MERGED - Dark Skinned Themes for Unity Free and Forum

Once you go black you never go back.

 

I wouldn't necessary want the dark skin but being able to use custom skins in general would be nice. Perhaps something that people could sell on Asset Store.

 

I'm a Unity Pro user, but I would love Unity to just have the dark skin. No light at all. For pure egoism: because that would make life easier when developing cool editor panels for everybody. That said, I know that removing the choice is a no-go, so I'm just blabbering

Now that instead would make life terribly hard (or at least annoying) for cool editor panels developers. Please don't do that

 

He's saying that it's pragmatically a non-issue, but that it's been worth every minute of the month their guy spent on it because people want it anyway.

In all honesty, if eye strain is a genuine issue then I think your work environment is poorly set up or you're using terrible equipment. Your monitor is too bright or doesn't have the necessary contrast or there's too much glare or the sun is directly behind your screen or you're using a crap VGA connection and the white blur into the blacks or... whatever. The dark skin may indeed help, but you probably have bigger issues to worry about.

 

Seizure skin. I love it!
It's time to go ... crazy!

 

No, my work environment is fine. This is a long standing issue with multiple people as stated in this thread. It's also why so many graphics programs ship with dark themes as a standard.

 

That's selective evidence. I could just as easily point to the hundreds of applications that don't have dark themes that nobody complains about. Like word processors, spreadsheets and, say, these forums.

 

It does seem to be a trend nowadays though. Maya, Max, Photoshop, and Visual Studio all have dark skins now, but they didn't a few years ago. Call that selective evidence if you want to, but those programs make up are a large fraction of what game developers use nowadays.

But hey! Maybe their skins are dark because they look so damn ... cool!

 

These forums are not only a regular eyesore, but a technological one. And it's not really selective evidence when this is the reason these skins exist in the first place.

 

Is it? I thought it was because, as turkey says, people think they look cool.

 

If that were the case, every program would look like a Winamp skin from 2005 like Boujou's old interface.

 

Or maybe it's because people find it easier to read. Googling for 'Visual Studio themes': http://studiostyl.es/.

Most popular themes have dark backgrounds. Or maybe programmers just wanna be cool like dark vader.

Ahhh well, this thread has turned into quite the bike shed. Sorry bout that ...

 

Makes perfect sense. You'd only go looking for a new theme if you didn't like the one you had, and since it comes with a perfectly serviceable light theme you're unlikely to go looking for a new one unless you want something pretty specific.

 

It's not hard to get a dark theme in Visual Studio (2012).

 

But if they changed the website to dark skin, everyone would want Unity to be dark skin.

Shhh.

 

GAWD! You guys are still arguing about it!
Here! I found a hack for you guys! Here is a hack to turn on the dark skin with your Unity Free!!



From the great wisdom of the eternal sage hippocoder :

Now, here is another hack too!
From the "Thou-shelt-not-speak-thy-holy-name"

Now for those of you still complaining the light skin is blinding your eyes.. may I remind you that the forum you are currently reading is WHITE and PROBABLY BLINDING YOUR EYES? I don't see any of you complain about it!


If you are still not satisfied, you can back my suggestion for Unity 5 skin - it is bound to satisfy EVERYONE because it includes every color for anyone's taste!

 

But what use would I have of pro then? I wouldn't need any of it's fancy visual shenanigans...you know, being blind and all

 

I MUST HAVE that Unity 5 Skin you got there, bawss

 

I haven't seen so many moody teenagers moping about bright lighting since the Denver planetarium offered Pink Floyd laser shows the day after they decriminalized pot. Get a grip, children. I'll repeat: if you're not going to pay for it, you get what you get and you don't get upset.

 

All people who said no bought pro for dark skin *facepalm*

 

And I don't see why this makes you mope so much about other people's mopings, especially if half of them are just made for fun ;P And without this thread we would have never seen the awesome Unity 5 skin!

 

I found a hardware hack HERE that gives you a dark skin in Unity free.

 

Does anyone else on this forum wear sunglasses at the office?

 

I used to do that in the morning, since I used to sleep very little

 

"People have a legitimate reason for wanting something in the free version that is only in the pro version, better call them children!"

