Unity Encyclopedia

Why a Web Developer Should Learn Unity

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If you write TypeScript/React in the browser and Node on the server, moving to Unity feels both familiar and foreign. On one hand, there is a managed runtime (CLR/Mono/IL2CPP instead of V8), strict typing (C# instead of TS), a component-based architecture (GameObject + Components instead of React), redraw loops, and events. On the other hand, there is a real 3D scene, physics, GPU-based rendering, and an asynchronous asset pipeline.

This encyclopedia is a practical introduction to 3D game development in Unity 6 for those who find it easier to learn through familiar web abstractions.

The Unity Stack and Its Ecosystem

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Unity ships several branches at the same time. A timeline of the key 6.x releases:

Unity 6.0 (October 2024) — the first major release under the new scheme (instead of ). Unity 6.1 (March 2025) — public WebGPU backend, Deferred+ for URP, GPU Resident Drawer improvements, DOTS production-ready. Unity 6.2 (August 2025) — UI Toolkit World Space experimental, Unity AI integrations, new Awaitable primitives. Unity 6.3 LTS (released December 5, 2025) — the current recommended LTS, supported through December 2027 (Enterprise / Industry licenses through December 2028). Here the legacy Input Manager…

The Unity Editor, the Scene, and the Hierarchy

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Editor: where you'll look at the world from

The Unity Editor is an IDE for content. A set of dockable windows that you can drag around and save as a layout. The key ones out of the box:

Scene View — the editor's 3D viewport. This is where you fly around and place objects. Game View — what the player will see: the render from the active camera. Hierarchy — the tree of objects in the current scene. Project — the project's files (assets): models, textures, scripts, materials. Inspector — the properties of the selected object. This is where you edit components. Console — the log, errors, and…

Scripts and the MonoBehaviour Lifecycle

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

MonoBehaviour — the base class of your scripts

Any C# script of yours that is attached to a GameObject as a component inherits from . This gives Unity entry points — methods with special names that the engine calls itself at the right moment.

The attribute makes a private field visible in the Inspector — it's the idiomatic way to expose parameters. Public fields are also serialized by default, but that's considered bad form (it breaks encapsulation).

The lifecycle — the order of calls

The full MonoBehaviour lifecycle is more involved, but here are the main methods, sorted by call order:

Input — the Input System and Legacy Input

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Unity currently has two input systems coexisting. The legacy class is old and simple. The Input System package is new, powerful, and recommended for new projects.

Legacy Input — a quick start

The class is available out of the box. It's polled every frame in :

Buttons and axes are defined in Edit → Project Settings → Input Manager. It's a dictionary with default values: "Horizontal", "Vertical", "Jump", "Fire1", "Mouse X", and so on.

Input System — the modern path

The Input System is a package (installed via the Package Manager). The main ideas:

Physics — Rigidbody, Collider and Collisions

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Unity uses NVIDIA's PhysX for 3D physics (for 2D — Box2D). This means: rigid body simulation, collisions, forces, joints. All of it works out of the box; your job is to configure the components correctly.

Three classes of participants

Static — a GameObject with a Collider but no Rigidbody. It does not move, ideal for walls, floors, static geometry. Kinematic — a Rigidbody with . Moves only through your script (via / ), does not react to forces. Dynamic — an ordinary Rigidbody. Reacts to gravity, forces, collisions.

Camera and Cinemachine

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A camera in Unity is an ordinary GameObject with a component. The main fields:

Projection — (3D, with perspective) or (no perspective; 2D/isometric). FOV (Field of View) — the vertical field of view in degrees. The standard for FPS is 60–90°. Clipping Planes: Near / Far — the distance to the near and far clipping planes. Anything closer than Near or farther than Far is not drawn. A large spread (for example, 0.01 ↔ 10000) degrades Z-buffer precision and leads to "Z-fighting" — flickering intersections. Try to keep . Culling Mask — which object layers this camera draws. Target Texture — ren…

Rendering, Materials and Shaders

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What actually draws a frame

Unity submits the scene to the GPU through a render pipeline — a sequence of passes: shadows, opaque, transparent, postprocess. The exact steps depend on the chosen pipeline (see the chapter on the stack):

Built-in RP — old, monolithic. Forward or Deferred rendering, your choice. URP — Forward+ by default, cross-platform. This is the recommended choice now. HDRP — Deferred + Forward, physically correct, for high-end PCs and consoles.

