In case you missed it... Unity 4.6 Public Beta... Download while it's hot...

Download Unity 4.6 beta
http://unity3d.com/unity/beta/4.6

Release Notes
http://unity3d.com/unity/beta/4.6/release-notes

New UI Tutorials
http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/ui

Beta Release Forum Area
http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/developer-preview-4-6-beta.60/


Unity 4.6 Beta
Features

• New UI System: Design UIs for your game or application using Unity's powerful new component based UI framework and visual tools.
  • Create UIs in screen space with or without perspective and with support for pixel perfect alignment, or in world space for simple creation of in-world interactions.
  • The layout system combines anchoring to sides, corners, or custom points in the parent container with the ability to stretch to a percentage or full extent of the parent width or height. Simple Scene View handles allows intuitive visual control and tweaking of the positional behavior.
  • Build up designs and customized controls composed of image, text, masking, and effects. All graphical components have full support for custom materials and lighting.
  • Built-in controls for buttons, sliders, scroll views, input fields and more have been designed for full cross platform deployment, supporting touch controls and mouse as well as directional navigation such as arrow keys or gamepad controls.
  • The UI system integrates with Unity’s animation smoothly, meaning that you can use state machines and other animation features to control your UI elements and panels.
  • The UI system is designed to be extensible so that it can meet the needs of your projects. Combine existing UI elements together to create new controls, extend existing controls, or write new controls from scratch.
  • Easily set up callbacks for your UI controls in the Inspector using the new persistent delegate system. A lot of functionality can be hooked up to your UI with no programming needed!
• New Rect Tool: In previous versions, rect handles were used only in 2D mode and only for SpriteRenderers. With the introduction of the new UI system that is a hybrid of 2D and 3D, more explicit control is needed to be able to efficiently position elements. The new Rect tool in the main Unity toolbar can be used for sprites, UI elements, and any other object as well. The rect handles have also received an overhaul to be more consistent with the other tools, and to be more useful for a wide variety of uses.
  • Rect handles now support Pivot/Center mode as set in the toolbar as well Local/Global mode as set in the toolbar.
  • Rect handle squashing (holding Control/Command while dragging a side) now supports preserving volume rather than area when holding down Shift.
  • Rect handles for objects that appear small in the Scene View now show a disc handle that can be used to move the object in the plane of the rect. When zooming further in, the disc will fade out as the normal rect handles fade in.
• Extensible Event Messaging System: Use and extend the new Event System framework. The system is used for the new UI to send and receive events, but it can be extended to support custom input devices and custom event logic.
  • Inbuilt support for touch and standalone.
  • Supports 2d, 3d, and UI components.
  • Extensible; add custom input handling and custom events.
• Persistent Delegates (Unity Events): A new way to set callbacks via the UI and have them be built into a player. This helps non-programmers quickly add functionality to your application within the editor.

Improvements

• Core: Added smart-allocating GetComponents<List<T>> method which fetches components of type T and grows the list as needed. Non-generic version that supports interfaces has also been added.
• Core: Add StopCoroutine(Coroutine) function.
• Core: Add callback 'OnTransformParentChanged' to MonoBehaviour. Called whenever a transform, or one of it's parent transforms has been reparented.
• Core: Added Transform.SetParent method that optionally allows setting the parent transform without changing the local position, rotation or scale. For RectTransform it also doesn't change the sizeDelta.
• Core: Implement and expose Transform.TransformVector and Transform.InverseTransformVector so it's no longer necessary to use localToWorldMatrix and WorldToLocalMatrix just to transform vectors with scaling included.
• Core: Add Vector2.SmoothDamp to be consistent with Vector3.SmoothDamp, Mathf.SmoothDamp, and others.
• Core: New API TouchScreenKeyboard.isSupported to check if platform supports on screen keyboard.
• Editor: Reorganized GameObject creation menus with categories such as 3D Object, 2D Object, Light, etc. as well as improved functionality.
  • "Create Empty" now also appears in the hierarchy Create dropdown.
  • The context menu for Game Objects in the hierarchy can now be used to create new Game Objects as children.
• Editor: More details on the error message when failing to add a Component due to already having another component that is incompatible.
• Editor: If during play mode a hierarchy window takes too long to fetch new data a warning icon will appear to advise users frame rate could be affected based upon the chosen hierarchy sorting.
• Editor: Make Scene View camera near and far clip planes use constant multipliers of size rather than four fixed ranges with fixed values that cause popping when transitioning over the thresholds of those ranges. The new ranges are about the same for close and medium zoom but has significantly larger near clip planes when zoomed far out, which reduces z-fighting.
• Editor: Make main Game View used by CameraEditor visualizations and the Canvas be the last focused Game View rather than just the first Game View found.
• Editor: Make sure the screen manager uses the correct game view size in the editor, which is only known on the managed side.
• Mecanim: Allow animation of PPtr types in the animation window (textures, sprites, materials etc).
• Mecanim: Only SendTransformChanged to transforms that are animated. Siblings with no animation will not receive SendTransformChanged
• Mecanim: Only SendTransformChanged when transform values effectively change on a RectTransform.

