Creating ball prefab and assigning it a rigidbody

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Hey, so I'm doing an online gamedev course and I'm having some trouble understanding a bit of code. I numbered each line of code and the comments/questions are below with the corresponding number.

 if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.LeftArrow))
         {
          1  GameObject Instance =  Instantiate(ballPrefab); 
          2  Rigidbody rb = Instance.GetComponent<Rigidbody>(); 
          3  rb.velocity = Vector3.left*speed; 
         }

So on this line, Instantiate creates a ball prefab and assigns it to the GameObject Instance, correct?
This takes the ball prefab that was assigned the name Instance and assigns it a rigidbody, or is it just creating a rigidbody to be assigned later on? This line is where I'm most confused.
Takes the rigidbody object and assigns it a velocity.

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by danmw3 · Apr 07, 2017 at 03:43 PM

Instantiate creates a clone of the prefab you provide. The prefab is in the form of a GameObject and the clone is in the form of a GameObject. So on line one you are creating a clone of ballPrefab and assigning it to a local variable called Instance which is a GameObject.

GetComponent attempts to retrieve a specified component(script) from a GameObject. If the component does not currently exist on the GameObject then it will provide a null value. So on line two you are attempting to grab the Rigidbody component and assign it to a local variable called rb which is a Rigidbody.

You are on the right track and I hope this clears some things up. Here are the Unity API docs for future reference: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/

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mdm5382 · Apr 08, 2017 at 12:12 AM 0

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Thank you. I do understand this better now.

Creating ball prefab and assigning it a rigidbody

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