Join us for #SRPLife Week!

I'm a little bit surprised that by now, no UT staff have even given just a little bit of feedback.... (we hear you at least).

We have one of the best asset store devs trying to be a force for change, and it is crickets...except for the community.

 

I am not surprised, unfortunately.

 

Also, we've heard empty "we hear you" so many times, I don't know what another one would accomplish.

 

Anyway the smoking gun was always that even unity couldn't maintain their own demo across versions of the engine.

 

Or even the assets they sell on the store..

 

I regret buying all the assets on store.... But meh, i quess i will do full rewrite of them to unreal... Atleast i learnt something

 

Man this thread is depressing to read.
I think we should keep the #SRPLife alive for as long as it takes Unity to reply to the problems stated here.

I'll give it a few weeks and then i will have to make a painfull choice if Unity doesn't supply a satisfying reaction...

Edit:
Maybe i should add that i was a 4.6 Pro customer, then 5.0 Pro and now Plus subscriber for as long as Plus exists. So when i leave that will actually affect Unity in some small way...

 

Same here, I won't hold my breath hoping Unity will fix the mess they created. If they don't fix their rendering workflow within a year, I'll start my next project with godot or UE5.
We are profesionnals, we can't keep using a broken and barely evolving engine when competitors are making incredible progresses (like godot and UE) in simplifying devs lives. Especially with the new console generation coming very soon.

I really hope Unity will wake up because I love using it, I love it's interface and it's community. But I would not be very suprised if it becomes a minor engine in the coming years.
Blender became a huge 3D software in like, a year, it also can happen in the game engine world. I seriously think an open source software like godot is a big threat for Unity, maybe for the best. I'll never regret stwitching from Maya to Blender. It was a relief.

 

I agree with keeping the avatars and keep making noise until there's an actual, non-empty response form unity. Maybe we can go ask some questions to the thread they started about SRP surface shaders. At least some devs are hopefully receiving notifications there.

 

I'd also suggest mentioning this topic in the signature; it's updated over all the past posts, will help with the exposure.

 

@Andrew_Bowell
Try to not overreact
Jbooth asking for Surface Shaders 2, but i afraid that became another 5-year project.

 

I mean, I've basically made that for my subset of MicroSplat- without it, every asset store developer has to basically develop it themselves.

 

The graphics product managers:

 

How about the graphics product managers themselves get involved here? The feedback has been pretty consistent. Hire Jason Booth as an expert contractor for one year and get him to do all the dirty work if the Unity team doesn't want to.

Unity's key strength is the community (although that was partially decimated with the shutdown of the Jobs Board) and the asset store creators. In my past working history as a Product Manager it would be a dream to have customer feedback and actual technical solutions and suggestions so clearly and sensibly expressed - rather than customers who just silently don't like the product, leave, and you're left scratching your professional head about what happened.

We are facing a once-in-a-generation transition of projects and store assets from built-in to URP/HDRP. Any quick wins that can be adopted *now* will yield significant benefits for the future. Otherwise the asset store will be forever littered with half-broken assets, that the creators could never update for SRP, diminishing trust (and spending).

 

As someone who spent thousands of bucks on hundreds of assets, i can confidently say that most of them are not working anymore and probably never will work again. Mostly due to the changes in the render pipeline(s).
So, naturally, i am VERY reluctant to spend any more money on assets other than 2D graphics, 3D models or audio.

Of course one could say that i should stay with an older version of Unity, but i want to stay on the bleeding edge of things, no matter if it is a 'sensible' choice, or not. And i bet 'enthusiasts' like me make up a large portion of the store sales.
Before the number of render pipelines exploded, you could get pretty much every asset to run alongside any other.
Now you need a different version for every asset, so you either stay with an old Unity and asset version, or make everything yourself.
Blaming it on the Asset Store devs is also not an option, because noone can justify spending three or four times the development time on their assets (Old, LWRP, URP, HDRP). Especially since that also fragments the user base of the asset, effectively increasing the amount of support it takes.
It even gets worse when you consider that, at least URP and HDRP, are changing constantly, further increasing the fragmentation.

