Unite 2012 stuff

Lane

For those that don't keep plugged in with Unity:
http://unity3d.com/unite/

A few articles from the convention
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176316/Unity_adds_Online_Services_store_promises_Windows_8_support.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176341/David_Helgason_details_most_ambitious_Unity_engine_yet.php

Windows 8 support, Asset store plugin branch, Mechanim generic reusable animations, Flash support, GUI Improvements, built in Timeline for scene objects to alleviate extra scripting, Unity 4 beta right around the corner, other goodies.

I'm happy to see so many changes on the way.

Farfarer

The beta's out now, by the way...

jerry

Windows 8 support, Asset store plugin branch, Mechanim generic reusable animations, Flash support, GUI Improvements, built in Timeline for scene objects to alleviate extra scripting, Unity 4 beta right around the corner, other goodies.

I'm happy to see so many changes on the way.

The bold stuff was said the be in an alpha state. Pretty sure they won't ship that in 4.

Lane

I think a lot of what the mentioned is going to be aimed at dot releases.

Luxxa

jerry wrote: »

The bold stuff was said the be in an alpha state. Pretty sure they won't ship that in 4.

In official forum I read that new GUI not is in 4.0

renderhjs

Luxxa wrote: »

In official forum I read that new GUI not is in 4.0

Same with Windows 8 "metro" integration support.

I think they will however have

• complete new particle engine (in 3.5 it was only half ported)
• animation system
• DX 11 support

so yeah some of the more interesting stuff still remains to be released afterwards. Also I wonder about their Chrome native code support which they announced they would support as well some time ago.

LoTekK

Dx11 and the new animation system are already in the beta. Haven't messed with the dx11 stuff yet, but the new animation system is pretty rad.

bugo

They are still lacking on having a better shader editor that supports mobile devices. For non coders that is a must.

renderhjs

actually I'd be interested in the things that are not yet well in 4.0 - kinda what to watch out for or what not to expect in 4.0 yet.

Like did anyone play with the new particle engine - is it all wrapped now or are some features still not implemented? Or the new animation system, is it full featured or are some things still part of something that needs to evolve?

commander_keen

I used the animation system a bit. Its a basic hierarchy state machine system where you can define states and then blend trees within those states that look at variables (you set these through code) to do blending. You can switch states based on variables with simple condition logic. There are also layers which are useful for setting up multiple states that happen at the same time, like you have one layer that controls idling, walking, running, turning, then another layer that handles weapon firing animation, which can be masked to only effect the upper body.

There is also root motion control that uses foot movement to move an object, but I havent used it so Im not sure how it interacts with physics or what kind of control you have over it through the api.

renderhjs

Ah thanks for that insight, appreciated.

LoTekK

In addition to the state machine, it also is able to do runtime retargeting of animations. Once you've got your character set up (quite a quick and intuitive process in and of itself), you can pretty much apply other animations to it in a snap, despite any differences in proportions. To test this, I took the included animation sets from the Mecanim demo tutorial project (mocap, so standard human proportions), and threw them on a guy with super short legs and massive upper body and arms. With a couple of quick tweaks to the character setup, the animations mapped almost perfectly, and quite painlessly. The entire blendtree/state machine system is wrapped up in an Animator component, so you can access a lot of stuff directly through the API.

The other thing is the tools for trimming and looping (and blending) mocap animations. Quite impressed with how intuitive they've made that process.

Particles-wise, they haven't updated Shuriken yet in the public beta build (no arbitrary particle collision that they showed off in the Unite demonstration, for example).

monster

Started using the Unity 4 beta. I really like the new Mecanim animation system. It's very similar to Natural Motion's Morpheme, but with fewer options. I consider that a good thing, because Morpheme has a tendency to overwhelm anybody that starts using it.

I had a character walk/run blending with jumping and upper body attacking on a controller in about 10 minutes.

I still hope they do something about all the damn meta files. It's annoying to use Unity with source control. Even working on a small project with just 3 or 4 people I have to delete my game directory and force sync at least once a week.

Ehsan Gamer

I watched the Keynote . The Mecanim is awesome .

I hoped they had implemented a Visual Material Editor Like UDK but not yet .

I'm working with SSE now but it lacks lots of stuffs .