Mesh, Material, Shader — the three pillars

Mesh — geometry: arrays of vertices, normals, UV coordinates, indices. Imported from FB…

Lighting and Shadows

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Light in a 3D scene is what turns geometry from a flat silhouette into a three-dimensional picture. Unity supports realtime and baked lighting, and in a real project they are combined.

Types of light sources

Directional Light — the sun. An infinitely distant source of parallel rays. One per scene is usually enough. Point Light — a light bulb. Light in all directions from a point, with a falloff radius. Spot Light — a flashlight. A cone from a point, with an angle and radius. Area Light — a rectangular/disc source for baking (in realtime — only in HDRP).

Animation and the Animator Controller

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Unity, animation is not just Transform movement. It is the Mecanim system: Animation Clip + Animator Controller (state machine) + parameters + transitions.

A Clip is a file with recorded property values over time. Sources of clips:

Imported from FBX — animations made in Blender/Maya/Motion Capture. Recorded in the editor via the Animation window (). Bought from the Asset Store (Mixamo and the like).

Each track of a clip is a path to a property relative to the root (for example, ) and a set of keyframes. Unity interpolates between the keys.

3D Audio and AudioMixer

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sound in a 3D game isn't just an mp3 in the background. It's spatial audio: footsteps on the left, a gunshot behind you, a whisper through a wall. Unity provides a built-in 3D audio engine that's sufficient for most tasks.

AudioListener — the "ears" in the scene. One per scene. By default it sits on the main Camera. AudioSource — a sound source. Attached to a GameObject. Plays an AudioClip. AudioClip — an asset containing an imported wav/mp3/ogg.

is great because it doesn't interrupt an already-playing sound — several footsteps can overlap. A plain would reset the current playback.

UI in a 3D Game — uGUI and UI Toolkit

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Unity 6, two UI systems coexist:

uGUI (Unity UI) — what Unity has used for years. Built on GameObjects and Canvas. UI Toolkit — the newer system based on UXML + USS (analogous to HTML + CSS). For the editor it's already the standard, and for runtime it's stable and recommended for new UI, but many projects are still on uGUI.

We'll start with uGUI as the more widespread one, then cover UI Toolkit.

uGUI: Canvas and RectTransform

In uGUI, the UI lives inside a Canvas — a special GameObject. Child UI elements use a RectTransform (an extended Transform with anchors, pivot, and size).

Prefab and ScriptableObject

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Prefab — a GameObject template

A Prefab is an asset that describes a GameObject with all of its components and values. From a single prefab you can create any number of instances. Change the prefab — all instances change too (except for explicit overrides on specific ones).

Assemble a GameObject in the scene with the components you need. Drag it from the Hierarchy into a folder in the Project. A asset appears, and in the scene the object turns blue (instance of prefab). To make further changes to the base prefab — double-click the asset (you'll enter "Prefab Mode") or use "Open" in the ins…

Practice — a First-Person Controller

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Let's put it all together. The goal is a playable first-person character: walking, head rotation, jumping, shooting a ray at targets. We use for predictable control.

Why exactly like this:

rotates horizontally (yaw) — this also affects the movement direction. rotates vertically (pitch) — separately from the body. This separation simplifies the physics: the player's collider doesn't tilt when you look at the sky.

Player.cs — movement and looking

Health.cs — the damage receiver

Player GameObject: a Capsule, delete the MeshFilter+MeshRenderer (or hide them) — it's an "invisible" controller.…

Building and Optimization

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The good news: making a build is usually one or two buttons. The bad news: optimization is endless work, in which the big wins come from understanding exactly where time is being spent.

(in Unity 6 — the new name; previously ):

Platform — Windows / macOS / Linux / Android / iOS / WebGL / Console. Scenes in Build — a list of scenes (by index). — the first one. Build or Build And Run — builds to the specified folder.

Each platform has its own Player Settings ():

Product name, icon, splash screen. Scripting Backend: Mono vs IL2CPP (see the chapter on the stack). API Compatibility Level — .NET…

NavMesh and AI — Pathfinding and a Simple AI Enemy

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 3D level rarely consists of a flat floor. An enemy has to go around a table, descend the stairs, find the short path to the player, and not fall off a cliff. Computing all of this by hand with is a nightmare. Unity has NavMesh — a built-in navigation system that solves 90% of AI movement tasks for free.

NavMesh — the "walkability map"

A NavMesh is baked, simplified floor geometry that agents know how to walk on. Unity scans your scene and assembles a polygonal mesh of all surfaces you can stand on. From this mesh it builds a graph for the pathfinding algorithm (A* under the hood).

