My name is Toni, I tried to get into Unity several times… now (due to the pandemic) with some extra time, I’d really want to deep-dive and finally make my (gaming) dreams come true.
Even with already some experience in programming and design, I usually start from zero, when picking up something new. Because I do know (learned it the hard way with Photoshop years ago), that someone new to it, might miss basic “shortcuts” and “hacks”, if just rushing too much.
I see there are a bunch of entry level projects and tutorials. The description sounds great, there are a few tutorials using those projects (even directly published by Unity themselves) … but it seems after those gut released, no one cared anymore, to keep 'em maintained. That’s pretty sad… For a platform/engine that advertises as something that anyone can pick up… well…
Opening one of these projects, using the proper version, ends up with lots of errors… making it impossible to use for beginners (and even for more experienced people).
There’s no way a beginner can get those running. And IF someone new to the topic can… damn… hire them!
What I get when opening the “Creator Kit: Beginner Code” is this:
Shader warning in 'Hidden/ProBuilder/ScrollHighlight': 'UNITY_PASS_FORWARDBASE' : macro redefinition at line 32 (on d3d11)
Compiling Fragment program with DIRECTIONAL
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_FULL_HDR UNITY_PASS_FORWARDBASE
Disabled keywords: LIGHTPROBE_SH SHADOWS_SHADOWMASK DYNAMICLIGHTMAP_ON LIGHTMAP_ON LIGHTMAP_SHADOW_MIXING DIRLIGHTMAP_COMBINED SHADOWS_SCREEN UNITY_NO_DXT5nm UNITY_ENABLE_NATIVE_SHADOW_LOOKUPS UNITY_METAL_SHADOWS_USE_POINT_FILTERING UNITY_NO_SCREENSPACE_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF2 UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF3 UNITY_NO_FULL_STANDARD_SHADER UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER1 UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER2 UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER3 UNITY_COLORSPACE_GAMMA UNITY_HALF_PRECISION_FRAGMENT_SHADER_REGISTERS UNITY_LIGHTMAP_DLDR_ENCODING UNITY_LIGHTMAP_RGBM_ENCODING UNITY_VIRTUAL_TEXTURING
You should use the version of Unity the tutorial or kit was published for. I don’t know for sure what you mean by “using the proper version”. If you’re using the latest version instead of the version the kit was released under, you’re not using the proper version. If you want to use a different version, there may be issues you will have to resolve yourself, and that’s not something a beginner should be attempting on day 1.
Unity does maintain many of their tutorial projects, but they do not update them for every minor release. Periodically they may do an update after one or more major releases.
You posted a shader warning. That isn’t necessarily an error (if it was an error it would have said “Shader error” instead of warning). Please post the errors you are receiving. A warning might be something that needs to be fixed, or it might not. You haven’t mentioned what if any problems this warning is causing, other than “making it impossible” which doesn’t say much and this warning would unlikely be the cause of making anything impossible. Worst case whatever visual effect this shader does might not look correct, or it may cause build errors which you actually need to address (but in that case you’d have some specific errors to investigate). So please be more clear about what actually is happening if you’d like help.
I recently upgraded Unity to 2020.1.9f1 and encountered the same problem that you saw. I seem to have resolved it by ensuring that all packages associated with my project were updated.
It’s likely that some of yours, including ProBuilder, were still on an older version. There’s an update button in the tabs of not-yet-updated packages.
I’ve also found that you should keep the file paths to your Unity projects as minimal as possible. I originally organized the projects associated with my training into a folder hierarchy with fairly verbose names (e.g., PluralsightTraining\Unity\1-Fundamentals\1-Beginning, etc.). This led to path length problems with resources deep within the unity project file structure.
I’ve condensed the names of my folder structure considerably (e.g., PT\Unity\1F\1B, etc.) and rely on a readme file as a kind of Table of Contents.