So i can imagine that the Asset Store already took a huge hit in sales. For anyone at Unity who was wondering why...now you know.

 

Even just a standardised checkbox/table on the store pages - does this work with BuiltIn, URP, HDRP, and for which versions of the editor. Right now you have to read through the description to figure this out (if the creator has listed it).

 

Edit: Someone has already made a wonderful pull request for this as I was figuring out how to do one myself, please go and give this some love:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Graphics/pull/720

For well over a year, Speedtree shaders in UniversalRP didn't sample ambient light (and they still don't) and also bake completely black for some reason but they look just fine when using URP-Default shader. I just found out this was a 2-line code fix thanks to @StaggartCreations here
I kicked off enough about it over the past year that it's been given an issue tracker case

https://forum.unity.com/threads/urp-terrain-lightprobes-for-speedtree7-8-shaders-bake-black.833083/

To think a high majority of foliage and environment assets on the asset store use Speedtree shaders, I was stumped for well over a year on why my environment assets looked so different to the built-in renderer. Even Speedtree customer support acknowledged the issue but said they had no control over fixing it or helping Unity fix it.

 

I hope @jbooth it's participating in this: https://forum.unity.com/threads/fee...-needs-for-optimizing-complex-shaders.922820/

 

I hope he is too, but even if something is to come out of that, you realise it's going to take at least a couple of years, right?

 

Seems to be all about virtual textures, so I kind of find it funny that it's under "optimizing complex shaders", since that's a much broader topic than virtual texture caches.

 

In any case I realized it could be an opportunity to be face to face with the graphics team

 

ha, we been giving feed back for over a decade.... They just don't care...

 

no offense but we heard this before when it came to the Substance support, and the networking side...I remember how many years it took for the terrain collider issues, some of us been here for 14 + years, and frankly I just don't trust it anymore... There is a lot of us, who still want to see Unity do well, because then we can...but you guys are making it easy for us to use other engines. ( I know I have for 20 + years, and others have anyways.....but, I see why companies tell me no....not to use Unity... You guys, really need to work with developers more....that produce games, content..... (I hope this time you prove me wrong...I really do.... We don't say the things to be jerks, a lot of us have a lot invested into Unity... but, our patience is growing...

So it would be great to hear something soon, you guys know this has been a problem for months and months now... Unity really should consider, using there own engine and make games as we do, so they can really see what it's like.... in the industry, we do use our own engines, and we know every weakness, and are able to fix it with teams much smaller than Unity's... and we are making games, so still will never understand why its not something Unity has ever considered.....

 

And my comment on unity yt channel highlighting these issues just got deleted.... What a surprise

 

I've lost a week trying inplement OIT in URP and failed. Returned to default renderer.

 

@Tim-C Has there been any discussion on just locking verified packages to a LTS Unity version and leaving the flexibility of current package manager as is to the tech streams instead of adding SRP to core?

 

Essentially yes, seems like the exact same thing as shipping with core. For me I love packages and the flexibility they offer and I dont want to lose that.

Also in my projects there are more to balance than just SRP versions, I fear that trying to get compatibility for a particular bug fix would inevitably lead to upgrading Unity, opening up another can of worms for my other packages. I know if SRP is core we can still override it but then I dont see much point shipping with core as appose to just locking it down in the package manager to a Unity version.

 

I’m going to trust you guys on this and go with it. Thanks for clarifying

 

Just want to say hi and I support Jason initiative in making SRP better.

 

Hate posting only to say "same", but same. You're not the only one who cares about this, Jason. I think that better compatibility between Unity-authored SRPs is a must, not only store developers will benefit from this, but also the average user.

 

Aye, this is why those left in production, left...I know the 14 years I been here, every person I worked with refused to use this engine anymore..I have used many engines over the years, and people are just fed up... and its not just SRP related issues either..... this is the problem...

