ProBuilder Integration

Starting today the full editions of ProBuilder and Polybrush are becoming part of Unity feature roadmap. They are now available at no additional cost to all Unity subscription plans (Personal, Plus, Pro and Enterprise).

Read more in our blog post announcement.

 

Whoever made this decision, thank you!

 

Probuilder workflow is clunky so the team needs to spend a few weeks using others modelers, learning from them and then cut the number of steps it takes to do simple shapes.

 

Not trying to be a dick, but I'm disappointed this was integrated.

I've owned ProBuilder since it first came out and it is very outdated and creates unoptimised models. I don't think it will help with Unity's reputation. It was even outdated when it came out, but better than nothing. Please continue to work on it over the next year or so with some serious features.

 

This is excellent news for Unity users everywhere! However...

For those of us working on platforms that do not allow us to upgrade to 2017.1.0 (eg. Switch) is there any way to get the previous version of Polybrush and ProBuilder Advanced?

 

I think it's free on asset store so you could copy it from there.

 

It would be really useful to me if it had tools to do precision editing, like rules, grids, and allowing you to type the exact amount you want to extrude, move, scale, rotate, etc.

The Asset Store version seems to be broken and outdated, if you close the ProBuilder window there's no way to open it again... The Package Manager version seems more recent however it also seems to break VS debugger integration.

 

It was a welcome surprise to see.

Though I was hoping on more of a CSG modeller being added.. just because the poly stuff is covered better in Maya (Modelling toolkit from Nex etc where your bread and butter poly modelling consists of poly pushing, extrudes and bevels.. etc.. and that is not so great an experience with probuilder.. frankly just rip the maya modelling toolkit interaction experience of setting bevels widths etc mmb to switch setting.. ) or 3ds or Blender in terms of well everything workflow, features (which could be expanded but I'll leave it for now)..

Better grids is something else Unity needed, so its free integration is good and maybe will see it improve faster with some improved manipulators..and better ugui strictly scene editor. Anyway the simplicity of roughing out basic levels directly in editor.. it's not bad for that..they should have started this years ago mind, but I guess the Probuilder guys have some experience in doing a bunch of different related assets and hopefully 2018 will see more improvements in the actual creative content world building areas. The polybrush and terrain aspect is also interesting and maybe unity new terrain stuff will be even better tooled- I mean so long as its large terrain supported like UE built in.

yeah or just selecting a face and having an option for the scale manipulator tool to actually freeze at the center instead of going reverse, so you can get coplaner faces quicker.

Unity needs a little more Maya in it personally

 

This is a super useful addition but honestly I'm more excited by Progrids now being free! Unity's lack of decent quick snapping controls has long been a weird omission. Glad that this is now 'fixed' by making Progrids free.

 

I agree.. though I'm not so fond of the grids overlay (positioning no control over it, coloring very vivid.. nice but also distracting).. would rather see the grid stuff take up some of the empty space that sits in the toolbar inbetween the Global/Local button and the Play/Pause etc...squeeze it in ... or another toolbar at the bottom of the scene view.

Then on the other side of the Play/Pause buttons add more buttons for even more useful editor S*** right

Is also that bottom status bar that sits mostly empty.. that could be used more.

 

@kaarrrllll @Jacob_Unity
Our team cannot use probuilder at present https://forum.unity.com/threads/cannot-update-package-manager-or-see-probuilder-etc-in-there.517769/ any idea why we can't download probuilder? is it limited to pro licenses or something else? have a case number if you'd like to check in that thread

 

Later down the roadmap, is unification with Unity's API and UI/UX going to happen? Or should we just expect these additions to be fairly separate 3rd party add-ons that tightly follow the typical update cycle like TextMeshPro(so far)?

 

Well, i'll just say i would love to see these tools that are brought into Unity actually feel like they're part of Unity.

Hope you guys make it happen!

 

Yeah, that kind of things should be natively integrated to Unity.

 

nice to see this, but it does feel weird how i can get pro builder from the package manager, but pro grids i need to get from the store. The 2 tools are almost a requirement of each other.

agreed find it works best when treated like a csg modeller, since if you start doing complex shapes you are better off going to your 3d package of choice. But pro builder is still ultra useful, especially if you stick to simple shapes and just use it to layout your level. When it comes to testing how your level design effects your gameplay this adds very quick iteration times. But once the layout is final, i see myself just exporting the pro builder mesh to Maya as a reference then either rebuilding it all in maya, or treating it like i would BSP geo in other engines and start building detail meshes to add over top.

