The Unity editor in 5 windows

your project so far▸ SampleScene.unity ▸ rename to Arena.unity

A tour of the default scene Unity made for you. You create your own in the next lesson.

The Unity window looks crowded, but you will spend 95% of your time in five panels. Learn those and the rest stops being scary.

animated diagram

Watch each panel light up: Hierarchy, Scene, Inspector, Project, Console.

What each panel is for

Hierarchy — the list of everything in the current scene. This is the scene's table of contents.
Scene view — the 3D workspace where you place and move things. This is not the game, it is your workshop.
Game view — what the camera actually sees. This is the game.
Inspector — every property of whatever is selected. Position, colour, your script fields.
Project — the files on disk: models, textures, scripts, prefabs. This survives when you close the scene.
Console — errors, warnings and your Debug.Log lines. Read it when something misbehaves.

animated diagram

The Hierarchy tree and the 3D scene are the same data seen two ways.

Make the folders before you make the files

Unity does not care how you arrange Assets/ — but by tab 04 it holds a couple of hundred files, and tidying up then is expensive: every move has to happen inside Unity or the links break. So build the whole tree now, in one go. Nine folders, half a minute, and every lesson after this one has somewhere to put what it makes.

Assets/ — every folder this course uses, and nothing more

Assets/
  Scenes/      Arena.unity + Intro.unity
  Scripts/     every .cs you write
  Prefabs/     P_Cube, P_Fireball
  Materials/   M_Floor, M_Block
  Models/      Knight.fbx, art you import
  Animations/  AC_Knight and clips
  Data/        skill and artifact assets
  Audio/       music and effects
  Settings/    URP and input assets

Library/  Temp/  Logs/  Builds/

1
In the Project panel click the Assets folder once, so the new folder lands inside it instead of inside whatever was selected.
2
Right-click → Create▸Folder, type the name, press Enter. Type it straight away: a folder left as "New Folder" is one you will forget to rename.
3
Repeat until all nine are there. Unity may have made Settings already — if you see it, leave it alone rather than making a second one.

A prefix instead of one folder per type: P_ for prefabs, M_ for materials, AC_ for animator controllers. The panel sorts by name, so the prefix does the grouping for free.
Library/, Temp/ and Logs/ are caches Unity rebuilds on its own whenever they are missing, and Builds/ is where your finished APK lands in tab 05. Deleting any of them is safe. Committing them to git is not.
From here on, the strip at the top of every lesson shows this same tree, with what you already have and what the lesson adds — so you always know which folder a new file belongs in.

Moving around the Scene view

Hold Right mouse and use W A S D to fly, like a first-person game.
Scroll wheel zooms. Alt + left drag orbits around the selection.
Select an object and press F to frame it. This is the shortcut you will use most.

The transform tools

Q hand (pan) · W move · E rotate · R scale · T rect
Red = X axis, green = Y (up), blue = Z (forward). Unity is Y-up, left-handed.

Play mode — the one trap

1
Press Ctrl/Cmd + P or the ▶ button to enter Play mode and test.
2
Changes you make while playing are thrown away the moment you stop.
3
Tint the editor so you notice: Edit▸Preferences▸Colors▸Playmode tint.
4
Save often with Ctrl/Cmd + S — that saves the scene, not the project.