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Build your first personal project

In this exercise, you will build your first personal project with Unity, a 3D art gallery that you will populate with artifacts. In the process, you will learn how to work with primitives, how to access the Unity Asset Store, and other foundational Unity skills.

Now that you have a sense for the Unity Hub and Editor, let’s start creating! In this personal project, you will fill a 3D gallery with artifacts from your life, work, and interests that you will then share on Discord. To do this, you will build canvases and stands for your art out of primitive shapes, apply art using materials, and add 3D models using the Unity Asset Store. These are essential Unity skills that you will build on later in this professional development, and that you will likely use with students in your course as well.

The final task of the personal project will be to fill out at least one room of your gallery, which should result in something like this:

If you’d like to go further with your gallery, you absolutely can! Here is an example of a gallery project that introduces new members of a school robotics team to the history and norms of the team.

Or, if you already have some Unity knowledge, you can go above and beyond! Check out the video below to see what your gallery project can become with some additional skills and practice.

As you engage in the project, think about what you want to display, and feel free to modify your project according to your experience level, comfort, and interests. For example, you could turn the gallery into any of the following: 

A space dedicated to a passion or interest of yours. 

A commemoration of a special trip or experience. 

Gallery project overview

First, you need to create a new 3D URP project to contain your gallery. To create a new project, follow these instructions:

In the Unity Hub, create a new 3D (URP) Project. 

Practice navigating through the gallery in the 

 view and take note of the different rooms. You can expand the gallery in the 

window to see all of its child GameObjects (such as the rooms).  

window with a camera attached — this allows you to walk around the gallery in 

button and try this now. You can use the arrow keys or WASD to move around.

Create a new project and explore the empty gallery 

You’ve probably noticed that the gallery is missing something important: art! To fix this,  you’ll need to create a blank canvas for your art using a plane primitive. You will then scale, rotate, and position the primitive so that it appears to hang on the wall. To add your first canvas to the gallery, follow these instructions:

 view gizmo to rotate, resize, and position the canvas on one of the gallery walls.

Rotate the plane 90 degrees on the x axis to get it upright, instead of parallel to the floor. 

Adjust the scale of the plane to be the size you want it. Setting the scale to 0.3 on each axis will get you to a reasonable size, but it is up to you! 

Adjust the position of the plane to sit flat against one of the walls of the gallery. This is a good opportunity to use the 

A couple things to remember as you start adding GameObjects to your scene. First, if you're having trouble locating your GameObject, click on the GameObject name in the 

. This will focus on the GameObject so you can see where it is in the scene. 

Second, sometimes the GameObject can enter the scene way off in space somewhere. If this is the case, select the GameObject in the 

component, select the three vertical dots in the upper right corner, and select 

. This will reset the coordinates of the GameObject to 0 on each axis (X,Y, and Z). From there you can move it to where it needs to be in your scene!  

Add a primitive canvas

A blank canvas is pretty boring, so let’s add some art or imagery using materials! To add an image to your canvas, follow these instructions: 

  Find a photo or other image to put on the canvas. 

This can be a family photo, your school logo, a famous image that you love - anything! 

Download the image to your computer if you haven’t already. 

  Drag and drop your image file into the 

Rename the material after the image you will apply to it (for example, FrancePhoto, SchoolLogo, etc.) 

With the new material selected, go to the 

Search for and select the image you imported from your computer - this will apply the image to the material you just created.

  Drag and drop the material onto the canvas. 

If the image looks stretched or distorted, scale the canvas to fit the approximate dimensions of the photo.

Apply a picture to the canvas (art or photo)

Next you’ll create a frame for your artwork. You’ll do this by applying another material to a primitive GameObject (another plane) and by using a parent/child relationship. To add a frame to your canvas, follow these instructions:

Duplicate the plane and make it a child GameObject of your canvas. 

Create a parent/child relationship by dragging and dropping the 

 component to resize Frame 1 so that its axes are as follows:  

. Doing so will ensure that it is slightly larger than the canvas. 

. Therefore, its Transform coordinates are not absolute coordinates, but instead are relative to that of the parent object (

). When you set the child GameObject to be at a scale of 1.1, it will be 1.1 times as large as the parent GameObject. 

Make sure the Frame is not blocking the canvas by using the Scene view Gizmo to move it back just slightly.

The frame currently has the same material as the canvas because it is a duplicate of the canvas. Don’t worry about this for now; we will correct it in the next step. 

Create a new material in the materials folder.

Name this material whatever color you want the 

window to match the color you chose to name the material. 

Drag and drop the material onto your frame.

Create a frame with a solid color

You now have one piece of art hanging in your gallery. Next, you’ll add to your gallery by creating an artifact of some kind. Before you create this artifact, however, you’ll need a plinth for it to stand on. To create a plinth, follow these instructions:. 

Build a parent/child relationship between two Cylinder primitives. 

GameObject that is a child GameObject of the first 

GameObject to flatten and widen it into a platform for your artwork.

Rename your parent GameObject “Plinth”.

Create a primitive plinth

Now that the plinth is finished, you need to find an artifact to go atop it. To do this, you’ll find and import a 3D model from the Unity Asset Store. The Asset Store is a rich marketplace (with thousands of free assets) to find GameObjects, materials, scripts, and more. To browse the Asset Store and find an artifact for your plinth, follow these instructions: 

In the top right, log in using your Unity ID.  

Search for an asset to go atop your plinth. 

Decide which asset to search for - this can be anything that fits the theme of your gallery. 

Make sure to search using the “free” and “3D” filters on the right.

Make sure the file size isn’t too large (that is, more than 50 MB). 

On the confirmation that pops up, select 

 window will open in the Editor, which shows all the files associated with your chosen asset. Select 

 window, adjust its scale to your liking, then drag and position it on top of your plinth.

Add a model from the Asset Store

Now you know how to work with primitives, group them into more complex GameObjects, find and import assets from the Asset Store, apply materials, and make adjustments using the 

As a next step, fill out one room of your gallery with additional art and artifacts of your choosing. Have fun with this! Once you are finished, you’ll share your work with your Class on Discord. 

 GameObject in the room you’re filling so you don’t have to walk to the room you’re working on every time you enter Play mode.

Fill out a room

If you’d like to push your skills even further, choose one of the optional challenges below to complete. 

Easy: Fill out additional rooms of the gallery, and experiment with different plinth structures.

Difficult: Add text next to the artwork describing what it is.

Expert: Add audio that is triggered by proximity.

More things to try

Make a roughly 30 second video walk-through of your gallery and submit it below to share your creation with other educators. In the video, be sure to include the following information:

What you found most interesting or rewarding about the process.

What was challenging and how you worked through the challenge(s).

After you submit your video below, send a link to your submission to your Class on discord to make sure they see your progress.

Unity Version 2022.3