Particle System and VFX Graph

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Visual effects in Unity are split into two large systems: the Built-in Particle System (often called Shuriken) and VFX Graph (part of the Visual Effect Graph package). They coexist and don't compete — each has its own use case.

Rough rule: if the effect is simple and needed on mobile — Particle System. If you need lots of particles or a complex GPU simulation — VFX Graph.

Particle System — the main module

ParticleSystem is a component attached to a GameObject. In the Inspector — dozens of module sections you can enable and disable. The key ones in Main:

Timeline and Cutscenes

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A cutscene in an FPS, an intro before a boss, the ritual of opening a door — all of these play out by a script, and writing it in code with timers is painful. Unity Timeline gives you a multi-track editor (like Premiere or DaVinci), where you can lay out animations, sounds, object activation, and signals into scripts.

What Timeline and PlayableDirector are

Timeline Asset () — an asset that describes the tracks and clips. PlayableDirector — a component on a GameObject that plays back a Timeline Asset. It has bindings: for each track you specify which scene object the effect is applied to.

Multiplayer — Netcode for GameObjects

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Multiplayer is a separate universe of complexity, but Unity Netcode for GameObjects (NGO) greatly simplifies getting started. It's Unity's official package for synchronizing GameObjects between the server and clients in a client-server architecture.

NGO works in authoritative server mode (the server is the source of truth). The role options:

Server — a dedicated server with no local player. For competitive games and dedicated servers. Host — a client that is also the server at the same time. Convenient for P2P and co-op. Client — a connected player.

Addressables — Modern Asset Loading

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Historically, Unity has had several ways to load an asset at runtime: , AssetBundles, and Addressables (). The latter is the recommended modern path, and in new projects you should avoid the others.

What's wrong with Resources.Load

is a simple API: you fetch an asset from the folder by path. It sounds convenient, but:

Everything in Resources goes into the build in full. Unity packs any asset in even if it isn't used in the current scene. This drastically bloats the build size. No asynchronous loading out of the box. exists, but it doesn't solve the first problem. No version management. Yo…

HLSL Shaders in Unity in Depth

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Shader Graph covers most tasks, but sooner or later you need either something non-standard or to understand what the graph generates under the hood. This chapter is a short introduction to "hand-written" shaders for URP.

What a shader is in Unity

A shader in Unity is a file with a ShaderLab structure, inside which there are code blocks in HLSL (or, previously, CG — the same syntax but with deprecated macros).

ShaderLab is the "wrapper": declaration of properties, sub-shaders, passes, render states. HLSL is the actual vertex and fragment code that runs on the GPU.

Practice — Third-person Platformer with a NavMesh Enemy

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The second practical capstone — we build a third-person platformer: the character runs, jumps (with double jump and coyote time), is chased by an AI enemy, and on death the player respawns at a checkpoint. We use what we covered in previous chapters: Cinemachine, NavMesh, a physics-based Rigidbody, and a ScriptableObject for the config.

PlayerMotor.cs — the physics controller

Cinemachine FreeLook — the camera

In Cinemachine 3, for an orbital third-person camera:

Create a CinemachineCamera in the scene. Add a CinemachineOrbitalFollow component to it (formerly a separate CinemachineFreeLook)…

Splines and Procedural Paths

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Unity 6 has a built-in Splines package (). Previously, for rail cameras, tracks, and AI patrols you had to write Bezier math by hand or install asset-store plugins. Not anymore.

What the package provides

SplineContainer — a node container for one or more curves (Catmull-Rom, Bezier, B-Spline). Spline Tool in the Scene View — you draw points with the mouse and drag tangents. SplineExtrude — extrudes a mesh along a spline (a ready-made road/pipe). SplineInstantiate — places prefabs along a curve (fences, posts, trees). SplineAnimate — animates a Transform along a spline (moving platforms, AI o…

Job System and Burst — Parallelism and SIMD

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The main C# thread in Unity is a single thread. If computes a path for a thousand NPCs, the FPS will drop. Job System + Burst is the official way to parallelize computation across all CPU cores and get SIMD optimization through a special AOT compiler.

Job System — a package (; in Unity 6 it's core). An API for describing parallel tasks through / structs. Burst — a package (). A high-performance AOT compiler: it takes your code and turns it into SIMD-optimized native code (via LLVM). Usually a ×5–×100 speedup. Unity.Collections — , , etc. — GC-free structures that are passed between a Job a…

2D in Unity 6 — Box2D v3 and Hybrid Scenes

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This encyclopedia is about 3D, but Unity 6.3 LTS brought important 2D additions worth knowing about — especially if you have a hybrid project (a 3D world + a 2D HUD/effects) or are prototyping a 2D feature inside a 3D project.

