Unity Templates - Overview, Details, and Request for Feedback

A template manager would be awesome. I've seen others request the ability to make custom templates, but the manager would handle a bit more on top of that too.

• Template management
  • Redownload templates (I have an anecdote on this)
  • Find installed templates in your machine's file browser
  • Duplicate & upgrade templates made for older versions of Unity
• Find templates from others (from the Unity Asset Store? Could prompt users to purchase packages in the template that aren't in their purchase history - leading to more sales, maybe?)
• Create templates
  • Pick a Unity version installed on the machine
  • Pick packages downloaded from the Unity Asset Store to include
  • Pick packages found in user's specified location on the computer (or perhaps restrict to only Asset Store packages to help fight asset piracy & prevent simple reuploads)
  • Public availability / publish to the Unity Asset Store (this may obviously have issues with licencing of assets - see the bracketed sentence in the "Find templates from others")
    • May require a Super Mario Maker style verification of "play once to confirm there's no errors, and THEN you can share it"

I was changing some stuff with the post processing in a project spawned from the Lightweight VR template - imported a newer stack to try and get things working on a Windows VR headset since the default stuff wasn't showing up. Got some errors about the imported stack having some duplicate assemblies from the existing stack, so I deleted the older stack files. Little did I know that deleting the older stack files causing issues in my project would delete them from the template itself - any new projects made would say there are scripts missing on the objects for the post processing volume and on the camera itself, so it seemed that I corrupted the project template. I'm currently reinstalling Unity 2018 to repair my Lightweight VR template.

So please, PLEASE let us redownload templates at least!

 

Through the Editor - there was one set (the newer, imported PP stack) that had a regular file path in the project as per any other asset, and the other set (the older, part-of-the-template PP stack) that had a weird file path; something about Packages?
I deleted that older PP stack stuff from within Unity and it caused the issue. Unfortunately even reinstalling Unity 2018 didn't fix it - I feel like I must've messed up something major in the package system - but if that isn't repaired by a reinstall, is that handled by Unity Hub itself? The only thing I haven't tried is reinstalling Unity Hub, and I'll try that after this coming week's project deadlines have all passed.

 

I am only seeing 2D and 3D in the Templates window. The other 3 templates aren't there.

 

Sounds like good defaults, one question though. Can you have a template without all the global illumination and lightmapping stuff that is not always used in low-end projects or procedural projects (which can not benefit from pre-made lightmaps and light probes)?
Of course then it would help to have a white (not yellow!?) light in new scenes and default shaders other than the standard PBR ones!

 

This is a really nice feature!

Almost a year ago, there was a call for suggestions for starter kits/templates. We delivered a few suggestions, and the Tower Defense Template was the first one created.

Are you planning on putting those "templates" in with these "templates"? I think that would be very convenient.

 

Does the Unity Hub Self- Update on Start-Up? It really should, If not. Also I read that Patch Releases were left out on purpose. This is truly a horrible idea. Patch fixes are there to fix bugs and should be considered part of this. I did notice that Patches are installed in the Main Unity directory and not in a folder with a name showing there version # etc.. Maybe that should be changed instead so they may be included.

 

This is odd considering they are only a few days away from releasing Beta 5.

 

1 question and 1 feedback
Question: I currently have a Unity 2017.3 project. Is that possible for me to apply and overwrite the 2D template to the project after I update project to Unity 2018.1 when it's out of beta?
Feedback: Hopefully u guys can figure out best possible configuration for both 2D and 3D template.

 

Awesome. Btw will the templates configure Scriptable Rendering Pipeline too?

 

Maybe I should ask in more detail.
1) Is that 2D template configured with Lightweight pipeline?
2) Will SRP i.e. Lightweight and HD pipelines work out of the box and only need modification if there is special need for the project?

 

The naming of these templates makes understanding their pipelines somewhat unclear and this seems to be creating some confusion for users, like @optimise, jbooth, and myself!

