Glossary

Animation blend tree

Used for continuous blending between similar Animation Clips based on float Animation Parameters. More info

Animation clip

Animation data that can be used for animated characters or simple animations. An animation clip is one piece of motion, such as (one specific instance of) “Idle”, “Walk” or “Run”. More info

Animation parameters

Used to communicate between scripting and the Animator Controller. Some parameters can be set in scripting and used by the controller, while other parameters are based on Custom Curves in Animation Clips and can be sampled using the scripting API. More info

Animator window

The window where the Animator Controller is visualized and edited. More info

Collider

An invisible shape that is used to handle physical collisions for an object. A collider doesn’t need to be exactly the same shape as the object’s mesh - a rough approximation is often more efficient and indistinguishable in gameplay. More info

Collision

A collision occurs when the physics engine detects that the colliders of two GameObjects make contact or overlap, and at least one has a Rigidbody component and is in motion. More info

GameObject

The fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. More info

HeightMesh

A navmesh that contains additional data that is used to more accurately determine the height at any point along the navmesh. More info

Hierarchy

Unity uses the concept of parent-child hierarchies, or parenting, to group GameObjects. An object can contain other GameObjects that inherit its properties. More info

Input Geometry

The geometry to consider when baking the navmesh. More info

Inspector

A Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, asset or project settings, allowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info

Mesh

The main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info

A mesh that Unity generates to approximate the walkable areas and obstacles in your environment for path finding and AI-controlled navigation. More info

Prefab

An asset type that allows you to store a GameObject complete with components and properties. The prefab acts as a template from which you can create new object instances in the scene. More info

Rasterization

The process of generating an image by calculating pixels for each polygon or triangle in the geometry. This is an alternative to ray tracing.

Rigidbody

A component that allows a GameObject to be affected by simulated gravity and other forces. More info

Root motion

Motion of character’s root node, whether it’s controlled by the animation itself or externally. More info

Scene

A Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info

Scripts

A piece of code that allows you to create your own Components, trigger game events, modify Component properties over time and respond to user input in any way you like. More info

Terrain

The landscape in your scene. A Terrain GameObject adds a large flat plane to your scene and you can use the Terrain’s Inspector window to create a detailed landscape. More info

Unity unit

The unit size used in Unity projects. By default, 1 Unity unit is 1 meter. To use a different scale, set the Scale Factor in the Import Settings when importing assets. More info

Voxel

A 3D pixel. More info