Game Engine Unity Learning Resources

Below you can find a list of resources and tutorials for learning the game engine Unity. The list will be updated as new resources are released. If you believe that you created an amazing tool or tutorial, please contact me and I am happy to add your work to the list.

Unity website: http://unity3d.com/

Which license do you need? http://unity3d.com/unity/licenses

Download the free version of Unity to get started: http://unity3d.com/unity/download/

Unity Asset Store: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#
Here you can download many professional resources and projects for Unity. Some of these resources and tutorials are free to use.
Tech Demos: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/category/97
Tutorials: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/category/98

If you have no previous experience with Unity, start with these video tutorials which give a quick overview of the Unity interface and some important features.
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules

Continue with a more in-depth text-based walk through of very basic Unity functionality and work flow http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Unity%20Basics.html

Unity features three scripting languages; JavaScript, C#, and Boo. Depending on your scripting language of choice, you might want to choose different tutorials to get started with Unity. Each tutorial link will also mention which scripting language is used. Most Unity tutorials available on the web are using JavaScript. Notice that JavaScript is commonly used for web applications. Unforunately, books which cover JavaScript are normally of little use for Unity's implementation of JavaScript. But worry not, a vast amount of tutorials will follow...

If you want to familiarize yourself with Unity's functionality more, browse through Unity's manual. You can skip the “Basics” section as we already went through this (see above).
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/index.html

For a printable version of the 600+ pages manual, see
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/printable.html

Unity Videos (including Tutorials)http://video.unity3d.com/

Live Online Unity Classes (currently for basic introduction to Unity)
http://unity3d.com/support/online-training/

If you rather prefer to jump into the action, skip the manual and basic resources altogether and have a look at several books which have been published on Game Development with Unity (several recently added on 03/22/2012).
A complete list of Unity books and their descriptions can be found here: http://gamefromscratch.com/page/Unity-Book-Roundup.aspx

1) Author Will Goldstone guides you through a complete project and introduces most of Unity's functionality (using JavaScript). The book is available as print and digital version and all needed assets and resources can be downloaded with the book. It's been a helpful investment from my point of view.
http://www.packtpub.com/unity-game-development-essentials/book
This forum thread discusses the book and its content.
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=29041
The updated version of this book for Unity 3 can be found on Amazon.
Amazon Link

2) Ryan Henson Creighton more recently published "Unity 3D Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide". Find out more about the book here: https://www.packtpub.com/unity-3d-game-development-by-example-beginners-guide/book
and the forum thread - http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/61349-Unity-3D-Game-Development-by-Example

3) Craig Stevenson and Simon Quiq (publisher Deep Pixel) released "Unity 3 Blueprints: A practical guide to Indie games development". Their website provides all the art assests and code to create four classic games from scratch (Match the Pairs, Top-Down Shooter, Tower Defense, Marble Madness).
Amazon link

4) Sue Blackman wrote a book in which she guides the reader through the development of a Javascript-based project which resembles an adventure-type of game. Sue highlights the viewpoint of an artist working in game development. See the forum thread and the amazon link.
A new second edition is planned for release in May 2013.

Other new and upcoming books:
Philip Chu's "Learn Unity 4 for iOS Game Development"

You are now faced with the choice of tackling example projects provided by Unity Technologies or jump straight into user-generated tutorials. As the example projects are quite complex, I would suggest working through some video tutorials first. Nonetheless, here are the links for Unity's official example projects. They can be taken completely apart, reverse-engineered and reused for own projects.

Unity 4 Tutorial Project: Stealth
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/stealth

More Unity Example projects for a variety or topics can be found here:
http://unity3d.com/gallery/demos/demo-projects

3dbuzz.com
Series of Unity tutorials in C# (among many other tutorials about different tools and programming languages)
registration required (free)
website - http://www.3dbuzz.com/
and http://www.3dbuzz.com/training/topic/unity?resetFilters=True for Unity specifically

forum thread - http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/37093-Over-7-hours-of-Unity-Training-Videos-Download-them-now!

