Expert guides

This Expert Guides section draws together pieces of work written by Unity’s area experts in their own words. Here, Unity developers provide detailed insights into features and topics relevant to using Unity and how to get the most out of it.

Some of these documents originated as blog posts, thers were written specificially for this section by developers who want to get their knowledge into your hands directly. Because their length and format differs from the the User Manual’s normal style, we provide them to you as downloadable PDFs or Google documents.

Guides

Windows Performance Analysis
Author: Tautvydas Zilys, Developer - Windows Team
Date: 2016–06–15
Synopsis: This extensive set of guides from Tautvydas explains how to use Event Tracing for Windows to analyze your Windows-based games, including both standalone players and Universal Windows Platform players running on all PCs and devices, as well as in the Unity Editor. Example files used in this expert guide: Unity+CPU+MF+DotNet+DXGI Unity+CPU+MF+DXGI VirtualAlloc

Particle System Modules FAQ
Author: Karl Jones, Developer - Sustained Engineering
Date: 2016–04–20
Synopsis: Karl talks through scripting access to the particle system modules, and explains what goes on under the hood when you access and edit particle system properties in your code. (originally posted on the Unity blog)

Realtime GI on desktops and consoles
Author: Jesper Mortensen, Graphics Engineer - GI & Lighting Lead
Date: 2015–11–05
Synopsis: Jesper goes into detail about the techniques used to produce The Courtyard, a demo that puts the precomputed realtime GI features in Unity 5 to good use. (originally posted on the Unity blog)

Monitor Calibration
Author: Laurent Harduin, Senior Lighting Artist
Date: 2016–10–28
Synopsis: Monitor Calibration ensures you get true and consistent colors and luminance on your monitor. It is an often overlooked development practice that is essential when working with a team of artists or developers. This guide takes you through the process of calibrating your monitor step-by-step.

Using Enlighten with Unity
Author: Kasper Engelstoft, Developer - Lighting Team
Date: 2017–01–17
Synopsis: This guide details how Unity uses Enlighten for computing global illumination. Kasper Englestoft explains the workflow and the equations Unity uses to calculate lighting, and the benefits of using it.

High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI)
Author: Sébastien Lagarde, Developer - Rendering Research
Date: 2017–03–09
Synopsis: This extensive guide details many aspects of capturing and using HDRIs. Sébastien Lagarde explains the implementation and calibration of HDRIs in Unity, to help you achieve accurate real world environmental lighting.