But I seen a person post about assets, why people don't buy them......well I think its unfair, to the asset devs as I see them getting torn into pieces over stuff that is beyond there control............ Unity should be posting something, as its ruining peoples reputation....its another reason, I don't recommend this engine much anymore when consulting or doing work.....


I doubt it will change....personally...and with UE5 coming ....( I been a UE USER also 15 +
years, they are going to pound the indie market more.....So Unity, better rethink there process....the ignoring isn't going to work or just getting buy isn't going to either....
also we have Uni, which is just as easy to use as Unity, and now free... and an asset store coming too.....

SO Unity better wake up...or there gravy train will end...

 

They did. Here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/wha...nity-with-scriptable-render-pipelines.924218/

 

keep up the good work Jason

 

ya they did after these posts where made.

 

I fully support this cause. As a hobbyist indie dev in a one-man-show project, I really can't afford to deal with upgrade pains and features going missing. SRP is a mess that needs to be cleaned up, by yesterday. It is by far Unity's biggest issue at the moment.

 

Because they don't want to.

The real problem is that we're not the target anymore. Unity isn't trying to provide us with a game engine, they're trying to get new subscribers. That's why HDRP looks great and easy in Unity's videos while being a source of complain for developers. it's meant to look good, not to be finished.

It's not the first time this happens, collaborate is a total joke for everyone in the industry, yet they continue to pretend it's used by professionals. Same with the "new" UI, feedback from users wasn't positive, yet they forced it on us.

One of their latest announcement is the acquisition of Bolt. Who needed that? Name one company that had a meeting and said, "we could work on Unity but we'll choose Unreal instead because we can save 50 bucks". Now, how many teenagers in their mum's basement commenting "Unreal is better because Blueprint is free" on youtube?

Let's face it, Unity isn't providing us with new features but themselves with what their marketing department needs to please young hobbyists. That's why we, professionals, are seing such a drop in quality.

I hate to say this because like most of you, I have invested years of experience and a lot of assets on the store, but that's what it is. I'm just looking at their actions here.

I don't know about you but the last improvement I benefited from is the new prefabs almost 2 years ago. Since then, I cant' think of anything new that was useful. Not saying they didn't provide upgrades but nothing that I could make money of.

Right now, I'm paying a monthly subscription but am not getting anything in return. What about you?

 

Support, will change avatar back when jbooth release microsplat tessellation with HDRP support

 

MicroSplat has supported tessellation in HDRP for months now..

Further, since Unity has completely failed to provide any kind of abstraction layers for shaders, I've written my own (Better Shaders) so other developers don't have to waste a year of time decoding all this undocumented, heavily boilerplated, shader code and can focus on actually making games instead of worry about platform compatibility (you know, the whole sell on why you use a 3rd party engine).

 

That was 9 months ago- not a word since. As far as I can tell, the only change made from all of that was that we now get some notes about what changed between versions - useful, but so far has been very incomplete, and still no real documentation on the shader pipeline..

 

One of my biggest beefs with this whole SRP crap is that it's completely antithetical to the entire concept of UNITY. Remember the days when the slogan was "build once, deploy anywhere"? And worse, it's not even an industry standard approach. No other major game engine that I know of, especially not Unreal, fractures its rendering pipeline like this. There's simply one pipeline that has everything and then you turn features on/off or otherwise customize it. If you want raytracing, you just turn it on in the project settings window and there you go--you don't have to go through some big conversion process. But here with SRP we have 3 different pipelines, each with their own set of features and limitations. The entire premise is garbage.
It also makes the UI/UX a total mess--some settings are in the Unity window panels, some are in the SRP asset, others like antialiasing get moved into the cameras themselves--it's all over the place.

 

All I was shouting for the last 3 years in a nutshell!

 

10.4.0 has been out for almost a week and still no version notes provided by unity

 

been a while.

should we update the avatar to also hashtag #NoFragmentation #OneUnityToRuleThemAll

 

I'm sure Unity must have addressed all this by now. Especially, all those Graphics Managers. **sarcasm**