So I think the names should be more descriptive and consistent. Here's some possible ideas:

• 2D
• 2D Lightweight
  
• 3D
  
• 3D Ultra
• 3D Lightweight
• 3D High Definition
  
• VR Lightweight
  
• Custom (empty project?)

Adding "Built-in" would make this even clearer:

• Built-in 2D
  
• Built-in 3D
  
• Built-in 3D Ultra
• Lightweight 2D
  
• Lightweight 3D
  
• Lightweight VR
  
• High Definition 3D

 

I really like the idea of these templates but as of right now... I can't seem to get them to work.

Using 2018.1.0b8, starting a new project using the High Definition template I get a few errors like this one:

C:/ProgramData/Unity/cache/packages/packages.unity.com/com.unity.render-pipelines.core@0.1.27/CoreRP/Shadow/ShadowUtilities.cs(250,51): error CS0227: Unsafe code requires the `unsafe' command line option to be specified

This is without me touching anything. There are also a lot of warnings like this one:

Shader warning in 'DeferredDirectionalShadow.compute': loop only executes for 1 iteration(s), consider removing [loop] at kernel DeferredDirectionalShadow_Contact at ShadowSampling.hlsl(204) (on d3d11)

They're fairly descriptive errors / warnings but I'm not sure why there are errors showing on a template created project. Have I missed a step in the installation process of 2018 perhaps? I installed it via the Hub.

 

@Charles_Beauchemin, why 2D template does not apply lightweight pipeline?

 

@optimise that is because the 2D and 3D template are just recreations of the original 2D/3D toggle for new projects found in previous version of Unity that simply setup the editor and had nothing to do with render pipelines



The "3D Ultra" template only causes further confusion here because that's just the built-in render with all settings on max and post-processing.

I also found these template names somewhat ambiguous at first, and the common confusion between templates and render pipelines is what prompted me to suggest we give them more explicit names above.

 

What is "built-in"?

"2D built-In" as opposed to "2D custom"? How is custom differentiated?

If the differentiation is simply the SRP then should it not be default rather than built-in (if default is even a thing anymore in SRP)... Why have 20 different options which are essentially variations of 3 toggle options when you could separate the single drop down into the different options; 2D or 3D, SRP you want to use, packages to automatically add, etc. Essentially building the template you need from components.

Just seems like separating it would would lead to less confusion is all. Having to look for the specific version of the template you need from 10 options becomes harder if people can add custom templates to the list and there is no clear difference between them.

Food for thought

 

As in Unity's built-in (legacy) rendering pipeline versus the new scriptable rendering pipeline. This is exactly how Unity describes it (Unity Built-In Pipeline vs Lightweight Pipeline), however, they also plan to ship "built-in" SPRs in the future, which makes the term somewhat ambiguous. So it's probably not any more helpful or less confusing to use here.

"Custom" was just a placeholder term for basically a project with no pipelines, but then I guess you're really just using "built-in" again, so kind of redundant and probably pointless now that I think of it.

As for making the templates more modular; I don't think that's possible and goes against their whole design, but maybe I'm mistaken and someone from Unity can enlighten us on the subject. My suggestions are really just about improving what we've got now. Maybe a "legacy" prefix would work better?

 

Makes sense, I tend to stick to stable versions of Unity for fear of betas messing up my projects so I haven't tried the 18.1 beta... hence why I don't know the terminology.

I don't think so, from what i read in the first post it doesn't go against it (at least not entirely) 2D or 3D is still more or less a toggle of which mode Unity gets put in, settings are preset depending on the (for lack of a better word) "quality" settings that you want (lightweight, ultra, etc) and some have additional content. So in my mind there are 3 areas that a template covers. So in theory the first two could be easy to implement with some filtering to get valid options for the content so that it is compatible with the other settings.

 

Anyway I would like to see 2D Lightweight Pipeline template available that able to support 2D game development optimally and it will able to support Shadergraph for this 2D game development too.

 

The problem I see with your suggestion is that templates cover all aspects of a new project (editor, graphics, assets, etc.) and are just a quick way to get things setup. The 2D and 3D templates are just recreations of the editor only settings found in previous versions of Unity (see this), so they're somewhat inconsistent with the new templates.

