So speedtree

Hey there everyone, been quite some time since I've posted.

Is there any info on what's going on with the Speedtree buyout from Unity yet?
I've been waiting all these months and admittedly I haven't really researched much during the time, but when I do research all I can find it links back to the original posting they were bought by Unity.

It would be really nice to know what's going on, like what does this even mean for the Unity community?

Whilst I understand it is in their rights to not talk about it, but what's the point of telling us if there's no transparency on what's going on? (If there is, please link me any urls to data to read)... But anyways, certainly they didn't spend all that money buying them just to make Speedtree work in HDRP and that's all it was about. Certainly there has to be more to it.

Any info would be appreciated, thanks everyone.

 

Same thing for furioos.com and probably a lot of other tools and services....
I really would like to get frequent information updates about the progress of intergration/improvements of stuff they aquire.

 

I can say one thing:

I used to always get prompt responses on the speedtree forum. Now it seems dead. Just my observation - doesn't imply correlation of any sort.

 

Rip the 'speed' out of the name and just give us tree already. I want tree.

 

Probably nothing.

What are you expecting?

 

I was expecting it to be a replacement to the built-in tree creator which does not work in URP and HDRP but it's not

 

They explicitly said to not expect anything in the short term and longer term you could expect stuff like “deeper integration”.

It might replace the built in tree creator, but what that will mean is that unity will no longer have a free tree creator.

 

I wouldn't expect much from this, as @AcidArrow said... if this was Unreal engine (and Epic bought them), we would probably now get access to Speedtree for free, but since Unity acquired them, I doubt anything will really change for us. It's all the same as when Unity acquired Pixyz or Vivox back then.

 

Which kinda makes me wonder if it was a counter buy to stop epic from buying speedtree or something.

It tracks with how they seemingly bought them without a plan, but that’s also how they have treated their other (presumably planned) buyouts, so who knows.

 

They bought bolt and are giving us a free VS solution (needs a ton of work but its a start for beginners who want to use it). I don't see why holding on to small hope they could possibly integrate some iteration of speedtree natively inside unity for free is outside the realm of possibility.

Not likely, sure. But possible.

 

Because this leaves little room for the things people are hoping?


They could change their minds of course, but I would say their track record points towards things staying as they are.

Also, they gave away Bolt for free—only after the community shamed them.

And finally, wasn't Bolt kind of a knee-jerk reaction after they failed to create a VS solution of their own and they just bought something to serve as a starting point? (or is their own solution that they have been working on for ages still being worked on? I don't really follow visual scripting news)

EDIT: They're still working on their own VS solution, they just pivoted it to being DOTS only and bought Bolt to fill in the monobehaviour gap, I guess?

EDIT 2: Actually I'm not sure if they are still working on their own VS. If someone has a link please share.

 

As far as Ive understood, Bolt essentially is their VS? I thought they are just heavily modifying it and binding it into the current Unity ecosystem, might be wrong.

I agree with you btw, it 99% most likely won't happen with SpeedTree. I definitely wont be disappointed if it doesn't. I just have this feeling that hopefully some higher ups in Unity see some major competition heading their way with other engines and things really start to turn around for the engine making it better for everyone, the company and users included.

 

I was thinking exactly the same they didn't had anything planned of what to do with it

 

This. When I read "for now, nothing will change" I think "oh, so it'll keep being a useless implementation".

If I remember correctly Unity decided they wanted their own solution to be centric to DOTS, but because everyone wanted a traditional approach they bought Bolt.

 

That sounds correct, but is the Visual Scripting ECS package they have their own solution, or is it based on bolt now also?

 

Since they are writing their own backend for (ex)bolt too, it will be their own solution. They are also working on putting the two together, so eventually there will be only one Visual Scripting package which can be used in both scenarios (which ties into the "hybrid first" approach of ECS too). According to the plans they were talking about of course. (Source: various posts in the Visual Scripting topic in this forum)

 

1. Q4 2018. Bolt 2 is announced. The original dev said that Unity had approached him in relation to acquisition, but their visions didn't match for what visual scripting should be, so he opted to remain independent then.
2. Q4 2018. Unity announce their own Monobehaviour VS scripting solution in their Unity 2019 Roadmap.
   
3. Q2 2019. A few months later, Unity's Monobehaviour based VS solution gets cancelled in favor of the DOTS/ECS VS solution. The reason being that there are multiple competent Mono solutions in the store, but nothing for DOTS. First experimental drop was on May 13th 2019.
   
