Your first Unity project

As Unity comes in two different forms—an Indie and Pro developer license, we'll stick to using features that the beginner, and therefore a likely Indie license holder, will have access to.

Having installed Unity, your first launch will present you with the Island Demo project. This is effectively a showcase project to demonstrate Unity's abilities and also to help new users pick apart certain features by observing and deconstructing the creations of its developers.

In this book, you will be starting from scratch, and you will need a new project to work with, so go to File | New Project. This will close the currently opened project and present you with the Project Wizard, a dialog window allowing you to select an existing project to open. You can also start a new one by selecting from several Asset Packages to start with.

To begin making your Unity project, choose a location to save your new project folder by either specifying a file path in the Project Directory field or by choosing the Set button and specifying a location in the dialog window that appears. I'm naming mine Project 1, but feel free to name yours as you please. Now select the box next to Standard Assets. This will give you a set of free assets provided by Unity Technologies to get started with. When you're happy with where you want to store your work, click on Create Project.