I also think separating templates out into components would kind of defeat their purpose and make them not templates anymore. If you actually want to pick and choose each setting for your project, then a template isn't really what you want. You can already do that by just using presets, the package manager and/or importing asset packages, etc.

 

Yeah, maybe. Perhaps have basic templates and advanced ones? I'm sure that whatever Unity end up doing will be fine. I guess it would only save 5-15 mins once at the start of the project anyway...

 

The ability to create custom templates would be awesome!

 

Can you maybe add a OpenVR controller input example script (with a Input Manager mapping for VR controller inputs) to the Lightweight VR Template?
For example trigger/button input and touchpad axis etc.

 

I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet, but it'd be really awesome to have a way to see what packages particular template include and which settings they change. Otherwise people are likely to just go with the ones they know and ignore ones that might actually be more suited to their needs.

 

Been playing with this today. My first thought was, can I create a custom template for myself? So another vote for custom templates please!

Also, once we have all these fantastic new templates, both custom & existing, a way to sort & hide them in the drop down list would also be great.

 

A word on wording:

When you make a new project in the hub, there's a drop-down for "Template", which gives a bunch of presets for how to make an otherwise blank game. What this thread is about. Then, under Learn/Resources, there's a "Tower Defense Template Project", which is a much larger, premade setup for a game. There's apparently supposed to show up more of those later.

This means that whenever I read the word "Template", I need to remember which one the thread is about. And I've read the forum threads announcing both features - imagine the confusion for someone new to Unity! Maybe have a talk with @willgoldstone about naming conventions here.

Ideally, the Tower Defense thing would be grouped with the 2D and 3D game kits, no?

 

Hi @DanielTG. For every template you guys created, I want to have a detailed description about each configuration makes for the particular template.

 

UnityHub unable to open Cloned Projects from Github. Unity crashes every time.

 

(This is a re-post. I posted this in the wrong spot because I was confused about the difference between a Scriptable Render Pipeline and a Project Template)

Hey there, I just have some general accessibility feedback surrounding the new render pipelines and project templates:

Background:

I've been working in Unity for over 5 years. I've shipped and maintained a game on 8 different platforms, including all the big VR platforms. I've written code that saves out multiple lightmaps to a single prefab to allow switching between them at runtime at a performance that runs well on a Note 4 in Gear VR mode.

With this background, I don't consider myself an expert -- but I also have a bit of an understanding of how things work in Unity.

Feedback:

I find the new project templates difficult to approach and learn. My biggest problem is that I don't deeply understand how the resulting project will be different if I choose to start with one template over the other. I think the documentation for this is actually fine and as clear as it could be. But documentation isn't good enough on its own. As a developer, I need to be able try things and see what the difference is, at a very deep and technical level. Diff tools are always helpful for this. And being able to switch a project back and forth between configurations is also imperative to having confidence in my understanding.

I'm not sure what the best way to approach this accessibility would be, but I think the end-goal for these new features should be the following:

It should be intuitive to a developer to configure an existing empty (basic 3D) project to be equivalent to a project template without needing to start the project with that project template.

If I had a way to get to this point, I feel I would be able to deeply understand these new templates. But without any direction on how I could do this, I feel lost when trying to learn the impact of these new templates on a project. No documentation describing the different templates will solve this problem -- I need to be able to go through the steps of configuring the project myself and see how things change (using diff tools, etc.). Right now, it is definitely not clear how I could do this.

Thanks for your work,
Allen

Update:

I figure it could be helpful to Unity developers to share my experience as I try and figure this out myself to highlight where the pain points are:

Recreating the "3D with Extras" template:

• Pain point 1: After reading the documentation on Project Templates, I have no idea how easy it is to change a "3D" project into one that uses a template. I also have no idea how easy it might be to change a template project back into a bare-bones "3D" project if I choose I want to strip out the extra stuff later in a project.
  