4. Fast-forward to Q1 of 2020. Bolt 1 has received no meaningful updates since the end of 2018 and had accrued a bunch of long standing, some pretty fundamental show-stopping bugs. And Bolt 2 development had stagnated, perpetually stuck in pre-alpha/alpha stage with long pauses between new alpha releases. It looked like the original developer burned out and approached Unity to sell them Bolt asset like Unity wanted back in 2018. But this is just my personal guess, nothing confirmed. This is also when they shifted focus from Bolt to their new asset Peek.
   
5. May 4th 2020 - Unity announces Bolt acquisition with no change to pricing, still asking the full $70 for it and nudging people to buy it before May 31st to get a free upgrade to Bolt 2. Very predictable community outrage follows.
6. July 14th 2020 - Following the community outrage, Unity decide to make Bolt 1 free.
   
7. August 3rd 2020 - Last DOTS VS experimental drop.
8. August 14th 2020 - After one or two beta releases under Unity ownership, Unity cancels Bolt 2 and props up Bolt 1 as the new VS solution going forward, which causes another community outrage for many reasons. Long story short, they couldn't finish Bolt 2 and integrate it in core 2021 in time, but they could do that with Bolt 1. Then outdated Bolt 1 was also a lot less opinionated and simpler architecture wise.
9. September 28th 2020 - Unity announce a new action plan for Visual Scripting - a new high performance runtime that can support both Mono and DOTS and unification of UI/UX across all Unity's graph based tools via Graph Tools Foundation framework.
   
10. Also September 28th 2020 - Visual Scripting Project Manager confirms that DOTS VS won't receive new public releases. Around that time, DOTS VS lead dev joins Bolt/Unity VS team as the lead developer to work on the new runtime and help port the asset to a native engine package.
    
11. Q4 of 2020 - Unity deal with most long standing Bolt 1 bugs, of which there is a fair amount and port the asset to a native Unity package. A first of its kind, according to the dev team. This required to create new internal workflows for testing, validation, etc.
    
12. Q1 2021 - Bolt 1 is rebranded to Unity Visual Scripting and ships with the engine. It gets some editor performance optimizations, minor workflow improvements, further bug fixing and a new visual theme using Bolt 2 icons. Bolt 1 custom node API gets documented for the first time (original developer never publicly released docs for Bolt 1 API as it was considered unstable and the tool was marketed primarily towards Unity/coding beginners).
13. Q4 2021. Unity VS lead dev (former DOTS VS lead dev) has finished their work on the new high performance runtime and leaves for another internal Unity team. The runtime is in pre-alpha for Unity 2022.1. Graph Tools Foundation package hasn't received public updates since summer 2021 and is undergoing integration as a core package for Unity 2022. Bolt 1, now Unity Visual Scripting, hasn't received any new features since the end of 2018 besides a rudimentary support for the new Input System. Current Visual Scripting is still very much Bolt 1 from 3 years ago, just a lot more stable.

TL;DR: DOTS VS development is paused, they're focusing on the mono Visual Scripting for now. But the new tech will support DOTS specific nodes in the future so Mono and DOTS visual scripting systems will be under the same tool according to the current roadmap. They also have 2-3 years of mono improvements in the pipeline so I wouldn't bet on seeing anything DOTS VS related anytime soon.

And Bolt being free is not a good example for new acquisitions. We had to fight for it becoming free and Unity had no idea at all what to do with it and I'd argue that they still lack vision for it as they are adamant at honoring backwards compatibility above all else, including good architecture and design.

 

Now that’s a super clear timeline, thanks @PanthenEye !

 

Y3p, Unity need finish first DOTS core architecture, for any DOTS visual scriptipting to make even sense. Otherwise will be quite waste of time, with such major and continuous changes. So that probable not earlier than DOTS 1.0.

 

I just saw this:

https://quixel.com/blog/2021/12/15/megascans-trees-are-now-in-early-access

and then I thought of this

https://blog.unity.com/news/speedtreer-creator-interactive-data-visualization-inc-idv-joins-unity

And then I cried a little on the inside. I mean, even the blog post alone is superior

 

Actually, you can't compare it, Speedtree is a tool to model trees, Megascans Trees is an asset package with 22 trees.

It bother me a bit that Unity keeps buying tools, but for not even Unity subscription users get something ...

 

If they'd add these acquisitions to Plus/Pro users I wouldn't feel so bad when paying for a Unity license which is basically a glorified splash screen remover at this point. And the only reason I need it in the first place is because they mismanaged their brand and didn't enforce the logo usage on all the good games.

I don't really need all the mobile specific feature set these plans offer, otherwise. So splash screen editing is the only reason I'm reluctantly paying. If Speedtree and other acquisitions would be available to subscribers, the pricing would at least make sense. And surely it would grow their subscriber base too.

