Industry Fundamentals template: Learn how to use key Unity tools for 3D interactive industrial applications

Industry Fundamentals, our first-ever in-Editor tutorial (IET) for Unity Industry developers, is now available to download in the Unity Hub.

This learning template consists of four tutorials that guide you through the workflows and steps to create a 3D interactive industrial application in Unity. New and intermediate Industry developers can explore it to advance their knowledge about converting CAD files to optimized 3D assets, using real-time data in user interfaces, camera systems, and more.

Our aim with Industry Fundamentals is to help make your Unity development experience more efficient, focused, and productive. The tips you’ll pick up apply across many types of real-time 3D industrial applications, including human-machine interfaces (HMIs), training simulations, digital twins, and product configurators.

Industry Fundamentals is built for Unity 6.4 and is free for Unity Industry subscribers and those with a 30-day Industry trial.

The finished scene in the template is a working warehouse simulation with autonomous robots, a real-time monitoring dashboard, dynamic camera behavior, and high-quality lighting and assets.

Convert and optimize 3D data with Unity Asset Transformer Toolkit

The project’s starting point is the Unity Asset Transformer Toolkit (included in a Unity Industry subscription). Fully integrated with the Editor, Asset Transformer Toolkit converts and optimizes large and complex files, from any CAD and 3D source, into Unity-ready 3D assets, making the tedious asset preparation stage smooth and efficient.

The tutorial guides you through the installation process for the Asset Transformer Toolkit, integrating it correctly into your Unity project, and setting up an automated asset preparation workflow in the Editor.

The IET introduces you to rule sets in your Asset Transformer Toolkit, which you can use to automatically apply a sequence of transformations and fixes to any asset you need to reimport into your project. This ensures that modifications you’ve made to your 3D models in the Editor are kept if you need to reimport those models as source data changes.

You’ll also see how to optimize a 3D model for Unity, including applying decimation (reduced poly count), fixing normals, removing holes, and cleaning up the hierarchy for better scene management.

See how to implement NavMesh, C# architecture, and real-time data in UI

With the assets now ready to use in the Editor, the template guides you through the implementation of key systems in the final scene. These features include:

• UI Toolkit: The dashboard is built with Unity’s UI Toolkit and displays live robot data during the simulation, like battery and health. Data binding keeps the UI in sync with the simulation or real-time data from any data source, without manual updates in code.
• Navigation: Robots navigate autonomously using Unity’s NavMesh system, with C# logic that allows users to toggle robot pathfinding between manual control and a fully autonomous mode.
• Scripting: The simulation is driven by a set of C# scripts that handle robot behavior, state management, and data flow using ScriptableObjects to keep the data layer decoupled.
• Cinemachine: The scene uses the Cinemachine virtual camera system to manage camera behavior, demonstrating how it can integrate with runtime UI and scene logic.
• Universal Render Pipeline (URP): The scene is rendered using URP for optimized real-time lighting, baked lightmaps, and high-quality visuals across platforms, including the web.

Get access to the Industry Fundamentals template

If you are a Unity Industry subscriber:

1. Open the Unity Hub.

2. Create a new project.

3. Select Unity 6.4 as your Editor version and the template will be available to open in the Editor.

If you don’t have a Unity Industry subscription:

1. Go to our free trial page and follow the instructions to get a free trial.

2. Once your trial is active, follow the same steps as for Industry subscribers.

Finally, watch our 10-part video series that provides a great introduction to the template:

The best way to learn is to build. We hope you’ll download the template today, explore it, and use it as a springboard to building your next interactive 3D application.