Catlike Coding C# Tutorials - text-based tutorials that walk you through creating simple projects, the most complex being a side-scroller game. http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/

GamerToGameDeveloper Tutorials Series 1
This series of video tutorials covers the development of a multiplayer first person shooter prototype from scratch and focuses on C# scripting.
Website: http://www.gamertogamedeveloper.com

GearTech Games
A complete Unity project to learn from - for free on the Unity Asset store.
http://www.geartechgames.com/page2/page3/index.html
Asset Store Link:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/search/Palace%20of%20Orinthalian

InsurgentX Advanced Video Tutorials
Series of JavaScript tutorials starting from the very basics and slowly increasing in complexity to build a sophisticated game from scratch
http://www.youtube.com/user/InsurgentXdotcom/videos?view=0

LOD Tutorial (Level of Detail, Unity3.5 Pro Feature)
By Manuel Scherer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX-9ofr2D5w

Making Sense of Unity
These video tutorials provide more indepth coverage of unity scripting using Javascript (not meant to be introductory material)

lecture style explanations of concepts
more entertaining and not like most other screen-capture tutorials :)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7AE076AFAFD3C305&feature=plcp
Website: http://eteeskitutorials.com/

Technicat
Introduction to Game Development with Unity including Workflow, Scripting, GUI, Version Control, etc. (for Unity Version 3)
http://drupal.technicat.com/games/unity.html

Terrain Tutorial In-Depth
text-based with screenshots
http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Terrain_tutorial
forum thread
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=16941

TornadoTwins Video Tutorials
They show step by step how to create a simple game using Javascript.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TornadoTwins

Other TornadoTwins projects:
http://www.fpscontrol.com/features (includes tutorials)
http://www.gameprefabs.com

Unity Gems
A website of text-based tutorials. This is a mix of introductory (intermediate) scripting tutorials and more advanced tutorials. Themes currently cover general tips for Unity scripting, Memory Management, Finite State Machines, Quaternions/Rotations and Coroutines. Some content for Boo and Unity Script is provided, several tips and descriptions are more conceptual and should be helpful regardless of the language that is used.
website: http://unitygems.com/

UnityCookie (CGCookie)
A series of tutorials for an introduction to Unity and several scripting video tutorials (using Javascript)
http://cgcookie.com/unity/

UnityScript Basics (Scripting Basics for Noobs)
If you're new to scripting, read up on this good introduction to scripting in Unity. Lots of analogies are provided which makes it really easy to understand. The details are explained for UnityScript, but the introduction is great for any scripting language. This content is not for the most recent version of Unity, but should be helpful nonetheless.
website - http://www.unityscript.com/lessons1/basics.php

Walker Boys Studio - Unity Tutorials from the Guildhall at SMU (an extensive list of tutorials with more on the way). These are for Unity 3, but should still be relevant to get started with some tutorial projects.
http://walkerboystudio.com/html/unity_training___free__.html

Will Goldstone, author of the Unity Game Development book, worked on a series of helpful video tutorials here (using JavaScript):
http://learnunity3d.com/ (also http://learnmesilly.com/).
More recently by Will Goldstone: http://www.unity3dstudent.com/

PAID TUTORIALS

Design3.com (subscription-based tutorials, Unity-related content among other software like Maya, 3DS Max, Photoshop) [For Unity 3.5, not Unity 4]
http://www.design3.com/software/unity

Digital Tutors - (250+ subscription-based tutorials) [For Unity 3.4/3.5, not Unity 4]
http://www.digitaltutors.com/training/unity-tutorials

Polypusher.net Tai-Pan Development Set Tutorial Series
Standalone tutorials that give insights into Polypusher's development processes of their RTS Tai-Pan. All assets are included royalty-free and tutorials are delivered as videos or pdf-documents. I have not tested their tutorials yet, but their work seems impressive and of high quality.
website - http://www.tuition.polypusher.net/ [Using Unity 3]

