Exercise files

- If you have access to the exercise files for this course, you may notice that the archive is using a slightly different extension than the normal .zip files you're probably used to. This .7z format is very similar to a zip archive, but the compression is much better. Since Unity projects can be quite large, we chose to use a .7z file to save you over six gigabytes worth of download. Be aware though that the full set of uncompressed exercise files is over 13 gigabytes in size. So, make sure you have enough hard drive space available before you extract them. To open the exercise files, you're going to need an application that can extract a .7z archive.

I'll go to 7-zip.org, www.7-zip.org. This is the official homepage for the 7-zip format. And they have a free application for Windows for extracting these files. You'll need to check if you're running a 32 or 64-bit version of Windows, and download the appropriate installer. The beta releases are often more stable than the stable releases from five years ago, so I'd recommend you install one of those first, and in the very rare case that something does go wrong, you can always fall back to the older version.

For Windows users, once you've followed the instructions in the installer, you should be able to right-click on the 7-zip file, and from the 7-zip submenu, choose the option Extract to Exercise Files to extract everything in its own directory. If you're on a Mac, the download page of 7-zip.org links to two separate projects. I'll click on Download and scroll down to the bottom. Under some unofficial p7zip packages for Linus and other systems, we've got keka, the free Mac file archiver. I'll click on that link and that takes me to kekaosx.com.

This is a free program if you download it from their site, or it's available in the Mac App Store for $1.99. Once you've installed it, it should set itself up to be the default application for extracting .7z files. So, if you double-click the archive, it will extract for you. Once you have the exercise files extracted, all of the working 3ds MAX, Maya, Photoshop, and Unity projects will be there as normal, and ready to accompany the lessons.