How has the appearance/graphics of Unity changed in different versions??

I decided to download a bunch of different unity versions (version 4,5, 2017,2018) but I think you can only install one at a time, so I just installed 4.

I wanted to know in what way did the graphics change from 4 to 5 and from 5 to 2017-2018?
.. Do all the versions essentially look the same, but with some improvements? Or do they all look drastically different from one another?

( I'm trying to choose a graphical style that suits my game, in case you're wondering why)

 

You can install many versions at a time.

Also style is more up to you than the engine.

 

You... downloaded Unity 4? It hasn't seen a new content update since like 2015. You actually really have to go out of your way to even find it. Just grab the latest version through Hub.

 

Unity 4 to 5 saw the biggest change with PBR. Alot of work needed to convert a project from 4 to 5. Going from 5 to 2019 is less work.

edit: artistic style and Unity version has very little correlation

 

Really?? Do they have to be in separate directories, or can they all be in C:\...\Program Files(x86)?

I don' t really agree. I actually switched to Unity because I didn't really the [rendering] style of Unreal Engine ( version 4).

If it helps- what graphical style I'm to emulate specifically is kind of like a cross between an early PS2 game and pre-rendered CGI point and click adventure games from the early 1990s- and so far (after playing a few free unity games and taking a quick look a version 4), I'd say Unity looks closer to the graphical style I'm trying to emulate.

A few pictures for reference:

Labyrinth of Time (1993):




Eastern Mind (1994):




Stretch Panic (2001):








Also, do you know like to know if there's a way to switch to/use blinn-phong instead of GGX (specular model) in the newer versions of Unity (5.3+)

 

I meant more the rendering style. See my above post.

 

UE4's rendering style is completely customizable. If you have a solid grasp of shaders you can make just about any modern engine look exactly the way you want it to.

https://gamedevworks.com/blog/ps1-rendering-style-in-ue4/

 

Yes, with additional work. And having a game look like a ps1 game is one extreme example of graphical style. It's kind of like trying to point out the differences between a cel shaded game made with Unity or Unreal. (it would be pretty difficult to tell them apart, because the cel shaded style is so far abstracted from the basic realistic rendering styles of both engines).

But for a more realistic style ( and I am going for a more realistic style- at least in terms of of the lighting) that's when it's very easy distinguish the way Unity and Unreal look different from one another. You can almost immediately tell the two engines apart.

I also picked Unity because in Unreal there is no easy way to make a material/object not use reflection captures. But I found a solution for Unity pretty quickly.

Please let me know if it still works in the newer versions (this post was written in 2015)
https://forum.unity.com/threads/is-...flection-probe-affect-only-one-object.358409/

And please let me know if there is an easy way to switch from GGX specular to blinn-phong in newer versions of Unity.

 

...Not really. You can tell them apart in the default lighting setup, maybe, but if you actually start getting into them it gets a lot more difficult.

 

Not quite sure if this works now but

https://janhalozan.com/2017/08/12/phong-shader/

 

That's only true if you use both engine's default shaders and settings. You should be able to create whatever look that you want in either engine. It's really about what rendering techniques that you decide to use.

If your thinking that downloading an older version of Unity will get you a more retro look, I wouldn't bother with that. Newer versions of Unity still include most of the old graphics features and you'll still have benefit of new features in other areas. Also, if you run in to any technical problems in Unity 4 you might not be able to get support on the forums depending on your question- just a lot of people saying "Sorry, I don't remember how it worked back then."

 

Okay. But would you say that basic lighting set up in version 4 of Unity looks completely different than the newer versions of unity (5, 2017, 2018 ,2019)??

I've decided to not use tone mapping in my game, because it wasn't really used in PS2 games or old point and click adventure games, which is key for emulating that kind of rendering style. Don't know if that changes anything?

 

Well yes, the older versions prior to (5.3) use blinn-phong shading by default.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

So would you say the versions look similar enough to where there wouldn't be much of difference in using one or other?

(I''m not going to use tone mapping at all,just so you know)

 

Go with a more recent Unity version

They can be in Program Files, but should be in seperate folders.

