Summary

In this chapter, you built a simple diorama, became more acquainted with the Unity editor, and learned about importing content into your project. We started by installing Unity via Unity Hub, creating a new VR project with the Universal Render Pipeline, and installing additional packages using Package Manager.

Then you learned some basics of the Unity editor, such as how to navigate between its many windows and how to use the Scene editing gizmos, including grid and snap. We built a simple diorama scene with a ground plane, a crate (cube), a red ball, and a photo backdrop. You then created a BobHead prefab and learned about prefab editing, overrides, variants, and nesting, which we'll be seeing more of in upcoming chapters.

You also looked at the value of, and potential problems with, importing assets and Unity asset packages, including ones from the Asset Store. We learned about the issues with importing legacy assets that are not necessarily compatible with the version of Unity and render pipeline that you are using and how to fix it. Lastly, you learned how Unity is growing support for round-trip geometry workflows with the FBX Exporter package.

When developing for VR, you need to set up Unity for the specific platform and device that you plan to target, as well as the SDK external to Unity that is used to build the executable project. In the next chapter, we'll set up your development system and Unity settings to build and run the project to play on your VR headset.