Coming from a programming background - where to start?

Hello,

I've been thinking about diving into unity for a few months (already tried some stuff in the past, but not for more than a few hours), and given my actual knowledge and free time on the next few weeks, now probably is a good time. I'm a computer science student that just finished his Bsc, and as such i'm quite familiar with languages such as C and Java, and have used others in a more superficial way like C#, C++, Lisp, and a few others, and I'm also more familiar with concepts related to software engineering, compared to the target audience of most learning resources found around here (no offense )

Right now I'm having a problem, is that I can't seem to find any structured learning resource for unity, aimed for someone not interested in learning how to code, but simply in how to use unity, in a correct, structured and scallable way. Giving a example in a sample of what I am looking for, in the last 2 months I've been in a summer internship developing with native android code, which I had to learn from scratch. One good book I found was Professional Android 4 Application Development, because it explained me in detail how android works, without worrying about my programming knowledge, instead of simply giving loose examples that try teaching how to code at the same time.

The problem that I mostly seem to find is if I try making something by myself, I don't know how should I create a structure to support my thoughts into unity, because I come from a programming-only background, and from what I see, here we don't need to do the low level code.

Does anyone have a suggestion to give that I should follow?

Maybe I'm thinking with the wrong approach?

Thanks for any help. And sorry for the English, I'm not a native speaker.

 

Based off what I read, you may enjoy my tutorial series. It's interactive about how todo things on your own with Unity3D.

My tutorials typically go over the Unity3D API.

There are a few unity3D books out there on the market that aren't terrible.

1 being will goldsteins essentials book.

best,

subzerogaming

 

Oh, another thing, I really do not like JavaScript, so C# is a must. I've already seen that both your tutorial and the book are In C#, but it's already late, so tomorrow I'll give feedback.

Thanks for the quick answer.

 

Hey there Manelis,

I have been absorbing Unity as fast as I can, as an experienced coder moving to Unity,heres been some of the most helpful links for me.

Unity Crash Course @ cgcookie - every new user should spend the few hours to go thru these videos , perfect to learn all the UI of Unity and "The Unity Way"
http://cgcookie.com/unity/cgc-courses/crash-course-learn-unity/

Quick to the point and small c# overview
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/4300/Quick-C

How to scale up Unity projects slideshow, good tips here....
https://docs.google.com/presentatio...gUXA1FESOq6LA8Q_8/edit#slide=id.gc2256254_078

Lastly, walker brothers tutorials, if you want more after getting done with subzero (his are good too)
http://walkerboystudio.com/html/unity_training___free__.html#unity3game2

Oh and this free tutorial works inside your unity editor, which is cool stuff really as it pauses till you click the right thing etc.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/6360

Hope that helps!

 

Thank you, some nice things over there. Just one question, is it worth to use my Visual Studio university license, or monodevelop works as good or better? (and its free).

 

As someone who came from a programming background I found the 3DBuzz video tutorials on how to use Unity quite helpful. The Unity Essentials series covered everything from how to start up Unity on through things like setting up 3D terrain, adding lights, and putting in audio.

 

So, juest wanted to give some feedback.

In the end I didn't follow any of the sugestions, but I had a simple idea to try, and managed to find my way around more easily than I expected. Here is the simple test I made in the last 3 days. The idea was to make a editor of a simple arkanoid like game in 3D. I will probably take it further in the next few days as a learning resource for myself.

(sorry for the broken mouse sensability, but on windows app it works well, only put it in the webplayer to show here, also, there are shadows that dont appear here)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23574503/testweb.html

Controls:

E - change to editor mode
P - change to play mode

play mode:
Mouse movment - control player bar

editor mode:
left click - place cube
right click - remove cube
middle click - move camera
left click + right click - rotate camera
scroll wheel - zoom camera