A Beginner's Guide To Machine Learning with Unity (Udemy.com)

Advanced games AI with genetic algorithms, neural networks & Q-learning in C# and Tensorflow for Unity

( 425 Reviews )

Created by: Penny de Byl

Produced in 2021

What you will learn

Build a genetic algorithm from scratch in C#.
Build a neural network from scratch in C#.
Setup and explore the Unity ML-Agents plugin.
Setup and use Tensorflow to train game characters.
Apply newfound knowledge of machine learning to integrate contemporary research ideas in the field into their own projects.
Distill the mathematics and statistic behind machine learning to working program code.
Use a Proximal Policy Optimisation to train a neural network.

Quality Score

Content Quality

Video Quality

Qualified Instructor

Course Pace

Course Depth & Coverage

Overall Score : 92 / 100

Course Description

What if you could build a character that could learn while it played? Think about the types of gameplay you could develop where the enemies started to outsmart the player. This is what machine learning in games is all about. In this course, we will discover the fascinating world of artificial intelligence beyond the simple stuff and examine the increasingly popular domain of machines that learn to think for themselves.
In this course, Penny introduces the popular machine learning techniques of genetic algorithms and neural networks using her internationally acclaimed teaching style and knowledge from a Ph.D in game character AI and over 25 years experience working with games and computer graphics. In addition she's written two award winning books on games AI and two others best sellers on Unity game development. Throughout the course you will follow along with hands-on workshops designed to teach you about the fundamental machine learning techniques, distilling the mathematics in a way that the topic becomes accessible to the most noob of novices.
Learn how to program and work with:

genetic algorithms
neural networks
human player captured training sets
reinforcement learning
Unity's ML-Agent plugin
Tensorflow

Contents and Overview
The course starts with a thorough examination of genetic algorithms that will ease you into one of the simplest machine learning techniques that is capable of extraordinary learning. You'll develop an agent that learns to camouflage, a Flappy Bird inspired application in which the birds learn to make it through a maze and environment-sensing bots that learn to stay on a platform.
Following this, you'll dive right into creating your very own neural network in C# from scratch. With this basic neural network, you will find out how to train behaviour, capture and use human player data to train an agent and teach a bot to drive. In the same section you'll have the Q-learning algorithm explained, before integrating it into your own applications.
By this stage, you'll feel confident with the terminology and techniques used throughout the deep learning community and be ready to tackle Unity's experimental ML-Agents. Together with Tensorflow, you'll be throwing agents in the deep-end and reinforcing their knowledge to stay alive in a variety of game environment scenarios.
By the end of the course, you'll have a well-equipped toolset of basic and solid machine learning algorithms and applications, that will see you able to decipher the latest research publications and integrate the latest developments into your work, while keeping abreast of Unity's ML-Agents as they evolve from experimental to production release.
What students are saying about this course:

Absolutely the best beginner to Advanced course for Neural Networks/ Machine Learning if you are a game developer that uses C# and Unity. BAR NONE x Infinity.
A perfect course with great math examples and demonstration of the TensorFlow power inside Unity. After this course, you will get the strong basic background in the Machine Learning.
The instructor is very engaging and knowledgeable. I started learning from the first lesson and it never stopped. If you are interested in Machine Learning , take this course.

Who this course is for:

Anyone wanting to learn about the potential of machine learning in games.
Anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the algorithms and theories underlying Unity's ML-Agents.
Anyone wanting to know how to setup and work with ML-Agents.

Time: 12.5h

Instructor Details

Penny de Byl

4.6 Rating
425 Reviews

Hi, I'm Dr Penny de Byl. I'm a full stack developer of most things computer sciency and academic with a true passion for teaching. I've been teaching others about games development, programming, computer graphics, animation and web design for over 25 years in universities in Australia and Europe at the full professor level. I've also consulted for Unity, SAE, the Australian Institute of Entertainment and Wikitude. My best selling textbooks including Holistic Game Development with Unity are used in over 100 institutions world-wide. My graduates work at companies like Apple, Ubisoft, LinkedIn and Deloitte Digital.
I have an honours degree in computer graphics and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence for games characters. Over the course of my career I've won numerous awards for teaching excellence at the state, national and international levels including the Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Excellence in Teaching Award and the Unity Mobile Game Curriculum Competition. My approach to teaching computer science and related fields is project-based giving you hands-on workshops you can immediately get your teeth into.
I want you to leave my virtual classroom fully armed with a toolkit of skills for life-long learning. I'm excited to now be focussing my efforts full-time on Udemy to bring my years of knowledge and experience to those eager to learn about technology.

Hi, I'm Dr Penny de Byl. I'm a full stack developer of most things computer sciency and academic w

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Reviews

4.6

425 total reviews

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Write a Review

By Daniel Cortes on 12/20/2020

la leccion fue muy agradable, alguno que otro video no se logra distinguir bien desde el computador, pero la teoria es perfecta

By Jesse Williams on 12/20/2020

As always, Dr. Penny de Byl has hit it out of the park with this course.
I came into this course with a strong grasp of C# and Unity, and a fundamental (academic) understanding of ML, and learned a tremendous amount. The instructor, in all of her courses, always finds that perfect balance between deep explanation (for beginners) and allowing the student to gain new knowledge (for intermediate students) without being so technical as to lose the former or so basic as to lose the latter.
I've enrolled in, and at least partially consumed, several of her courses and so far I've found every one to be fantastic. Take any of her courses and you won't be disappointed.

By Mathews Nunes de Holanda Cavalcanti on 11/22/2020

It is being awesome until now! Penny explains the theoretical concepts in a very simple and useful way!

By Jorge Sebastian Mora Lara on 11/6/2020

Very good course, it explains well the bases of machine learning, the only thing is that it needs an update to the section that talks about the package ml-agents of unity to work with reinforcement learning

By Junaid Malik on 11/4/2020

Awesome course from Dr. Penny as always.

By Ivaylo Dimitrov on 10/1/2020

Great Course !

By Bar KES on 8/25/2020

Title is very difficult and codes are hard to understand :(

By Juan Carlos Granados Cardona on 8/22/2020

so far it has filed my expectations

By Holosim on 8/18/2020

The content is important to me right now. Video #6 is hard to see much of the slide content on screen. Based on other videos from this instructor, I'm confident it will get better.

By Anonymized User on 7/26/2020

good course to open vision for machine learning

By Patrick D Pope on 7/25/2020

Thanks Penny, your courses are just the right speed for me. You also have a good variety to choose from. Switching from course to course is easy since there is continuity in the teaching style. This ML stuff is great. You've brought a lot of clarity to topics I've struggled with in the past. I'd love to see a course on creating user interfaces in Unity or at least a section attached to one of the other courses.

By Dmitry Belyaev on 7/16/2020