 

here is a good talk about the UI/UX for level design tools

 

Previously posted to one of the other threads:
Sweet. I'm a long time ProBuilder user, it's handy that I can now just expect everyone I work with to have the same tools by default!

If it's being brought in-house I hope that means it's going to get a) improved performance and b) features it's missing compared to other tools. The improved performance thing, to be honest, is more to do with PolyBrush than ProBuilder itself. With ProBuilder alone it's not a big deal, but last time I used it (quite some time ago now) PolyBrush had some pretty long pauses on certain actions once I'd subdivided a large structure for brushing.

 

What's the rationale for grids + brush on asset store vs package manager, and if you are building anything directly into Unity, why do that?

 

i get the feeling they just haven't gotten to bring grids over to the package manager yet, since grids is almost a requirement for builder if you want it to be usable.

 

I think they just want to have it as part of the editor functionality and not really just related to pro builder. Same with Polybrush. Because those two things don't need pro builder to function. For instance, I use Polybrush for painting geo and vertex painting. Don't think I'll ever use it with pro builder so it more of an editor feature that's missing rather than an extension of Probuilder same with pro grids. You should already be able to snap anything to grids in unity but it's not there so this will be an editor feature as well.

Which is why these two features won't be in packages




Those two images are from the blog post about Probuilder integration if you haven't read it yet - https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/02/1...g-integrated-in-editor-advanced-level-design/

 

So ... does this mean ProBuilder will get MORE funding to continue building on what they have, or its a one-time purchase now making ProBuilder free ... but basically killing any further development? Not to be a nay-sayer, but I've been very excited about a few other acquisitions, only to see the projects become "keep it working", as opposed to "make it the best it can be". If this means that pro-builder will become better, then its awesome. If it means its going to stagnate because the devs no longer have a financial incentive to continue improving it, but now everyone gets it for free, in my opinion, thats not a good thing in the long run. It gives Unity better marketing and makes some people happy that they get stuff for free, but it also means that Unity has worse tooling for it.

It would be great if they mentioned what's planned for a tool when its acquired, and what it means for the Devs, and not just that its being acquired.

 

From the blog: "For Unity 2017.x & 5.6, add ProBuilder to your projects from the Asset Store. The version of ProBuilder from the Asset Store will only receive bug fixes, no new features. All new features will be added to Unity 2018 and forward. Note that support for Unity 5.6 will end in March 2018.
If you purchased ProBuilder prior to its transition to Unity, you will notice that the Asset package is now deprecated. You can still access it from your Asset Store library, but this package will no longer receive any updates."

Any idea what those new features may be? Will they be more extensive than before the acquisition, or less? Are there any definite new features planned on a roadmap that we can see? Sorry, but as a long standing customer of Probuilder and its utilities (I own all of them), I worry when something like this happens. All I see is that most of the stuff I own has been deprecated ("Other tools ProGroups, QuickDecals, QuickEdit and QuickBrush are being deprecated"), the existing Unity Asset Store stuff is getting pulled, but no actual concrete details on what customers are gaining from this.

If this was purchased for any reason other than marketing (the ability to say this is integrated into Unity for free), what is it? That blog doesn't say very much about why this is better.

With that said -- congrats to the ProBuilder team, they do great work, and I'm happy to see that they got compensated well (I assume) .

[Edit -- I think what I'm trying to say in a long-winded way is ... I hope they treat PB as a first class citizen in Unity, and its not just a marketing grab. I would LOVE to see what they can do with more resources available!]

 

Just cut a long story short and do zbrush in Unity properly, preferbly with polybrush and gpu tessellation. Thanks!

 

I still haven't tried Unity 2018 but I am following closely the development.
Does the package manager keep its files in the project like the asset store or it has its own directory?

 

its still beta keep in mind, but it stores them external to your asset folder when i last tried.

