The Benefits of Prefabs - Unity Game Development Tutorial

In this Unity game development tutorial we'll be looking at how to make the most out of the prefab system.

The prefab system lets you store a GameObject and all of it's configuration as a reusable asset. If you want to have more than one instance of an object in a Scene or you want to use an object in multiple scenes, then you'll want to store that object as a prefab.

1. To get started let's create a new 3D project in Unity Hub.

2. Add a Plane to the scene by clicking the plus button on the Hierarchy panel and selecting 3D Object->Plane. We're going to use this plane to represent our floor.

3. Create a new empty game object by clicking the plus button on the Hierarchy panel and selecting Create Empty. 

4. Rename the new empty object to 'House' in the Inspector panel.

5. We're going to use this empty object to group lots of other objects together. Start by adding a cube by right clicking on the 'House' in the hierarchy and selecting 3D Object->Cube.

6. Set the transform for the cube in the inspector panel to the values shown below

7. Now we'll create a prefab for our House so that it can be reused over and over again. To do this click and drag the House from the Hierarchy panel to the Project panel. You should now see a thumbnail representing the prefab.

8. If you now drag the prefab thumbnail from the Project panel onto the scene view it will create another instance of the prefab that is identical to the original except for its position.

9. Currently our House doesn't look much like a house. We'll sort that out shortly, but before we do we'll make a few changes to the appearance of the scene. First of all we'll set the lighting to auto generate. Select Window->Rendering->Lighting Settings from the main menu, and then tick the box labelled 'Auto Generate'

10. Next we'll add a material to the floor. To do this click on the plus button in the Project panel and select Material. Name the new material 'Floor'. Set the colour of the material to dark grey by clicking on the box next to Albedo in the Inspector panel and selecting the desired colour.

11. Assign the material by dragging it from the Project panel onto the Plane in the Scene view.

12. Now we can start improving our prefab. To do this click on the House in the Hierarchy and then select 'Open Prefab' in the Inspector panel.

13. From here we can modify our prefab. Let's start by adding a roof to our house. Click on the plus button on the Hierarchy panel and selecting 3D Object->Cube. Set the transform of the new cube to the values shown below.

14. The house will now have a roof. Click on the save button at the top right to save the changes to the prefab.

15. Return to the scene editor by clicking on the arrow next to the prefab name in the Hierarchy

When you return to the scene view you'll see that both instances of the house now have a roof. This is really powerful as it means you only need to make changes in one place to update many instances of an object.

16. It may be that we don't want all instances to appear or behave in exactly the same way. The prefab system supports this by allowing you to override values for individual instance. Let's add a chimney to one of the houses by right clicking on it in the Hierarchy panel and  panel and selecting 3D Object->Cube. Set the transform of the new cube to the values shown below.

Now we have one house with a chimney and one without.

17. If we now decided that we wanted all our houses to have chimneys we can apply the individual changes to the prefab. To do this click on the Overrides dropdown in the Inspector panel for the house with the chimney and select 'Apply All'.

This applies the overrides to the prefab and to all instances.

18. Now let's add some colour to our houses. Add a new material in the Project panel and call it 'Walls'. Set the Albedo colour of the material to red.

19. Add another new material. Call it 'Roof' and set the Albedo colour to brown.

20. Open the prefab editor for the House by selecting the prefab in the Project panel and selecting 'Open Prefab' in the Inspector panel. Now drag the Walls material onto the base of the house and the chimney, and the Roof material onto the roof.

21. The final thing we'll add to our house is a door. To do this click the plus button on the Hierarchy panel and select 3D Object->Quad. Set the transform of the quad to the values shown below.

22. Create a new blue material and drag it onto the door to assign it.

23. Save the prefab and return to the scene to see that all the changes have been applied to both houses.

24. One other really powerful feature of prefabs is the concept of prefab variants. This allows you to override aspects of a prefab and store it as a prefab in its own right. Let's create a variant of our house that has a green door rather than a blue one. Create a new material and set the Albedo colour to green.

25. Assign the new material to the door of one of the houses by dragging the material onto the door in the Scene view.

26. Now we have a house with a green door we can save it as a variant of the prefab. To do this drag the house from the Hierarchy to the Project panel. When prompted, select that you wish to create a 'Prefab Variant'

27. You'll now hove two prefabs. One with a blue door and one with a green one.

28. Drag the two prefabs onto the Scene view a few times. Rotate and position them however you like and see how easy it is now to create a cluster of houses.

29. The other great thing about prefab variants is that they are still linked to the parent prefab and changes made there will apply to the variants. For example, if we open the original prefab for the house with the blue door and reposition the door quad as follows.

When we return to the Scene view, all the houses have the new door position regardless of whether they are blue or green!

That covers everything for this tutorial. We hope you found it useful. Please leave any questions or feedback in the comments below, and don't forget to subscribe to get notified when we publish our next post.

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