Changes

• 2D: Sprite Packer is now enabled by default.
• Editor: T is now assigned as default shortcut key for Rect tool. The Sprite Editor trim shortcut key defaults to Shift-T to avoid conflict with the Rect tool.
• Editor: Rect handles now do non-uniform scaling by default for consistency with a large range of other applications. Hold down shift to scale uniformly.
• Editor: The preference default for script language in the Add Component dropdown has been changed from Javascript to C#, since that's the new default for documentation and examples.
• Graphics: Stencil buffer is now available in Unity Free.

Fixes

• Editor: Fix occasional argument out of range exceptions when using Scene View tools.
• Editor: Do not allow picking of locked scene view layer.
• Editor: Ensure ObjectSelector defaults to the Asset tab when selecting PhysicsMaterial2D objects.
• Graphics: Fixed an issue where render texture was not being created due unsupported anti aliasing value on devices like Surface RT.
• Graphics: Compressed sprites are no longer deformed on devices that support NPOT textures.

 

I'm just going to pretend to be a good child who doesn't peek at the presents before christmas morning. I'll just cover my eyes here and... was that a bike? It sure looked like one.

 

Already downloaded.

I'm the evil child who makes a full analysis of the presents before Christmas morning. Already downloaded.

 

Hilarious.

 

At least...

 

Non-allocating multi-component access?

Support for interfaces?

Events on reparenting?

Reparenting with optional local position preservation?

Ability to stop a function-called Coroutine?

I'm eager to check out the new event/messaging stuff, as well. I've always just used C# delegates directly and never had an issue with that, but having a potentially nicer system built in would rock.

 

Anyone else experiencing problems downloading it? My internet connection seems fine doing other stuff and I've never had issues downloading Unity updates in the past. But for some reason with this one it starts really slow and then eventually times out. Most I've gotten to is 0.2 GB of the download.

 

I had an issue with corrupt downloads, then with download speed slowing drastically. It is moving faster again, so here's hoping I get a clean download.

Edit: Success!

 

So what about fixing cloth physics bugs?

 

They said with the new physx in 5 should help with that I believe they said.

 

Probably too many people downloading at once. Someone suggested a torrent option in the past, that could be a good idea.

 

Hi there, If you would like to download this 4.6 beta and analyse it, should you first uninstall the free version you already have, or should you just download and run it? Thanks

 

Same as with any new Version of Unity.
Since it's a Beta you might want to install it separately and make a backup of your current Project just in case. Otherwise you can use it like any other new unity version. Just be aware that it is a beta.

 

Thank you. On the 4.6 beta website, it says: "After you download the 4.6 beta, follow the steps to activate your license." Does this mean one could not use it (separately, as you suggested) for free for 30 days then?

 

I don't know that actually since I'm a pro user. If you're in a hurry I'd suggest just giving it a try.
Chances are if you used your Pro tiral already that you won't get another one for the 4.x cycle unless you ask Unity really really nicely, anyways.

 

I couldn't get the new UI to scale properly so... before anyone falls in love with this, make a menu or two and then try it on different resolutions. I tried the resolution scaling component but no matter what I tried with that and anchors it scaled completely wrong on different screen sizes.

The only case it worked on was when I made a menu in a ratio of 1:1 (800x800). Then it scaled perfectly to other 1:1 ratios lol but no one has square monitors...

 

I didn't think it would be worth posting. I made a single button on a panel, set the anchors so it would try to keep the same size inside the panel and then changed the screen resolution while it was running and the button flew off the page. It sort of worked on some resolutions, but it's easier for me to continue making my menus with code run in OnGUI. I make everything a % of the current screen width and height for perfect scaling on any resolution, even 247x903. It'll look skewed as hell on silly resolutions like that, but it works.

I'll check on it again in Unity5 to see if I have the same issue.

 

I think it's still worth posting. If it's a bug it might get fixed faster or if there's something you overlooked people might spot it and help you out.

 

I was somewhat interested so I could pass the GUI stuff onto my group for a school project, but I decided to take over that part of the project entirely so I don't need a WYSIWYG interface for making the interface. Maybe it's an issue with Mac, maybe it's an issue with retina resolution, don't know. I'm sure I'll give it a go again in the future. If I do, I'll post any bugs I find in the help forums.

 

Yes. It worked (mostly) for another resolution with the same aspect ratio. But then I changed it slightly and the button warped significantly.

 

What is the difference between "transferring a Unity Pro license that somebody has over to machine X" and "entering a Unity Pro licence number on machine X"?

The reason I am asking this (probably basic) question is because I am a novice Unity user and have just started work somewhere with a common machine (let's call it machine X) that other people would use it for other purposes as well, so it is not my private machine to work with.

So, I would like to use my own laptop that already has the trial Beta 4.6 but I am thinking if I activate my own laptop with the Unity Pro license that I am given, then I will not be able to activate machine X for other people to explore Unity Pro.

Does my question make sense?

 

You can't legally let them use it anyhow. The license doesn't allow it.

If they want to try it, there's a free trial.

 

Thank you. But I can still activate the Pro on my own machine, and then if I need to use a different machine, transfer it into that one. Correct?

 

Do you realise you're allowed two installs of a Pro license? This doesn't mean two people can use it, it means one person can have it installed for their own use on two different PCs - eg: home + office, or workstation + laptop. Does that get you covered?

 

Yes! Thank you. That is exactly what I was trying to ascertain before entering the serial number and re-activating my expired Trial Beta. So, to sum up, I can have it on my home MacBook as well as my office Windows PC, just entering the one serial number I have. Correct?