 

I am very happy, just got around to trying out ProBuilder which is a great boon, great time saver for me building test levels, but even happier that it works perfectly with MegaFiers allowing me to recreate my 3ds max workflow inside Unity, so I can add bends, twists, path deforms and most importantly for me FFD lattices. Quick grab below showing stairs flared with an FFD then part of it bent, an arch with a FFD lattice allowing me to enlarge the top and then a noise modifier on top and then stairs deformed along a spline. Thank you Unity for giving me the perfect level building setup.

 

First, this is a fantastic move from Unity to include those superb tools.

I'm already using the Builder and the Grids assets in my project under version 2017.3

I would like to migrate my project to 2018, so my question is how do I handle my Probuilder/Grids assets in the migration?

Should move my project to 2018 first, then delete my current PB folder and re-import it through Package Manager ?

 

This is cool but…
I really don’t get how Unity choose which asset become part of Unity.
And don’t know if they sent a survey to some users to choose their Tool of choice but:
For what I have tested so far, in term of level blocking, Realtime CSG is way better than ProBuilder.
QuickBrush was really cool, but… it’s 2018 a tool like that should have an option to paint Gpu Instances, even better Indirect Instances.
And for vertex color, https://github.com/slipster216/VertexPaint this free asset is just way better. Handle flow map, non destructive (paint into a cache), …
Still waiting on a builtin Spline solution also.
And even is the news is nice, I’m waiting on how the integration will be made.
Just a reminder Unity had purchased TextMeshPro and Anima2D, still not implemented build in the engine…
So wait and see, but I wouldn’t have chosen this assets even if they are very good, they are not the best
Thanks for the effort though

 

Great news for Unity3D, Keep it up.

 

@Jacob_Unity @kaarrrllll Are there any plans to update/refine the UI? I really dislike the current icons and would be happy to offer some redesigns, but I don't want to waste anyone's time if that's already in the works.

 

Thanks. So once you download it, it is available for every project ?

 

Despite the negative attitude in here, this is really great news! I'm super-pleased with - this just made Unity about 10x better for me.

Great stuff. I look forward to more excellent news

 

Hmm more free stuff is always cool, but I'm concerned this will languish forever just like every other project Unity has acquired. TextMeshPro integration never went anywhere, SpeedTrees are still broken, the only work Unity has done on Substance in the last few years has been adding the 2017 feature of spamming the console with the message "The Substance devs yelled at us for not doing anything those guys are jerks and they want to do updates themselves well let's see how they like it when we fill the console with spam about how they're jerks" which, you know, was probably one of the worst additions to Unity ever.

 

Pretty ignorant and incorrect.

 

Currently ProBuilder can export meshes created with it as OBJ. Are there any plans to support FBX?

 

You could use the FBX Exporter Unity is working on - https://forum.unity.com/threads/new-fbx-exporter-in-2017-2.499889/page-3#post-3398111

 

please have a look at Maya and copy paste what works well

- pressure support for tablets
- editing of values after they are created
- hotbox for quick acces to context sensitive tools
- customisable shortcut keys for actions
- modifier keys to snap to grid
- middle/right mouse to drag. move. extrude a long an axis
- middle/right mouse to adjust currently selected values while anywhere in the screen,

 

I am glad to hear Pro Core is being integrated with Unity. I've owned it for quite a while now. I haven't moved to 2018 yet because it's still in beta. If I use the depreciated version in 2017.3 then migrate to 2018 when it's out of beta, what should I expect during the upgrade process?

TIA,
Boysenberry

 

I guess that Probuilder could integrate some cool features from classic level editors (Hammer or Trenchbroom for example), like an easy way to set 4-scenes view and being able to resize brushes without having to meticulously select the face you want.
Really sad seeing a modern level editor being subpar to an editor from the 90s.

 

Great addition. Yes as a level editor you might prefer a CSG tool - look at Realtime CSG on the asset store for that - but you can create any kind of model with this (except skinned meshes - coming in future?! )

 

Will there be other modelers integrated at some point? The guy who made Realtime CSG works for Unity, after all.

If not, when will basic face cutting and lofting along edges be added?

 

@kaarrrllll
Is it a bug that the polybrush prefab placer doesn't place an actual instance of the prefab?
EDIT: Lovely it comes with source code, https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/PrefabUtility.InstantiatePrefab.html that did it right there, thanks!

 

This is great news. Now it makes sense why it was deprecated.