able to:

Explain how Reflection Probes improve the accuracy of reflections in a scene.

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!

Creative Core Pathway Facilitator Kit.zip

Creative Core Pathway Facilitator Kit (Google Drive)

Unity Educator Hub

The Unity Creative Core Pathway 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

Creative Core: Lighting

You might have noticed that the apple on the corner plinth is made of a shiny, reflective material, but the reflections being shown on it are currently very strange. It is reflecting the two colored Spot Lights positioned over it in the gallery, but it is also reflecting the skybox outside of the indoor space. That’s definitely not right! 

Before you address this issue, you need to learn a little about how reflection works in Unity.

In games and similar interactive real-time experiences, reflection mapping is an approach that simulates reflections by assuming that all reflective objects in a scene can see or receive (and so reflect) the same surroundings.  This can work well in a simple open space like your outdoor scene. It works less well for indoor scenes or in other spaces with a more complex environment (where there are increased variables that could impact the reflections).

Improve reflections in your scene

1. Overview

2. How does reflection work in Unity?

3. How do Reflection Probes work?

4. Place and configure a Reflection Probe

5. Test the Reflection Probe

6. Why take this approach to reflection?

7. Explore: Establish a mysterious atmosphere in the gallery

8. Next steps

Complete this tutorial