Also, when using Unity Hub, you can define the installation path in the preferences:



If I was now to install e.g. 2019.2.9f1, it will get installed under

D:\Program Files\Unity\2019.2.9f1

. Basically, the folder names are based on the respective Editor version. This way, you can have multiple versions installed.

 

The basic lighting setup is meaningless because when you start a unity project the setup is a single directional light. In 4's case, you don't even have a skybox to start. In fact, 4 is an awful one to start at even compared to 5 because unless you have a Pro license for it, you don't even get access to real time shadows.

 

Definitely. I've got a game I upgraded all the way from 4.x to 2017 or 2018 (I don't remember) and the graphics did not visibly change, because it was still using the same features.

Are you perhaps conflating "graphical style" and "technical limitations"? I ask because you're referencing a piece of hardware and a method of generating images, rather than describing the characteristics of your reference images that you want to replicate. You've also already said you won't use tone mapping, even though that might be a great way to get some of the effect you're after.

Yes, Unity can create low-res, grainy, obviously palletized images with blurry textures if that's what you're after. But is that the stuff you're referring to when you say "graphical style"?

 

All of the same shaders are available in the newer versions. They've been renamed (added the word "legacy" at the beginning because they are old). Use the legacy specular for shiny and legacy diffuse shaders for not-shiny.

 

Good to know. I've got a game made in 5.5.5 that I might want to bring up to date. Conversely, the game we made in 3.5 is staying put in 3.5, haha.

 

@tmr2
I think you simply don't understand how these visual works, neither modern adn retro.

AS such unity and unreal won't help. You need to actually learn about shader editing



Here is an example of a retro shader done with unity by editing shader to look like psx game.

and it's not just shader, you need to have a thorough understanding of the graphic pipeline and techniques used in old game, along with machine limitation to emulate them.

If you know shading a blin phone is just a ndoth, old game had mostly a global light dir as a simple lambert (ndotl) multiplied by an ambient term, most of the level didn't actually receive light, only character, level used painted vertex color. URP and shadergraph can allow you to achieve that look in no time by selecting the fast lighting option (don't do pbr). But you would get better result by doing a custom shader because URP applies per pixel, and those screenshot are probably per vertex lighting.

You have shown some precalc look that use 256 colors with dithering, that's a lot of offline preprocess, it can be tricky to emulate at run time (due to heavy hand selection and correction of palette) and these harsh shadow are probably best emulated with stencil shadow, which unity don't have out of the box, you would need to add them yourself).

The last one is simply using the lambert to mask a grayscale texture that is threshold by the "mask" to obtain the sketchy shading.

Learn shader ASAP, that's the only way, or hire a tech artist.

 

Wow, thanks a lot!

Thanks!

Really? In what way?

Yes. I was also referring to how the used phong/blinn-phong shading as the specular model(instead of GGX) and used reflections inconsistently. Unless something was mirror shiny/metallic, only specular highlights were used. Whereas in Unreal 4 (since it was designed from the ground up to be PBR) reflection captures are always used. I was able to change the shading model to blinn-phong in Unreal, but When I to tried to ask the Unreal forums about how to create custom shader that used no reflection captures I couldn't get any real answers.

 

Tone mapping just maps an input colour to an output colour. So if you make an output LUT which is faux-palletised then when you apply that to your tone mapping shader you'll get faux-palletised output.

Yes, you can change both of these things. Changing the default lighting requires changing a shader, from memory, but it's a bit of shared code so you only have to do it in one place.

You definitely do not have to have everything be shiny. I'm fairly sure you don't in UE4, either.

 

Don't get me wrong, but I think OP is focusing too much on graphics minor details, too early.
In such minor, before having anything working yet.

I got also impression, there is significant gap in technical knowledge, which may make hard understanding suggested directions.

 

5.5 to 5.6 was a pain sadly. Don't rembered exactly all problems but it took us months to make that jump (not full time work offcourse). We actually never shipped 5.6 to production but rather 2017.2 if I remember correctly. Going from 2017 to 2018 and 2019 have had some regression problems that I have had to report. We are still on 2017 LTS in production branch.