3D development in Unity through a web programmer's eyes
A practical guide to Unity 6 for people coming from browser and server-side JS/TS apps. With parallels to familiar concepts — DOM, React, requestAnimationFrame, Webpack — and without the myth that gamedev takes magic.
The main editor windows, plus GameObject and Transform — the DOM of the 3D world.
How Unity calls your code — Awake, Start, Update, and everything in between.
Keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and touch — two paths and why you should take the new one.
How to move objects with physics and react to collisions.
First/third-person views, virtual cameras and smooth follow without the math.
URP, Material vs Shader, Shader Graph, and why "multicolored cubes" are expensive.
Directional, Point, Spot — and why static light can be "baked" in advance.
Animation clips, state machine, blend trees — how a character doesn't look like a puppet.
AudioSource, AudioListener, 3D attenuation, and routing through the mixer.
Canvas, RectTransform, EventSystem — and two competing UI systems.
Reusable objects and data-only assets — without them a project falls apart.
We'll build a minimal FPS character with movement, jumping, and raycast shooting.
Build Settings, Profiler, the frame budget — from a finished prototype to a build.
Navigation Mesh, NavMeshAgent, a basic state machine for an enemy.
Two visual-effects systems — when to choose each, and the basic techniques.
Multi-track direction inside Unity — animation, sound, and effects by timecode.
NetworkObject, NetworkVariable, ServerRpc/ClientRpc — the basics of a networked game.
Asynchronous loading by address, a replacement for Resources.Load and AssetBundles.
ShaderLab + HLSL structure, vertex/fragment, custom URP shader.
Orbit camera, physics controller, double jump, coyote time, a chasing enemy, and checkpoints.
The built-in Splines package in Unity 6, Bezier/B-Spline curves, Cinemachine SplineDolly, and spawning along a path.
IJob, IJobParallelFor, the Burst compiler, NativeArray — a working path to high performance.
The 2D pipeline, Box2D v3 in Unity 6.3, multi-threaded physics, Hybrid 2D/3D Scenes.
XR Interaction Toolkit, OpenXR plugin, a basic VR scene with teleport, grab, and hand-tracking.
Custom Inspectors, EditorWindow, MenuItem, Gizmos, ExecuteAlways — extending the Unity Editor.
ONNX models in real time, IWorker, a practical image classification example.
Confiner, Impulse, Composer, FreeLook, blending, state-driven cameras — a deep dive into Cinemachine 3.
TwoBone IK, Aim Constraint, Multi-Parent — layering procedural layers over a ready-made animation.
PlayerPrefs, JSON, binary serialization, encryption, save versioning.
