12 Unity Terms to know before starting Game Development

Once Garry Williams joked that almost 99% of the game developers demonstrating indie games generally use Unity.
Although it’s quite hard to back up the statement with facts, it is a common belief that most people use Unity to bring their game designs to life.

However, the recent stats stated that out of 1000 games, 52% of them were made using Unity which is enough to give the statement some weight.

With its availability on over 25 platforms, the engine is used in almost 195 countries- which certainly seems like every other country in this world. Other than this, it is one of the most preferred game design platforms because it’s free to use and easy to pick up.

Unreal Engine (a direct competitor to Unity), has made forays into online game development as well, which aims to make game development even more accessible. While Unreal Engine has its own place in the market, there are plenty of solid reasons to choose either one.

If you have chosen Unity for you, there are certain terms that you need to know before downloading and using the platform.

Learning commonly used terms makes the whole learning process easier and more efficient.

So, do not miss to check out these Unity search engine-related terms before you start using Unity.

Terms To Know Before Downloading Unity Game Engine

1. Avatar

It is a Unity3D system used to identify humanoids and then assign them with corresponding body parts including head, body, and limbs. This system is generally used while you are remapping animation from one humanoid to the other one. Other than this, the Avatar system allows masking, restricting parts of any character from being animated.

The best example of it would be; Custom hand pose where a scene showcases custom hand posing. A prefab for each of the hand skeletons provides components to pose forward. This epitomises Avatar form in Unity ecosystem in the best possible way.

2. Light Baking

Another term that you will come across in most of the Unity Courses is light baking. In this process, light and shadow information is assigned to every point of the scene and model. This information is then used to make the whole rendering process more effective.

In virtual reality based products, unity light baking is used to incorporate textures and models into the objects.

3. Markerless Tracking

Markerless tracking is one of the augmented reality technologies used in Unity which detects real-life surfaces for precise digital placement without using any predefined triggers and markers in the environment. The technology majorly depends on LiDAR technology, advanced image processing, accelerometers and gyroscope.

4. Universal Render Pipeline

URP is a graphics solution pipeline designed by Unity to make the process of rendering visuals more enhanced and optimized. This helps you to render the visuals smoothly on different destination platforms by scaling the renderings to high or low-quality levels depending on the destination platform.

5. Unity Forma

Unity forma is one of the Unity tools that can be used to import a 3D product data model, enhance and visualize it in real-time and publish the result on different channels like VR, AR, desktop, web and mobile. This tool offers a codeless environment for professionals from non-coding backgrounds in creative and marketing departments.

6. Rigidbody

Another most used technology of Unity is Rigidbody. This technology helps you implement and facilitate physics-based movement in the object. The objects that have Rigidbody are generally influenced by physical forces and gravity in the most realistic way with the help of the NVidia PhysX engine.

7. Ray-Tracing

Ray-Tracing is most commonly used in gaming that allows you to simulate a realistic light behaviour in a particular scene. These lighting conditions include light intensity, shadows, light reflections, global illumination, light sources available in the scene and occlusion.
Some of the existing examples of ray tracing like RTX demons include Shadow of Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus and Battlefield V.

8. Quixel

To use ultra-detailed assets and textures based on real-world scan data, Quixel is used. The Quixel Megascans can be used in gaming, AAA movies and VR productions to get realistic visuals. Other than this, the Quixel bridge is utilized to import, export and borrow Megascan assets into 3D software and tools including Unreal Engine, Blender and Unity.

9. Prefabs

Prefab is a complete system that is used to create reusable assets to combine all the values, components, and existing child objects of the GameObject. This system is most useful when you want to utilize the same object in multiple scenes. With this system, you can update all the copies of the object by editing the Prefab asset once.

10. Pixyz

One of the important Unity plugins that you can use is Pixyz. This plugin allows you to optimize, import and prepare large 3D assets including meshes, and CAD to visualise them in real time. It works with almost all of the 3D formats including five subtools required to perform multiple tasks.

11. MARS

It is an extension available for Unity to ease the development of mixed and augmented reality content. This incorporates the required editing features of the AR foundation and environment.
Some of the common applications of MARS include Snapchat, AR maintenance, Google Glass, Google ARCore, and Hololens.

12. Marker-Based Tracking

It is a type of technology used to recognise objects or shapes as triggers available in the real-world environment and initiate a certain behaviour with a mix of augmented and mixed reality applications.

Winding Up

For game developers, Unity provides a complete package to develop a game, and its mix of advantages are especially beneficial for indie and mobile games. Unity is generally preferred by most game developers because the platform is easier to use and is free of cost.

However, if you are a budding game developer or you wish to learn how to develop games, it’s always a better idea to enrol in game development courses to ensure your learning is guided and mentored.