Unity's 2D pipeline in brief

Historically, Unity has a separate 2D stack that runs in parallel with 3D:

Sprite Renderer — draws a sprite instead of a Mesh. Tilemap — a powerful pattern of grid tiles with rule tiles. 2D Animation — riggable 2D skeletons (for cutout animation). 2D Light (in URP) — lighting for sprite scenes with Normal Map support. Box2D for physics (se…

XR / OpenXR — VR Applications in Unity

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

VR/AR (Unity calls this XR — eXtended Reality) is a large universe of its own. Unity has historically been one of the leaders in the VR-development market. This chapter is a short entry point: what you need to know to run a basic scene on Meta Quest, Valve Index, or PCVR.

The XR stack in Unity 6

OpenXR Plugin () — the lower layer. OpenXR is an open standard from the Khronos Group for VR/AR. It replaced the Oculus SDK, SteamVR, Vive Wave, and others. XR Interaction Toolkit (, XRI) — a high-level system: ray-pointers, grab, teleport, locomotion, UI interaction. The main package for the devel…

Editor Scripting — Extending the Unity Editor

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Unity Editor can be extended with C# code just like runtime logic. This lets you: Build custom inspectors for a non-standard field-editing UI. Create editor windows — standalone tool panels inside the editor. Add menu items, gizmos, scene view handles. Run your code in the editor (not only in Play Mode).

Editor scripts — the main rule

Editor scripts live in an folder (any nested one), and are compiled into a separate assembly that is not included in the game build.

Inside Editor scripts you can use (this namespace is not available at runtime).

Custom Inspector — override the UI

Sentis — ML inference in Unity

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sentis is a system built into Unity 6 for running machine learning in real time inside the game. It replaced Barracuda (deprecated since 2023).

What you can do with Sentis: Image classification from the camera (ResNet, MobileNet, YOLO). NPC AI based on neural networks (decision-making, dialog generation). Style transfer for post-process effects. Pose estimation for motion capture without sensors. Voice command recognition.

Installation and the basic idea

Package Manager → install Sentis (). As of Unity 6.1 it's officially GA. Import an file (ONNX is an open format for exporting models from…

Cinemachine — Advanced Techniques

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the camera chapter we went over the basics of Cinemachine 3. This chapter is a deep dive: 4 features you often need in a real project.

CinemachineConfiner — the camera won't fly off the level

The most common problem with a follow camera is that it can end up inside a wall or show an out-of-bounds zone. The Confiner solves this:

CinemachineConfiner2D — confines the camera to a 2D polygon (for 2D / top-down). CinemachineConfiner3D — confines it to a 3D Collider (BoxCollider, ConvexMesh).

Usage: Add an Empty GameObject to the scene with a suitable Collider (for example, a the size of the…

Animation Rigging — Procedural Animation and IK

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The standard Animator plays back recorded animations. What do you do if: The character needs to look at a dynamic target (an enemy, the mouse cursor). A hand needs to hold a door handle while it turns. A foot needs to touch uneven ground correctly (foot IK).

The Animation Rigging package () provides procedural constraints that are applied on top of the Animator's regular animation.

The main idea — a riggable layer

collects all constraints and applies them after the Animator's base animation. The constraints are separate GameObjects with a logic component.

Save / Load — Saving Progress

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Save/Load is a standard task in any game. Unity has 3 main approaches, and the choice depends on the size and complexity of the data being saved.

PlayerPrefs — for settings

Where it's stored: Windows: in the Registry. macOS: . Linux: .

PlayerPrefs is not encrypted. The user can open and edit it — that's OK for settings, but insecure for game progress.

For structured data, use JSON. Unity has a built-in (with no external dependencies).

Application.persistentDataPath: Windows: macOS: iOS: Android: (sandboxed)

Serializing a Dictionary with Newtonsoft

Encryption (or just obfuscation)

Glossary — Unity Terms Through the Eyes of a Web Developer

Konstantin Ryzhov — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A consolidated list of terms that appear in the encyclopedia. Where appropriate — an analog from the web.

Scene — a file describing the objects on a level/screen. Analog: a page (route) in an SPA.

GameObject — an empty container with a mandatory . It does nothing on its own. Analog: an empty in the DOM.

Component — a behavior attached to a GameObject. Mesh, Collider, your script. Analog: a set of CSS + JS handlers attached to an element.

Prefab — a reusable GameObject template in the form of an asset. Analog: a React component that is rendered in many places.