 

You all know that the poll is completely biased, don't you?

If there are more people that have the free version and they vote "yes" on this poll vs the vote of the users who vote no (mostly Pro users) then it becomes a populist poll.

And we all know that populism is _bad_ right? right?
(yes I just turned this into a political argument)
*hides*

 

I have Pro but voted "yes"! Hooray! I don't see why anyone would vote "no" actually, since it's an additional feature which wouldn't hurt anyone, and thus the only obvious choice is "yes", unless you're jealous of your Pro skin (which doesn't mean that the Unity guys are evil if they don't implement it: as antenna tree mentioned, it's kind of a non-issue). So, yes, the voting feels like populism

*hides too*

 

I think it's more about value. No one here is on a mission to make "Free" users happier. Let's face it, if you get more for 1500$ (even if it's a skin) you get something that has more value in your eyes. So giving away that value to non-Pro users is in no one's interest. Unity might lose some customers (who value highly... very highly the dark skin, which IMHO is sad but could be a couple people so maybe a couple of Pro licenses).

Less money for Unity = less money to pay their engineers = less improvements to the engine = less value to the 1500$ cost of a Pro license.

In my eyes, giving away freebies like that, doesn't help anyone. It's different from the "Mobile Basic" license as it actually gives incentive to buy the Pro license, which is revenue. Giving away the Dark Skin won't push users to buy the Pro license, on the contrary.

[political slogan]
A vote for YES is a vote against better physics, better Occl. Culling, better UI... better Unity!
Vote NO!
[/political slogan]

*runs away*

 

Nobody is going to spend $1500 just for a dark theme.

 

Ohmygod, populism!

*hunts PolishRenegade with a pike, but trips and impales himself - bloody red skin for the win*

 

I really hope so. But in the off-chance that someone, at least 1 person decided to buy the Pro license because it tipped the balance between not-buying and buying it.... then it's worth it keeping it in Pro.

1500$ of revenue for Unity is free-booze to increase morale for 1 day for 5 engineers. It's worth it.

 

Some things to consider:

1. The free version isn't exactly free. If your game is of significant size, you're probably going to be paying for addons from the store. Unity gets a 30% cut from store purchases. I don't own the pro version, but Unity has already made hundreds of dollars off me.

2. If I were to upgrade to the pro version, I'd like to do it for something that feels significant enough to warrant that $1500. For instance, if my game gets fancy enough to warrant more high-end rendering techniques, I would consider that a good reason to go pro. My game is already hard-locked into Unity tech, so they don't have to worry about me switching to another engine to get those good graphics.

3. The dark skin is an interesting feature, which is why I created this thread. I don't think it's trivial, as I do find the eye strain to be noticeable. But it's definitely not significant enough for a $1500 upgrade.

Would Unity gain or lose financially from putting dark skin in free? It's hard to say without looking at their numbers ...

 

Good points turkeypotpie.

Like you said, part of the reason is their numbers (but that's impossible to know because you don't justify 'why' you bought the Pro version) and the other is simply value for the user.

Anyhow, its unfortunate that the light skin strains your eyes so much that it's actually a problem. I think that's the real argument here.

 

Actually, Unity are very much in the habit of giving value away for free and making their free users happier.

In the past, the "indie" version of Unity was $400. Now it's free.

After that, the iOS and Android "indie" versions were still $400 a pop. First they gave them away for free for a week in Unity 3. Now in Unity 4 they're included in the free license from the outset.

After that, there was still no support for any kind of light-based real time shadows in any of the free versions. Now there is.

So Unity are very much in the business of providing value for free. But they're a business, and to stay in business they have to make money. And they've chosen to draw the line where we stop getting stuff for free and start paying for the immense value they give us somewhere between the current free version and wherever the dark skin sits in their minds. I'm 100% cool with that.

 

Not to be flippant, but I have to suspect the monitor brightness is turned up too high...it's not like the light skin looks like these forums (with the #ffffff background), it's a fair bit darker than that and shouldn't normally cause any actual eyestrain.