 

The comparison is what Unity does for their user base and what Epic does when they acquire something.

With Epic everyone rejoices because you can create even more awesome content with what they give you.

With Unity all you get is a Blog post in mediocre layout.

 

I wonder if there are any archviz companys that have enough time/money to model realistic trees.
We need assets.

Another nice example for that UE buys, integrates, improves and gives stuff back to users.
I simply do not understand why Unity so often does not.

 

Unfortunately its 1 simple answer: Unity are still working out how to turn a profit - they are very different companies at different stages of development. Unreal was a 1st class engine for years before unity even existed, and they have worked out how to make a profit a long time ago compared as a result.

 

Epic has Tencent and Fornite billions as well as long history of AAA licensing income. They don't need to make money from acquisitions as much as Unity who don't have any first party hit games. So these acquisitions not being free is understandable.

I just don't get why everything's so scattered between multiple subscription services using different accounts on different websites when they could wrap it all up Adobe style, provide lots of value for Plus/Pro subscribers by including these tools in the plans so there's an actual reason to subscribe. The value proposition of Plus/Pro is non existent for non-mobile devs, right now.

 

I really hope that unity makes atleast the speedtree library free.... For now we have this https://blog.unity.com/games/the-latest-unity-terrain-sample-pack-is-here

 

I saw that and my first thought was: Where's the demo scene? And when it wasn't there I wanted to create it myself and thought: Where are the trees?

 

I think there's a lot of value in making more than $100k per year. And staff have been clear in the past that if you're making less than that then the free version is for you. If you're making money then they want a cut, and fair enough.

 

Sure, but there are far more people/orgs who do not make more than 100k a year with Unity yet still make a decent living using the tool. Surely, the plans could be made more attractive to these people? They're having trouble with profitability, yet this is such a low hanging fruit, it boggles the mind why it stays unexplored. People will subscribe if there's a benefit for them, speedtree and other acquisitions could be that.

 

In other words:

- people love free stuff
- people want free stuff
- people now demanding free stuff

I still think Epic's tactic with free stuff is _extremely_ toxic.

 

Last I checked Plus/Pro is not free. And last I checked there's no reason to subscribe to these plans unless you need splash screen editing because of their brand mismanagement and if you're developing for mobile.

For desktop devs the value proposition is near 0. They could make these plans attractive by including actual benefits in so there's a reason to subscribe beyond making X amount of money per year. There are infinitely more users who don't make over 100k but would subscribe for speedtree and other tools growing Unity's subscriber base and their profits.

This is not a demand for free stuff, this is a proposition to make the plans not suck for people who aren't forced to subscribe because they don't make over 100k with the tool. They've barely tapped the potential of their subscription service.

 

You're blaming a direct result of capitalism though. This a force of our own making, every day.

Ads, NFT, Crypto are all far greater negative forces in our industry which both Epic and Unity are dancing with, today. You can go as far as you like with any major player. But to blame Epic when Unity is no more innocent is not quite what I expect. Or maybe Unity's pulled the NFT job offers, I don't know.

 

There is no week since Epic changed their license without someone on the forums mentioning how great Epic throw free stuff at people and why Unity doesn't. Even you call the license (which is like this for almost seven years now) a 'glorified splash screen removal'. Meanwhile the intent of Plus is clearly not to remove the splash screen, that's just a side effect.

I know, I pick my battles and support people and politicians who have intent to do something about it. This is not a battle Unity Forum can participate in, really.

Don't get me started on those... But with that said I don't like whataboutism either.

 

Not sure why you're talking about Epic here, I realize they have Tencent and Fortnite billions as well as a long history of AAA licensing. Unity doesn't. So they can't make stuff free. That doesn't mean their subscription plans can't provide actual value beyond being the equivalent of a tax for using the tool. They can improve them to the point people will want to subscribe which is more profit for Unity. That has zero relation to Epic.

EDIT: Albeit, I now realize that they're already making subscription money from people who would also need Speedtree and other high end content tools and services they're acquiring recently. So their intent is to monetize the user base that's already subscribed and including speedtree in Plus/Pro plans would be counter productive to that.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't think you realize that even you're using the very same language I'm talking about. In my opinion it should be considered normal to pay for the software you're using. It's not a tax. It is the price of their software. And then if you don't make that much money they allow you to use their software for free. Not the other way around.

BTW, it is the same with Unreal too. They aren't giving it for free. They are not collecting their royalty for the time being if you make less than the threshold. Important distinction even if the amount of money exchanging hands or not is the same.

