Before starting work on your VE2 application, you must first setup a Unity project, import the VE2 tools, configure your project settings, and your scene.

<aside> ⚠️

While no longer strictly required, it is strongly recommended you back up your projects in a version control system such as Git

</aside>

Installing Unity and Creating a Project

As VE2 is Unity-based, you will first need to setup Unity on your machine. You can find system requirements in the Unity documentation.

• Setup Unity Hub

  • Create a Unity account: https://id.unity.com/en/conversations/bd9462bf-cc4b-45f1-850a-996ed8c627db01bf
  • Download Unity Hub https://unity.com/download
  • Open Unity Hub and login with your account

• Download Unity version 6000.0.51 - it must be this exact version!

  • Navigate to the following link https://unity.com/releases/editor/archive
  • Find Unity 6000.0.51 and click the blue ‘Unity Hub’ button to download through Unity Hub
  • A dialogue should open asking you to “Add modules”, there are three you should tick
    • “Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2022”
    • Windows Build Support (IL2CPP) towards the bottom
    • Documentation (Right at the bottom)

  Adding a license

  • Instructions to add a license

Creating a project

• In Unity Hub, select “New Project”
• Select “Universal 3D (Core)”
• Give your project a sensible name
• Ensure the location for your project is a relatively shallow folder. For example, something like C:/UnityProjects/MyProject rather than something like C:/Users/MyName/Desktop/Work/Projects/Unity/MyProject etc. If you already have a repo setup, you’ll want the Unity project to live in your repo’s local folder
• Create project, this will take a few minutes

GitIgnore Setup (Optional)

If you’re using Git, you should set up a .gitignore file. Unity generates all kinds of files that we don’t need (or want) to track in our repo. To handle this, we can use a .gitignore file

• Open Notepad, copy/paste the contents of the .gitignore file below

  .gitignore file

• Save the file as ".gitignore" — include the quotes to prevent Windows from renaming it to .gitignore.txt, this file should live in the root of your Git repo

Importing the VE2 Tools

<aside> ⚠️

VE2 is still in early development and has not been released to the public. You must authenticate your access to the VE2 package through the Git Credentials Manager

• Create an account on GitHub if you haven’t already: https://github.com/join
• Contact the VE2 Development Lead, supplying your GitHub email so access can be granted: Email f.tovey-ansell@imperial.ac.uk
• Download GitHub Desktop: https://desktop.github.com/
• Log in to your account through GitHub Desktop
• When adding the VE2 package to your Unity project, a popup window may appear asking you to verify your GitHub credentials. </aside>

1: Confirm your machine has enough storage space!