Render to tecture and post processing for free edition?

Like the topic says, can we get RTT and post processing in free edition?

This tech is kind of standard when it comes to other engines, and it seems pretty odd to limit this functionality for indies as these features could easily make smaller indie games a lot prettier and hence promote unity better.

There are tons of other cooler features in pro to pay for. limiting somewhat core functionality is a weird choise imo.

 

Not having access to both of those was a little weird for me when I started with the free edition, since I was used to being able to do "render targets" and post-processing effects in XNA without restriction. But it does make sense to me. There are plenty of game types you can do without those. Post-processing effects in particular are mostly for visual "bling." Plus most 2D games can get by without either of those features, which is a pretty big chunk of what people are doing. I don't know, it seems fair to me.

 

Every week there is a new 'can we get this and this in the free version'.

How about no, and give UT the money they rightly deserve for developing this great software, or get a subscription if you can't afford the full purchase price straight away.

You get enough already in the free version. Stop making these threads.

 

Also other engines dont have a free version like unity have so the whole its part of other engines dont really count..

 

Agreed, along with the "it's strange that this feature isn't in the free version" arguments.

 

I wish you could permanently buy Pro features (albeit at a large markup)... for example, you could get just the Profiler for $200 or something. Or render textures for $150. Or eliminate the splash screen for $100.

 

I've been longing after RenderTextures for a long time as well, but thats mainly because there are so many things you CAN do with them that they really do represent a lot of value, and so it's understandable Unity would want to keep that as a Pro feature. Although if they were to consider making at least some kind of even limited RT available in Unity Free that would be great - like, only allowed to use one, or only RGBA format, or can't use image effects with it, or something... there are a lot of things you COULD do in 2D that makes a lot of use of these but are otherwise limited.

 

I would have thought asset store earned you enough to license unity pro by now though

 

Yea, I'm coming from XNA, SDL and C4 background where this has been offered from the start. I always thought that Unity Free is either for indies or bigger companies to prototype games before going for the Pro edition. Something like post processing or rtt could be critical in terms of prototyping some ideas that rely on those features. And note, my current project does not need RTT/post processing, but I always wondered why this isn't included in the free version.

Sigh, a good counter argument is always random fan burst of "shut up". I was wondering WHY this is a pay feature. I'll happily give UT money when they update Mono (discussed in another thread, let's not go into that one). No need to take personal offence from this, I tried to search whether this has been discussed before.

I could be impolite list other engines/frameworks that have this feature in their free offering, but You just have to google them for yourself.

And of course now the next fan outburst is "then go use them instead of Unity" - or something along that line -, but the fact is I like Unity. You just have to suck it up if someone has some critic or questionable opinion about Unity, I'm still under the impression that this is a valid point I'm raising.

This. I can't justify to pay 1500$ for just RTT per platform. Other features like IK rigs and audio filtering are cool and more pro version than 'just' RTT. But I think this would be too much of a change for UT to make to chop the engine into little pieces to sell independantly.

 

Nah, neither of these features are really necessary. Sure, they'd be nice to have but they're great pro features.

 

I don't think this is going to happen as Render Textures and Post Effects are (beside the removed splash screen) the "biggest" Pro feature.
The most of you "wanna wanna" guys seem to forget that there have to be features left to justify 1500$ for a pro version for indie developers.
For most other Unity Pro features are third party replacements in the asset store available. Some might not be as mature as Unity's own, but others are even better.

 

Technically yes, following the daily deal sale I made just enough to buy Unity Pro, which was an exciting prospect and almost happened, but unfortunately my wife has some health problems (she had a stroke a couple of years ago) so we're putting the money toward some new treatment. So I'm still squarely in the Unity Free camp for the time being and making the best of it.

 

But there's already too little incentive to buy pro... I say they're giving us enough features as it is.

I've had pro in my sights since day one, but it still makes more sense to make money with unity free first ...and use that to buy pro.

Of course, we all have bills to pay. Even if you made money with Asset Store and you want to buy Unity Pro, there's always something more important. From important health issues to essential house fixing.

But Unity already made enough of an investment on us... it's up to us to return that to them, and then we'll get all features.

 

Well since the free version is for indies, and indies target mobile devices (the majority) , there is really no use for post or render to texture effects since they are extremely expensive for the gpu....99% of the top unity games doesn't relay on Post and uses custom shaders / materials to fake the effects instead (like the local bloom shader unity used with their latest demo "The Chase")

 

Thanks for speaking for the rest of us but the free version of Unity doesn't necessarily mean mobile and it doesn't necessarily mean there is no use for render textures. I have tonnes of non-mobile projects I had to put on hold because the only way to get them to do what I wanted with enough performance was to use a render texture.

 

My friends and I use free for our hobby projects, and there are also things that we've either not done or done differently because of a lack of render textures. Still, we've done far more with Unity than we could have / would have with other toolsets that do offer those things, so it's a case of taking the good with the "bad" until our little group decides it's worth the cash to upgrade.

At the end of the day we were picking between making a game that didn't have certain specific features (yet) that'd be nice to have in an ideal world or rolling our own cross-platform game tech or accepting someone else's license terms (and learning a new toolset to go with it). Giving up a few features (for now) was kind of a no brainer.

"Bad" is in quotes because I really can't complain about the idea of being given what we've already got for free and not getting even more. Unity's indie license was already free when we started the current incarnation of Master Thief, but there's a good chance we'd have paid for a couple of seats if it were not. We'd quite happily have paid the basic mobile license costs up front when the time came, and we'd quite happily have paid the upgrade costs from 3 to 4, but in both of those cases Unity rocked up just as we were starting to consider those things and said "hey guys, guess what? That's all free now, too!"

 

Speak for yourself.

I would love to have the bloom effect for my environments, and I can think of dozens of uses for render textuers- and I haven't ever used them in my life!

 

RTT would be handy, just like dynamic shadows/lighting (not just the sun) would be great (sort of necessary) for the game I'm working on. However... it's best not to fight constraints and rather work with them until we can get past them.

Core? No, that's bling. If a specific technology is required to make a game, the game mechanic probably isn't nailed down well enough. I could *really* use multiple dynamic shadows and RTT, but you know what? I can do without them.

We've heard this before. Unity offers features W, X, Y, and Z at a cost of A, B, and C. Those other engines/frameworks offer features A, B, C, and X at a cost of W, Y and Z. You're right, it would be nice to get RTT. Maybe we will one day. Right now we don't.

Agreed with all of that. Great idea, but unlikely to happen.

I'd rather see the 2D and other enhancements released and bug fixed before any dev time is spent finding a way to bring something like RTT to the free version. In fact, I'd rather see Mono, better/real streaming, and better team support in Unity before RTT as a feature in the indie version.

 

WHY is it a paid feature? I don't work for UT but I guess it's just one of those 'nice to haves' that you won't be getting for free, because UT needs to make money somehow. It all comes down to sales and marketing.

 

NECRO BUMP ALERT:
If anyone is still coming here, you could give my effects package in my signature a try! of course, though, it isn't exactly fast, but that's free version for you. will do me and a few other people that made use of my package until i can afford pro. And Realtime hard shadows have been available in free since 4.2, so at least we have that, rather than just projectors...

 

word. Trust me, I could really really really use a number of the things in pro that I am accustomed to, but free gives me piles adn piles to work with in the meantime.

 

HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-

And this has already been around for a year and I never noticed? Looks like I'll be coming back to Unity.

 

Yes... atm, my thread's been a bit quiet... But that's mainly because I am not currently actively developing it, since the GitHub page went up, allowing anyone to mod the source code. (with my approval, of course... )