• Started with two projects, one using "3D with Extras" template, one with no template ("3D")
• I noticed there was a Post Process Volume script, attached to the object in the Extras scene, so I thought I could start with trying to replicate this.
• Editing the post-processing script revealed that it existed outside the Assets folder in a package cache. This lead me to believe this post processing script was likely in a package I could install
• Pain point 2: I brought up the Package Manager and couldn't find the Post Process package. This was because, in Unity 2019 alpha when using "3D" template, the "Show preview packages" was turned off in the Package Manager. This made it appear as if I would need to go somewhere else to get this magical package that appeared only when I used the "3D with Extras" template.
• Now that I had found the preview packages and matched up my project to have the same packages as the template project, I copied over all the assets from one project into the other.
• At this point, I could tell I was still missing something, though no errors were given and all the project assets and packages matched:

• It seemed my post process effect wasn't working correctly, so I started to look at that, and found this error immediately:

• This lead me to review all my project settings. When doing that I think I found the differences between starting with or without the template.
• After changing the project settings, I think I was able to get my 3D project to be equivalent to the "3D with Extras" template:

Recreating the HD RP template:

• After my experience with recreating the "3D with Extras" pipeline, I started with the packages. This time I knew about the "Show preview packages" option.
• Pain point 3: For some reason, the HD Render pipeline package is named differently when you use the template vs when you use the Package Manger on a blank 3D project??? Edit: turns out this is just before you import it.

• Next I copied all the assets over and replicated the project settings.
• I think that seemed to be it:

Summary:

To be honest, it wasn't as bad as I thought to recreate one of the templates from the basic "3D" template. There were a few pain points, but the only real thing that stuck out was my own lack of understanding on what a template really was. Somehow it wasn't entirely clear to me that a template was nothing more than:

• An additional one or two packages that could easily be added or removed through the package manager
  
• A set of starter assets, some of which all developers will immediately delete
  
• A few small tweaks to a project's settings

Now that I've understood this, it has become obvious to me that which template I start with really doesn't matter and I don't need to predict the future before starting work on a prototype.

The one big issue:

The major issue I want to end on was a fuzziness in my understanding between the render pipeline packages, the post-processing package, and the project templates. Could you use a render pipeline without starting with the template for that render pipeline? Is a render pipeline and a template the same thing? If it's a project template, then why is there one for a specific package? If a render pipeline is a package, then why is there a whole project template for it? These questions made this all very confusing and unapproachable to me.

 

I have a few more thoughts on the documentation for templates:

• Under each of the RP previews, it lists some features. In one of those lists it says "adds the following". In the two other lists it says "uses the following". This is confusing because at first glance, it's easy to misread the Lightweight RP as being different than the High Definition RP because it "adds the shader graph tool" (that's not what the documentation says, but it's easy to misread it as that)
• The documentation does not clearly and precisely state what a template is and isn't! I would expect the documentation to start with a definition of what a template is in terms similar to this:

A Project Template is a collection of:

• Pre-configured Project Settings
• Pre-installed Packages
• Sample Assets

​

• Rather than saying a template uses or adds "features", call them as they are! These are packages in the case of both the Render Pipelines and Post-Processing stack! By simply calling them packages, it makes it much more clear that these are things that I could later add to my basic "3D" project if I chose to do so.

I hope it's helpful in improving the accessibility and usability of Unity. Recently I've been very unhappy with the "jump in and prototype something" experience because I get hung up on not knowing what template to start with. I hope this can be improved to keep Unity as a simple, easy to use prototyping tool.

Cheers,
Allen

EDIT: I just noticed that the descriptions in the original post of this thread address a number of the problems I just mentioned! This post seems much more clear about what a template is than the documentation.

 

Error: UnityHub install module for any device In Linux failed. Even run it with sudo privileges it happen in version: 1.3.0

 

The ability to add custom templates would be amazing! I make mobile apps and might start 2-5 new projects in a month. I've got a script that basically just instantiates all of my boilerplate app dev stuff, but I still have to import that first, run the script and wait for it to finish! Plus, with customisable templates, I have different templates for different app styles - e.g. not every app I do needs a camera, or some of the native plugins, etc. Having a few customised templates would be incredibly useful in that regard! Plus, it also means that if we bring in new Unity devs that don't know our pipeline, there's a nice, obvious template for them to get started with.