--Eric

 

Sorry for offtopic ..but all this darkskin and lightskin reminded me about my problem few months ago, with skincolor detection script ..and there was a youtube vid that shows its a common problem

HP computers are racist:

 

It's not. If you are experiencing eyestrain, step away from the computer. Take regular breaks. Sit at a proper distance. Get a better monitor. Adjust the lighting in the space you are working. See an optometrist. Adjust the brightness/contrast/color. Try eyedrops. Calibrate your monitor. There are several things you can do that have an real impact on eyestrain. Bottom line is that if your eyes are hurting, stop looking at the monitor. You need to rest your eyes from time to time. Any issues you have can be completely mitigated by one or more of those things, the dark/light UI in Unity has so little impact compared to those other things that it has effectively zero impact on eyestrain.

 

Yeah, I wasn't trolling earlier when I suggested equipment or environment or setup were the actual causes of eye strain. Software with light or white backgrounds is incredibly common, plenty of it with a higher average brightness than Unity. The colour white should not be a problem, and Unity's light theme isn't even white.

I suspect that badly calibrated monitors and/or cheap crap ones could an issue. I'd also point out screen glare, but that would actually be worse with the dark skin. I guess that dynamic contrast/brightness or other monitor "image enhancement" features designed to look good in showrooms or website feature lists rather than in actual use could detract from the experience as well. (The concept of constantly changing brightness/contrast to "enhance viewing" is such a load of bollocks. Do graphic designers constantly tweak their screens to suit each individual piece of content, or do they calibrate once and then design their content for a consistent display? Changing the display settings on the fly can't make up for bad calibration, all it can do is ensure that the image is viewed inconsistently...)

 

Yeah, there's this thing I have to do called "work." Stop operating under the assumption that these things haven't been tried already.

 

If it's so bright that it's causing eye strain (and yet you'll happily repeatedly come to this even brighter website to talk about it...) then why can't you turn your monitor brightness down?

 

Hey I just got an idea for the free users, invert the whole screens pixels via system preferences. Then apply an Invert Colors Image effect onto the cameras in unity. And that's it, dark skin in free unity!

 

But image effects are pro only

 

Yea, we all do.

Chill, read what I quoted. I wasn't making any assumptions about you or what you specifically may or may not have done. I was using "you" in the third person informal, in the same way you did in the part I quoted.

You were attempting to argue it was a "problem". I was simply listing a handful of factors that show that it is not an actual problem. It may not be to someone's liking or their preference, and it may not feel optimal for things like color balancing to some, but that is not the same as physically causing eyestrain, it simply doesn't.

 

IIRC there is a hack for this... can't remember were I saw it, I think it was replacing a file or modifying a file or something like that.

 

I'll refer you to my previous post (previous page);

 

Yeah, I realise you also said other stuff. But I felt like responding specifically to the bit that I quoted about not wanting to make free users happier or give them more value. Point is that Unity are constantly increasing the value available to "free" users and their mission seems at least in part to very much involve making those users happy - after all, if people have experience in free their future employers are more likely to buy them Pro licenses, so it's a win-win. It just happens that this particular aesthetic feature isn't something they choose to include in that.

 

Except there's no image effects in free Unity. Nice idea though...

 

I think also that it provides psychologically, to some degree, a visual change that indicates you are now using Pro. The Pro feature don't really surface themselves when in the common usage of the IDE. If it wasn't there, and you just dropped $1500 on Pro, and then launched it, you would "see" no difference. The Pro features are there, but kind of instant response/gratification that you just bought something. Sure, it doesn't actually affect your game or the app itself, and it is small but it provides a visual cue that you have now gone "Pro".

Personally, I wish it were somewhere in between standard an pro, a little lighter, so it was at least easier to visually separate between the adobe apps, but not a big deal in the end. The ability to customize the color/sizes would be nice as well. I give Unity classes every week, and neither skin works very well when projected.

 

@Dabeh, SevenBits: Haha, yeah I guess that slipped my mind. But if my memory serves me correct, I believe you can invert the screen pixels without any image effects. I remember doing it years ago by writing a simple shader and applying it to a plane, and having the camera look through the plane.