Unity 4.x Cookbook

by Matt Smith

In Detail Covering the latest version (Unity 4) of this established game engine, the Unity 4.x Cookbook explores a wide range of 3D, animation, multimedia, and scripting game features. The power of Unity 4 is demonstrated through the 10 chapters covering many of this game engine’s features. "Unity 4.x Cookbook" helps you learn how to make the most of the powerful but easy-to-use Unity 4 game engine. Every Unity game developer is different. Some come from a multimedia background, some are new to game development, and some are transferring from other engines. Whatever your background, with the breadth and depth of topics covered you should find new features and techniques to enhance your next game. This book offers detailed, easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipes helping you master a wide range of Unity game features. Chapters are provided focusing on the basics; audio, cameras, images, materials and animations, GUIs, external resources and devices, directional and artificial intelligence character control, and performance optimization. "Unity 4.x Cookbook" provides a collection of ideas and resources that should offer new and useful techniques for every Unity game developer to enhance their next game. Approach Cookbook. Who this book is for From beginners to advanced users, from artists to coders, this book is for you and everyone in your team! This book is for anyone who wants to explore a wide range of Unity scripting and multimedia features and to find ready to use solutions to many game features. Programmers can explore multimedia features, and multimedia developers can try their hand at scripting.

Genres: Programming

Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

About the author

A product of the American midwest, Matt grew up with interests in gaming, computer hardware and writing. After some trial and error, he discovered how to combine these three into a career, and now works as a full time freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon.

Matt has written for numerous publications in the past, including gaming sites such as Thunderbolt, The Escapist and Games Radar. Today he contributes to MakeUseOf as a staff writer, news writer and the assistant editor of MakeUseOf Answers. His love for hardware shows itself in his work for PC Perspective and Digital Trends, where he is responsible for reviewing laptops, tablets and smartphones. If you need buying advice about mobile hardware, he’s your guy.

Besides these professional interests, Matt runs two blogs. One is SmidgenPC, a blog about mobile hardware that he uses to channel his theories, advice and rants. The other is SWTOR Class Guides, which provides tips and advice centered on the character classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Reviews

[Steve Knapper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The unity cookbook is a very comprehensive ebook, I am half way through and there is a lot of detailed sections, they have clear images of the steps involved to achieve what is described.
I would say that some of the content is at more of an intermediate level than a complete beginner (which I am) so I would have preferred to have had a complete game linking all of the sections together.
There are some very clever snippets of code that will be useful to use in my forthcoming projects.

The ebook format is very good allowing me to have the code open on my kindle alongside my laptop.

http://bit.ly/19ky4uq

[Russ Painter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good tips. But PSD and TGA files were used where PNG would have been a better choice. Apparently Photoshop needs a plugin to save alpha channels properly.

The examples did build on previous ones somewhat, which is good for beginners. My 11 year old son is working through the examples, and the pace is good for him.

[Xianshun Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally worth my money to purchase the book, The book is relatively easy to understand and contains a lots of visual clues on the instructions which makes the practice very intuitive as some instructions which can a bit complex for a beginner of Unity game engine. I particularly like the introduction on the animator and the mecanim engine and the camera tutorials. The book serves well for the beginners who want to learn about Unity engine.

[Mandar Kulkarni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read this book - http://bit.ly/19ky4uq and I must say, it is really worth reading. It does have over 100 recipes to spice up your games. I am working on Unity3D for more than an year now and I really wish I had this book when I started. But for all those who are willing to kick start Unity development, this is the resource you are looking for.
The book delivers most of the things that Unity 4.x offers, basic and important recipes and some extra perks like working with Kinect inside Unity and Mocap using Kinect, which was unexpected from the book.
I really liked the optimization tricks and would really try them in my games. In the end, the book also delivers stereography using unity3D and polarized projections which adds value to it. The book has well written tips and tricks which makes it neat and interesting.

Good work Matt Smith.