Key Information

Tutors:  Fred Tovey-Ansell (ESE), Simon Pocock (IETL)
Course Level: Level 2
Course Credit: 1 credit
Class Duration: 3 x 2 hours in-person plus 3 x 2 hours independent study

Prerequisites: 

  • Basic experience with a programming language, including conceptual understanding of if statements, variables, and functions. The Graduate School provides courses which provides this grounding in a number of languages.
  • A laptop with Unity installed. Minimum hardware requirements may be found here

Course Resources

Unity is an industry standard game development tool that facilitates the creation of virtual environments with minimal prior programming experience. Unity can be used to develop 3D simulations, complex data visualisations, gamified learning applications, and other academically oriented content.

Unity development requires a base level of experience with the engine’s features and user interface, as well as an awareness of Unity’s scripting API, which will be provided by this course.

This course will provide you with the prerequisite knowledge of Unity required for the Graduate school course Introduction to ViRSE for Virtual Reality which will enable you to participate in VR teaching at Imperial and to develop VR experiences and tools in Unity.

Syllabus

  • Setting up a new 3D Unity project
  • Navigating and understanding the Unity editor / User Interface, using Unity’s basic scene tools (moving, rotating, scaling objects etc)
  • Understand creation of Unity’s geometric primitives (cubes, spheres, etc)
  • Use the asset store to import assets (3d models, textures, etc) and prefabs
  • Understanding of Unity’s component systems (Rigidbody, Collider, Material, etc)
  • Basic understanding of Unity’s physics system
  • Basic understanding of Unity’s scripting API (Monobehaviour functions such as Start and Update)
  • Basic understanding of reading player input
  • Basic understanding of UI (writing to text elements)
  • Basic knowledge of linking scripts together through the Unity Inspector
  • Creating and exporting a simple game using the above components
  • Playtesting games with other participants of the course

This course combines independent study, following videos and other training material produced by the course tutors, and three scheduled in-person workshops. Completion of the independent study sections should take no more than two hours per week, in addition to some setup time before the start of the course. Each chunk of independent study will be followed by an in-person workshop, which will be two hours each. These will reinforce the material learned during independent study, introduce more advanced concepts, provide an opportunity to playtest your created games with other participants of the course, and enable the tutors to give direct, in-person support.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this workshop you will be better able to:

  • State the utility of game engines for development of 3D applications
  • Classify the different components provided by Unity and explain their relationships
  • Modify simple prebuilt code snippets to achieve basic functionality
  • Assemble prebuilt assets to create simple 3D interactive Unity environments


Dates & Booking Information

  • Wednesday 29 January 2025 (Part 1), Wednesday 05 February 2025 (Part 2) & Wednesday 12 February 2025 (Part 3), 15:00-17:00, South Kensington Campus (In-Person Teaching)

To book your place, please follow the booking process advertised on the main programme page

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