Creating A Scene Template In Unity 2020.2 And Above

Today I’m showing you how to quickly create a Unity Scene Template to easily create new custom scenes within your project.

Today’s Objective: Give a straightforward guide to creating and using a Scene Template in Unity, and the benefits they can provide.

Note: Unity’s official documentation is here.

What is a Scene Template?

While using Unity version 2020.2 or above, you may have noticed a new option under the File menu:

Scene Templates are a way to simplify the creation of new scenes in a specific project, when you know what needs to be in it, or often need to duplicate scenes.

I personally use Scene Templates to instantly add all my default GameObject “folders” to each scene for organization.

From here, I can build whatever type of game/project I want without needing to spend a minute or 2 creating all the objects again.

Creating a Scene Template:

The creation process is very simple, and I will now guide you through it.

First, open/setup the scene you want to convert to a template:

Once saved as a template, all new scenes created using this template will start off with all these objects.

Now choose “File/Save As Scene Template”. It will open a save dialog asking you where to save it.

If you haven’t already saved your current scene, it will also ask you to save it now too.

After saving successfully, and clicking on the newly created template file, you will see some empty options in the Inspector:

These can be filled out to better organize the scene template, giving it a title for the Create New Scene window, as well as an optional preview image.

Using a Scene Template:

By clicking on “File/New Scene”, you will open the Create New Scene window, which shows the built-in Unity templates, as well as any custom templates you’ve made.

By choosing one of these options, you will use that template to create a new scene in your project. Any objects existing in the template will be replicated into the new scene.

Depending on your requirements/project, Scene Templates can save a whole lot of time in creating new scenes, so they are a great addition to Unity’s features.