Unity – Installation

Index & Table Of Contents

Unity is a powerful and widely-used game development platform that allows developers to create 2D, 3D, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) experiences. Installing Unity involves setting up several components to ensure a smooth development workflow. This guide will walk you through the installation process for Unity, as well as the necessary tools, including Visual Studio Community, which is the preferred integrated development environment (IDE) for scripting in Unity.

0.- Requirements #

Before you start the installation process, make sure your system meets the following requirements:

  • Operating System: Windows 7 SP1+, macOS 10.12+, Ubuntu 18.04+. (Windows 10+ recommended)
  • Hardware:
    • CPU: 4 cores, 2GHz, SSE2 instruction set support
    • GPU: DirectX 11 enabled, 4 GB VRAM
    • RAM: 8 GB
    • Disk Space: 4 GB for Unity Editor. 4GB for IDE (Visual Studio 2022 Community). +5 GB for each project

1.- IDE #

First we need a tool to edit and debug C# code (Commonly known as an Integrated Development Environment). We will use Visual Studio 2022 Community edition.

1.1.- Visual Studio Installer #

The first step is to install the Visual Studio installation manager, to do this we look for the version of Visual Studio that interests us. In our case we will use Visual Studio 2022 Community, which is free for students.


If you can’t find it in a Google search, you can click on the following link

1.2.- Visual Studio Community 2022 #

Once the Visual Studio Installer is installed, it will automatically open showing the installation screen for the version of Visual Studio that we have chosen.
We do not select any of the options and click on the Install button at the bottom right. It occupies 900MB.

If it tells us that we have not selected workloads, we click continue, we will install them later.

The program will then be downloaded and installed. Remember to leave the start box checked after installation to configure it.

1.3.- Configuring Visual Studio #

When you open the program for the first time, it will request a Microsoft account. It is not necessary to have payment methods associated with the account, the program is free to use. It will ask you for some customization options.

Once the configuration is complete, close the program and reopen the Visual Studio Installer.

In the installer, we locate the current installation, and press the modify button.

Here we will search for the workload “Game development with Unity”. Once selected, we make sure that only IntelliCode & HLSL Tools are checked on the right.

We go to the Individual components tab, search for “Git for Windows” and check it.

Once all selected, we press the modify button, and wait for the program to download & update.

2.- Unity #

Before installing any Unity version / package, we must create a Unity account or Unity ID.

You can create a personal unity account here.

2.1.- Unity Hub #

Once we have a unity account, we will download Unity Hub. It’s an application to manage, Unity versions, projects & licenses.

Once in the download page, we click the Download button, & install the program.

Once installed, we launch Unity Hub, and we will be prompted to sign in with our Unity ID

The application will open our web browser, we sign in. If a pop up like this appears, we check the “Always allow” and click on the “Open Unity Hub” button.

We will be prompted to install the latest LTS version. Usually this is not desired, so we check the “Don’t ask me again“, and click on the link “Skip installation“

If we get prompted for a Unity Personal License, we click agree, it’s free for small projects & academic use. Without a valid license Unity won’t work.

2.2.- Unity Engine #

To install a specific Unity version we must have Unity Hub installed and go to the Unity Archive page.

In here we must search for the version that we will use, paying attention to all the version numbers, not just the major version name. Once located, we click in the button “Install”

If you want to learn more about how Unity Versions work, check the Unity – Versions documentation.

If a pop up like this appears, we check the “Always allow” and click on the “Open Unity Hub” button.

A new window will open with all the avalable optional modules. In here we will see that Visual Studio appears already installed, and that the “Documentation” will be downloaded and installed. We click install and wait.

If you want to learn more about how Unity Modules work, check the Unity – Installation Modules documentation.

3.- Git #

If we want:

  • Backups of our projects
  • Multiple people working on the same project
  • Multiple computers opening the same project

We need to install a git client, and add each project to a git repository.

If you are a novice, It’s recommended to start with GitHub Desktop. If you want more advanced options, and the ability to change hosting for your projects, you can try Fork.

Here are a few useful guides for that:

Updated on 2024-09-07

Related Docs