Hi I am very new to unity and C#. Coding is a very new thing I am learning (haven’t even tried C# with unity yet).
I want to know considering my situation how long would it take to learn and create something similar like the interactive car demo found in the Unity’s Standard Assets Example:
I know how to model, texture, animate in 3D and I think I have all the assets to well, make a game’s assets.
I want to know how long something like this (excluding sounds) would take for me to make something such as this.
If you have any tips or things to avoid in my unity journey, that would be appreciated too.
I would aim at half a year, unless you find an asset that does the job for you. Basically you’ll be learning unity and learning programming at the same time.
I may be overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. not sure.
Hiring someone to make the coding part instead of you might be faster.
I think it’s more like 6 months to do it the first time, maybe 1 month to do it after that. There’s a learning curve, but after you climb it, things that used to take you all day can take you an hour or less. So always pad your expectations for learning time when thinking about things you don’t know how to do yet.
Well it might help if you clearly stated exactly what it was you were trying to do.
All I see is an image of one of the demo’s.
The thing I quickly realized is, half the stuff in the demo’s is honestly much more coding than what is truly needed.
Like the character controller, it ends up being hundreds upon hundreds of lines of code and I could make my own with less than 100 lines of code.
But of course, it’s stuff like this you’ll notice when you get experience. Don’t take me wrong, nothing wrong with learning from the demo’s and such, but just know things can be much simpler than they make them out to be.
If I didn’t include half the un-needed stuff they use in most of their stuff I could have it done in an afternoon (if assets are included).
But remember man, the demos are good for learning ways they did things (which is why I think they did it that way) so you can see more than a couple lines of code and actually fully understand things that can be done/used). But the best learning experience one can have is to just go out and make something… Don’t be ashamed to ask for help, as long as you aren’t asking stuff like “How do I make a bool false or true” you’ll be welcomed here. Always google, google and google before asking. Because there’s a 99.99999% chance it’s been asked/done before. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something.
Man, I feel like I am like @nitroba who did too much modelling. Like my sci-fi gun artwork from two nights ago… https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wip-small-works-art-thread.145172/page-127#post-2889740 .
But, I also know rigging, and I know when to use the basic syntax to code with a few methods at once inside a constructor, plus using some binary math like % in boolean. And I kind of knew all the basic syntax is really is basically doing like the Main method call is a first start in a class.
But, after 4 months of programming school. Now I am learning how to use Serial Version UID to get a right matching class inside a multiple list of other class and other connected files. Which I am trying to learn more about data structure files right now. Which I am still no where near making a full apps software by myself.
But, be aware before my 4 months of programming school. I did not know how to learn programming by myself for a year.
I’m not quite sure I understand, isn’t the game just a cube with a thrust and turn left / right, constrained by the bollards. I can’t imagine that would take more than a few weeks. It’s the polish that would take months, if you’re going for realistic car mechanics like suspension, tyre burns, better real time reflections on the car etc.
True, sorry for my misleading point that programming a racing car is easy. But, my programming university does not teach Unity yet. I am mostly learning computer science stuff instead. So far, I am only using my university special libaray add on package to learn coding easlier. Thier package and what lesson that we learn is to import a input file or a class, then change the input by coding, then print a output file like creating a new report file or a new changed sound file or a new picture. Is like doing a very cheap way of making a API only. So, I have not touched with Unity much except for making my unity environment with a free asset character camera and a free visual effects asset.
For MEL rigging the wheel automatically animation in Maya, just use this formula expression. Centre of the rotation= (360distance traveled / (2PImeasured radius distance of a wheel))(-360 to stop initial rotation) . Like this one… wheel.rotateZ = (car.translateX / (2 * 3.14 * __ )) * -360; .
But can someone answer me, will the Maya MEL scripting will automatically work inside Unity when you import a Autodesk FBX file? Like the Autodesk spinning wheel function still works inside Unity?
Of course it won’t. As far as I know FBX importer only pulls animation data, not functions. So unless a function results in keyframes, it won’t be used.
Besides, wheels are one things that I wouldn’t try to handle with animation clips. Those should be procedurally animated via a monobehavior and rotation speed should be tied to engine output. Car wheels can rotate much than what you’d get via movement-based formula, and can be spinning while the car is sliding along the road.
Just have fun doing it, that’s part of the joy of Unity playing around with games you would like to make. Then ask back if you get stuck.
Hint for time management:
Break what you want to do into steps estimate the difficulty for you to do that step then assign it a duration e.g. days. Once you have all the steps down total your duration and multiply by PI.
Work through the first step recording the time it takes and the difficulty encountered, update your original calculation and move onto the next step and repeat.
