Install and Orient

By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Install Unity Hub and Unity 6.3 LTS with the modules this course needs, and say why the LTS number matters
• Create a Universal Render Pipeline project from the correct Hub template, and recognise one that got the wrong one
• Name every panel in the default layout, say what each is showing you, and restore the layout after you wreck it

The Hub is a version manager, not the engine

Unity ships as two separate programs. Unity Hub is a small launcher holding your licence, your installed editor versions, and your projects. The editor itself is the large one, several gigabytes per version, and you will have more than one installed before the course ends.

Every Unity project records the exact editor version that created it. Open a project in a newer editor and Unity upgrades it, rewriting scene and prefab files on disk as it goes. There is no downgrade. When four students in a group each open the same repo in a slightly different editor, the repo starts producing merge conflicts in files nobody edited. The Hub exists so you can pin a version and stay on it.

Get the Hub from unity.com/download, sign in with a Unity ID, and accept the Personal licence. Then open the Installs tab and press Install Editor.

Pick 6000.3. That is the version number Unity 6.3 LTS reports; the marketing name and the version string do not match, and the Hub shows you the number. LTS means long term support: 6.3 gets bug fixes through December 2027 and no new features. The tech stream releases after it get new features and new bugs, which is fine for a studio with a QA process and wrong for a class where a broken editor costs you a week.

In the module list that appears during install, tick these:

• Windows Build Support (IL2CPP) or Mac Build Support (IL2CPP), whichever is not your own platform. You already have yours.
• Web Build Support. Phase four publishes a Web build to itch.io, and adding the module later means a second multi-gigabyte download at the worst moment.

Skip the Visual Studio module. This course uses JetBrains Rider, free for students through the JetBrains education programme. Budget around 15 GB of disk for the editor plus modules.

Once a project exists you can check what created it without opening Unity:

cat ProjectSettings/ProjectVersion.txt

That prints an m_EditorVersion line such as 6000.3.11f1. When something behaves differently on your machine than on a classmate's, this is the first file to compare.

One project, the Universal 3D template

In the Projects tab, press New project. You get a list of templates, and the naming here trips up almost everyone, because the URP templates do not have "URP" in their names. The one you want is Universal 3D. The full URP set is:

• Universal 2D, URP configured with the 2D renderer
• Universal 3D, URP configured with the 3D renderer, the one this course uses
• Universal 3D sample, the same thing plus a large demo environment you do not need

"Universal" is the render pipeline. A template called 3D with no prefix is the Built-in Render Pipeline, which Unity deprecated in 6.5, and 3D HDRP is the high-end pipeline now in maintenance mode. Pick one and the project is committed: a URP project cannot go back to Built-in without redoing every material, and materials authored for the wrong pipeline render as flat magenta. Magenta is not a bug you debug. It is Unity telling you the shader does not exist in this pipeline.

Check the editor version in the dropdown at the top of the dialog before you press Create project. Put the project somewhere plain, no spaces or non-ASCII characters in the path, and not inside OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or Dropbox. Those services rewrite files under the editor while it has them open, and the corruption that follows looks like a random Unity crash.

The template hands you a project shaped like this:

MyProject/
  Assets/
    Scenes/SampleScene.unity
    Settings/           URP asset, renderer, volume profiles
  Packages/
    manifest.json       every package and version, one of the two files that define the project
  ProjectSettings/
    ProjectVersion.txt
  Library/              generated cache, never commit this

Only Assets, Packages and ProjectSettings are yours. Library is a large rebuildable cache. Deleting it to fix a strange error is a real and often correct move; the next launch is just slow while Unity reimports.

What each panel is actually for

The default layout is five windows and a toolbar. The useful distinction is which of them show the scene in memory and which show files on disk.

Hierarchy lists the GameObjects in the currently open scene, in memory, right now. Project lists the files under Assets on disk. A prefab dragged into the Hierarchy exists in both, and that relationship is the whole of next session.

Scene view is your editing camera. You fly it, you never ship it. Game view shows exactly what the scene's Camera renders, which is what a player sees. If something looks right in Scene view and is missing in Game view, the cause is almost always the camera or a culling setting, not your object.

Inspector shows the components on whatever is selected. It is also the trap. In Play mode, Inspector edits apply to the running scene and are thrown away the instant you stop. Unity tints the editor a different shade during Play mode as a warning; if that tint is too subtle on your monitor, turn it up in Preferences under Colors, Playmode tint.

Console shows errors, warnings and logs, with a toggle for each in the top right. Turn on Error Pause now. It stops Play mode on the first error instead of letting one broken line spam a thousand identical messages while the game runs on.

Any panel you close or drag somewhere bad comes back from Window then Layouts then Default. Learn that path before you need it.

Point Unity at Rider

A mismatched setup gives you a code editor with no autocomplete, which for a beginner means silently misspelling a method Unity calls for you and getting no error at all.

Open Edit then Preferences on Windows, or Unity then Settings on macOS. Go to External Tools, set External Script Editor to Rider, and press Regenerate project files. Double-clicking a script in the Project window now opens it in Rider with the Unity API resolved.

Try it

Create a project called Microgame from the Universal 3D template on 6000.3.

1. Confirm the Hierarchy contains exactly Main Camera and Directional Light.
2. From the top menu, choose GameObject, 3D Object, Cube.
3. With the cube selected, set its Transform Position in the Inspector to 0, 0, 0, and move the Scene view camera until you can see it.
4. Press Play. In Play mode, set the cube's Position Y to 3. Press Play again to stop.

You succeed when the cube is visible in Game view during Play mode and its Y snaps back to 0 the moment you exit. That snap back is the most common source of lost work in Unity, and you should see it happen on purpose once, today.

Common mistakes

• Installing the newest version instead of 6000.3. The Hub pushes the latest release. Every menu path and package version in this course is written against 6.3 LTS, and an upgraded project cannot be downgraded to rejoin the class.
• Choosing the plain 3D template. It is the Built-in Render Pipeline, deprecated in 6.5. Everything works until you follow a URP lighting or material step and the result is magenta.
• Working inside a cloud-synced folder. OneDrive and iCloud fight the editor over Library and produce crashes that look like Unity's fault.
• Editing values in Play mode. You tune a number for twenty minutes, stop, and it is gone. Glance at the Play button before typing in the Inspector.
• Committing Library to Git. It is a generated cache, it is gigabytes, and it will make your first push time out. The template ships a .gitignore that excludes it; the repo session fixes the rest.

Where this goes next

Next session, GameObjects and Components, you stop looking at panels and start building with them: a scene assembled from components on empty objects, then the part you want to reuse turned into a prefab.