Basically custom templates in the hub is my most desired feature for Unity at work

 

I hate the hub, it sucks, why is required open that to open a project in unity in the last versions? i'm really angry, I spend more than an hour trying to create a project for unity 2019.2 thanks to the hub.

I been using Unity more thant 8 years, it was preally good until unity 2018 appeared, i'm thinking seriously to use another engine like UE4, the documentation of all the new stuff for Unity is poor, the building time used in the last versions are a taking hours because of "shader variants", you never listened your users and all your demos show a lot of stuff that is never accesible to public.

New unity versions are unstable and you are lauching a new update every month that breaks projects from a previous version, also you are launching tools in alpha versions that you sell like a big update but are broken, thats stupid, go and paid your own testers and realease a tool when it works fine for public, don´t use us like lab rats, what the F*** are you doing???

I remember something to you "Make it simple" that's why Unity became famous not for this.

 

Now that the resolution dialog is gone in 2019.3, it would be really nice if Unity would extend their templates with an in-game menu that supports video (of course resolution setting) / audio (volume) / exit options.

 

@Rowlan Templates are designed to help you quickly setup and configure the editor side of things for a new project. So player features such as a resolution selection screen are outside the scope. However, I do think it would be a good idea for Unity to offer a standardized menu system asset package since this is such a universal and important element of any game. The old player options window was just a lazy way to handle that on desktop platforms.

 

+ 1 for the custom templates. I usually delete some default packages, and add others that I always use like Cinemachine... I know that I can configure manifest for each Unity version, but I cannot choose from multiple set ups. I might write a script that handles loading and changes manifest, but it seems like an overkill.

It's not like a new project is created every day. But it's a nice and neat feature to have. Very useful for Game Jams, if there is an ability to even add a

git

reference to manifest in those templates - it would be amazing, probably the best feature for this.

 

I just want the ability to create my own templates (derived from already available templates). For instance I love a stripped down version of the URP template, without the assets, but above all, without the packages for Rider and Visual Studio. Since I am using Visual Studio Code, I have no need for the Rider or Visual Studio package and they only add unnecessary harddrive space and install time.

I do a lot of test projects and having to remove all that I don't need every time is cumbersome. I rather would have the ability to create a copy of a template and then edit to my own personal preferences, with my own preferred folder setup etc..

Until then I will do it manually using this link: https://manuel-rauber.com/2020/08/21/unity-custom-project-templates/

 

Kevin Maxon seems to no longer be at Unity or at least not on the forums so reaching out to @DanielTG @Charles_Beauchemin @superpig

Just a heads up --It's been 3+ years and this confusing (yet simple to fix) template labeling still has not been addressed. Twice a day someone in the official Unity discord doesn't know what render pipeline they are using, or they think they are using the "2D" or "3D" render pipeline due to this simple oversight. And I'm sure at least 10x more that never make it to the discord or forums to tell the story. The naming convention to label Built-in Render Pipeline, the Built-in Render Pipeline is in the official Unity documentation a thousand times over. Only Unity Hub breaks this convention and confusingly labels these "2D" and "3D"... yet also doesn't specify if the URP and HDRP templates are 3D or 2D. And before anyone mentions it, virtually no-one clicks on the tiny "i" info button to get more info on template nor should they need to. And even that hidden info text that almost no-one reads "built-in renderer" is inconsistent with Unity's documentation "Built-in Render Pipeline."

Anyway --I know you're working on some bigger improvements to Templates in Unity Hub and it sounds great, but please address this simple naming convention / string edit as a priority. It's a simple but important detail that can immediately give a developer or company that is considering to license Unity a good or poor impression of Unity's usability, clarity, consistency right off the bat.

 

Thank you, Charles! It is much appreciated.