Unity Student Resources

https://unity.com/

Unity has a Student section but to use it, you need to also use GitHub. This is because Unity stores its student files in GitHub.

GitHub is a software development platform that lives in the Cloud; it’s also a software distribution platform. Normally we download an app. But if we need to use a bunch of files instead of just one executable file (an app), we can receive these files to use and edit through GitHub.

(GitHub is a cloud provider for Git repositories. Git is a version control system invented by Linus Torvalds who invented Linux.)

Git isn’t just used by programmers; lots of organisations are using it for Project Management and just for managing documents.

Git can be found at: https://git-scm.com/

So to use Git you need to sign up with GitHub, i.e. open an account using an email.

https://github.com/

Essentially Unity is delivering its learning tools using GitHub (instead of wrapping them up into an App) and this is why we need to use GitHub.

So I opened a GitHub account and made my first repository (folder) in the cloud called urs-test. This is where I will push my local files to for file storage, and so that I can always roll back to a previous version.

Because GitHub is a software development service, it isn’t that friendly for some users. But it can be accessed with a Graphical User Interface to make it more user friendly. One such is GitKracken which can be downloaded here:

https://www.gitkraken.com/

Once you have a GitHub account you can authorise GitKracken to use this account, to provide a nice GUI for GitHub.

The first task is to initialise a Git Repository. This is a file system so you want a Git Repository per project (a folder per project.) AutoDesk have a GitHub account at github.com/Autodesk.

Press Init; name the repository and ‘initialise in’… this will be a folder on your machine – the local copy on your machine:

The path box will auto fill. Ignore the bottom two options; press Create Repository.

It has created an empty repository with a ReadMe file. This now exists on my hard drive:

When you’ve edited files on your hard drive, which could be anything… 3d models, etc, you press Stage – this is telling Git ‘watch this file’. So Git won’t see the files on your local drive unless you press Stage.

The workflow is:

Edit files locally > Stage File > Commit > Push to the Cloud

Stage means “Use this file”… you use it to register a file with GitHub.

Let’s open the ReadMe file and use it as an example file to edit, stage, commit and push into the cloud. Press it and it opens in the box on the left. Press Edit This File.

Below I’ve made a change to the ReadMe file by writing a comment.

Press Stage or Stage All Changes

The software wants me to comment on my edit so I have written a message in the “Summary” Field: “This is my first commit”. This is essential for being able to look back over previous copies of work and understand which version is which. It’s like commenting code so you can understand it.

Now the software will let me press ‘Commit’.

At the moment there is no Cloud repository to accept my files (called a Remote Origin). Press ‘REMOTE’ and this happens…

The software wants us to associate our local files with a remote repository in GitHub. I have made Urs-Test in GitHub already and I will associate this folder with my local Project1.