As a co-organizer for our local Unity User Group, one of my tasks is to find interesting subjects for our Monday Workshops each month. Sometimes, we meet someone who would love to speak. Other times, we need to make our own content for the meeting.

This coming Monday we have decided to do a hands-on workshop, especially for those who are new to Unity. So together with on of our programmers, we put together a science fiction scene, an alien planet.

We will use Unity Personal, which is a feature complete engine, unlike the old Unity Free. The only thing missing from Unity Personal are some add on services, most of which can be purchased a la carte. Of course, if one makes over $100k on their Unity related commercial products, then they will need to upgrade to a paid level. But until then, Unity Personal is great for learning and developing your first game.

Every asset in our alien world is free on the Unity asset store. While money will buy you more elaborate models, with the right lighting one can do amazing things even with free stuff. Asset store products make great models and tools for prototyping your world or in some cases, they can even make an entire game.

I will begin the presentation by showing the attendees how to build a terrain using real world data and showing them how I used a free tool to  texture the terrain and use Unity’s terrain brush system to add rocks to the landscape. We will then place models on the world, and discuss the importance of matching your art. We will create lighting, including reflections in the scene and add a dramatic skybox. Audio sources will be added to create atmosphere.

Ryan will then walk through adding a first person character to the scene. A weapon will be added and the attendees will learn how to add bullets/lights that fire at the enemies. They will also set up a UI for the health bar.

Next, he will show how to add a Navmesh Agent and Mob Controller. Once this is done, an Animator Controller can be added to the alien monsters.  A Navmesh will be added so the aliens can wander once they are spawned.  The attendees will learn how to set up the Spawner.

Finally, I will show everyone what a few inexpensive paid assets can add to the scene such as blowing sand and a few other extras.

We are hoping our participants will take these projects home and tweak them, adding their own flavor to the scene. I cannot wait to see what they create!

Hopefully, we can present this to a group of homeschooler teens/preteens in the future as well. Games are fun, but learning to make your own games can teach you so much, not only about coding but about design and art.

I will post back about the experience and maybe with a link to a video in the next post.

Laura