VTC - Unity tutorial using JavaScript (subscription based content on vtc.com) [Using Unity 3]
http://www.vtc.com/products/Introduction-to-Game-Development-Using-Unity-3D-Tutorials.htm
Unity-Tutorials (mostly paid and some free tutorials)
http://www.unity-tutorials.com/

Once you went through some or all of these tutorials, you should be creating your own content in no time. Next, I'll provide an overview of general resources for Unity. Whenever you need to find some information about Unity, scripting, projects, collaborations or anything Unity-related, check these links out:

Searching for resources - The All-In-One Unity Reference Search
http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=001712401338047450041:csfhqk-trfa
credit goes to Robotduck for providing this link to the public; tremendous time saver (see http://robotduck.wordpress.com/)

Unity Scripting Reference
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/index.html

Unity Component Reference
each available Component described in detail
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Components/index.html

Unity Wiki (UnifyCommunity)
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
UnityScript Keywords: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=UnityScript_Keywords

Unity Answers
Invaluable when you have specific questions about Unity or Scripting
http://answers.unity3d.com/
This link should also get you started on learning Unity
http://answers.unity3d.com/search?q=learning+tutorial

Unity Forum
http://forum.unity3d.com/
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=30633

Unity Feedback
feature requests go here
http://feedback.unity3d.com

Unity IRC
Point your favorite IRC client to irc.freenode.net and join #unity3d to chat in real time.

Overview of Unity Resources
http://www.reddit.com/r/unity_tutorials/

Overview of Unity blogs
http://www.reddit.com/r/unity_blogs/

Unity Extensions

Terrain Toolkit
External Lightmapping Tool
Locomotion System
Explosion Framework
Head Look Controller

http://unity3d.com/support/resources/unity-extensions/
overview of some extensions – Unity youtube and vimeo channels
http://www.youtube.com/user/Unity3D

Visual C# Express- free IDE for your C# development
http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads/#2008-Visual-CS

AngryAnt
One of Unity's developers provides projects to extend Unity's functionality (e.g. pathfinding and AI)
http://angryant.com/

Antares Project - Extensive Set of Tools to extend the Unity Editor - Open Source
Also available: Antares.dll (free for non-commercial work)
forum thread - http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=50843
Unity Asset Store: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/search/antares

Starscene Software - Tools, Games and Utilities for Unity (purchase required for utilities)
http://www.starscenesoftware.com
e.g. Vectrosity - Line Drawing Tool
http://starscenesoftware.com/vectrosity.html
Fractscape - Terrain Tool
Stitchscape - Stitch multiple terrains together

NGUI - GUI builder/editor (purchase required)
http://www.tasharen.com/?page_id=140Asset Store: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/2413

EZ Game Saver, EZGUI, SpriteManager2 - saving tool (purchase required)
http://www.anbsoft.com/middleware/

Overview of extensions on UnifyWiki
http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Extensions

LightUp (purchase required)
Extension of Google Sketchup (Lighting Solution) which works nicely for exporting lightmaps to Unity
http://www.light-up.co.uk/

Plugin for Kinect's Primesense Camera (unknown whether this works with Unity 4)
forum thread - http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/67982-Kinect-plugin

Tools for Visual Programming:
Antares Universe - Vizio (forum thread)
cost $75 (50% off)
Visual programming tool similar to the approaches of Quest3D and Virtools.Asset Store: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/495

Playmaker by Hutong Games
cost $45 (50% off)
Visual State Machine Editor (website and forum thread)Asset Store: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/368

Update Log:
05/15/2012: added GamerToGameDeveloper tutorials (section user tutorials)
11/2/2012: added UnityGems (user tutorials)
03/31/2013: Completely updated all links and removed a lot of old and dead content, added books and new Unity 4 sources