And yes, they could add things to the mix to raise the value of their offerings, the question is, is it worth it for them? I don't have numbers and it was a long time ago, but someone said Unity actually doesn't get that much from engine subscriptions. It may not worth it for them to disturb the well establishes subscription models of the software they bought. Often times big AAA companies are the targets and they may break off with a change. Anyway, I may be wrong on this, but it is disturbing to see after every news when Unity buy stuff that the know-how potentially getting into the engine isn't enough already, people actually expecting these for free.

And I think I said everything I needed to say about this topic.

 

Do you not think it's odd that so many people here are willing to pay for everything instead of a % after a million? In a world where capitalism runs amok we find that it isn't the price of a thing that necessarily changes our minds, but the effort behind it.

 

I'd consider Unity sub if they included spedtree license in it ...or lets say if the services they aquired were included

 

Unreal embraced free when unity made itself free and force their hand, now they are giving back a taste of that medicine while unity is trying to find a suitable business plan for non suitable ambition. Basically unity had a business plan that works for an indie engine and got the mobile market, then they ballooned to try tickle unreal AAA market, but they weren't prepared and are now left scrambling for existing because they are over stuffed yet constantly starved for going that direction, and they are too prideful to back down, so they keep posturing with aimless acquisition to show they are still in the game. All while Unreal is pulling its weight and experience to land effortless blows.

 

Epic's stuff is not free, though. You're still contractuhally obligated to pay them royalties...

There is, it is called the contract. You're not allowed to use free version anymore if you earn over the threshold. You agreed to those terms.

 

But why? Here's a plan that doesn't suck: keep the money for yourself and put it towards things that address whatever specifically matters to you. Spend $35 a month on the Asset Store, or sub to SpeedTree or hosted version control or Quixel or whatever other thing helps your specific team and project.

I guess I don't understand the problem this is trying to solve. Even staff here in the past have said that if you're not making $100k then they'd rather you spent the money on something that will help you succeed.

 

Just checked the Speedtree store. While Speedtree 9 is now out, the last new tree content for games was released back in 2020. They seem more focused on their tree creation software than new tree content at this point. I've always preferred to just buy trees than waste time making them. Looks like I'll need to learn if I want anything new at this point. Still holding out for improvements in render times, or native DOTS support for millions of trees in a scene, or any other tangible benefit from this acquisition. They say some Speedtree shader improvements are available in the latest Unity 2021 builds, but sadly not in the 2020 LTS package I'm using.

 

If speedtree is essential to you consider https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/the-vegetation-engine-159647#description which is able to convert various vegetation assets. I haven't used it, but hear people speak well of it for problems like yours.

 

I remember the times where each Unity blog post have substance in it. Always looking forward to what they have to say next.

 

I've given up on Speed Tree long ago. At least in Unity it was a promise that was never fulfilled, and always felt half-implemented. The recent acquisition by Unity will mean nothing to the user of Unity (unless of course "user" refers to shareholder) as it is simply a financial acquisition to show 'growth' for this now public company.

For trees in Unity I use Vegetation Engine to add proper shaders and wind motion to various static tree assets. I even use it on XFrog trees sometimes ( as long as I decimate them down a bit in Max or another tool). Then I use Amplify Imposters on the tree to create a quality imposter and set it up in an LOD Group with the Vegetation Engine tree for distant viewing.

If I'm using a large number of trees I use GPUInstancer to render them to the GPU. Can render a scene with multiple hundreds of thousands of quality trees this way.

 

Did people really think Speedtree would be free for all Unity users? When they bought it, I thought it would continue to be the same pricing, but would have better integration with Unity.

 

@chingwa would you say its possible then to use trees from the likes of Evermotion or Laubwerk, convert shaders using Vegetation Engine, stick it into GPUInstancer, and that way get HQ trees for offline rendering? (I'm not doing a realtime app so not too worried about performance, more about quality)

Of course then I geuss I wont get any wind animation and the trees will just be static. Which is fine I geuss

 

@newguy123 I'd say it's possible yes, depending on the poly count of the trees, but particularly if you're able to reduce them a bit. I've used a number of X-Frog trees in realtime, after first doing some decimating, geo-deletion, and material combining in Max before bringing the reduced poly tree into unity. Works pretty well. Vegetation Engine conversion will add tree motion and wind animation by default by analying the geometry of the tree. In some cases it can have some weird artifacts depending on the geometry construction, but I've mostly not had a problem with it.

For offline rendering you might be able to get away with not doing the poly reduction step.

 

I have Vegetation Engine and Mtree, maybe worth looking into as an alternative to Speedtree

 

For us and for our projects, we dont have time to sit and learn a "tree modelling app", let alone sitting creating trees. A ready to go tree library is much more valuable to us