The general software thread

We'll see I'm sure, there seems to be a common theme with modern engines. They try to be a jack of all trades, whether it's supporting as many platforms as possible or trying to stuff as many features in as possible. Instead of focusing on making it good at what it's good at..

Again, excited to see what comes of it.

 

I'm somewhat excited by this engine, and I agree it will be most interesting to see how it turns out to be. Though, I'm not a huge fan of Autodesk, and I doubt it will replace Unity for me anytime soon.

 

why not ? if you' re into Autodesk bashing...fine, don't like it...
having a really performing engine linked to the DCC Tools is a real plus... i don't care who owns it.
it's a very very logical move, i've waited for years Autodesk to do that and i just Wonder why they didn't do it earlier...
paying for unity, unreal, cryengine or stingray is just a matter of : what i can do and how easy i can do it.
in addition, AD has a big share in architecture and architects want realtime more and more but don't want to pay too much for that.... sounds very logical to me..

 

I don't understand the hate some people have for Autodesk but I assure you I will delete posts that contain it. The Unity forums are a place to positively develop, not act out primitive behaviour.

On topic: Stingray seems like a nice and welcome option in the engine market. I am sure it will spur yet more competition & innovation. I particularly like where things are going with Houdini and so on - less about static assets that are imported and converted, and more about live updating assets. It's a game changer when you can essentially build in a whole 3rd party app inside your game development tool via robust linking and communication.

It sure beats save, tab, etc when you can run them side by side and see things update as you build levels, characters etc. It's certainly the right foot forward.

 

I wasn't bashing Autodesk, and apologies if it seemed like so. Now, I really think it's great to have more options and I'm looking forward to use Stingray in the foreseeable future.

 

Actually this sounds pretty good to me. $30/month is not bad if you consider game development your main "hobby" -- like myself. It's probably cheaper than the amount I would spend on beer each month, if I drank -- which I don't lol.

I also consider Scaleform to be a major draw. I'm not sure, but in my opinion Scaleform is perhaps one of THE best UI tools I've ever seen. I don't know how hard it is to work with, since I've never worked with it before.

Overall, I'm curious to see if it turns out to be a good engine. Maya LT for free with the engine subscription is also pretty cool. To beat the ease of workflow with Unity though, it would have to be a pretty amazing engine.

 

Thanks AD with 3dsmax, sure a lots of us wouldn't be here now if that software didn't exist.. AD can be criticized like all the major companies were : the Bad Microsoft, now, the bad Apple , basically every bad Big One....
but we can'(t deny what they allowed us to do..
so, i'm starving to see how stinray works, i'm sure that it will have some really neat features, i just imagin i can export all physics directly to the engine in a click...wow...
i just hope Lua and the "flowgraph" system will be optimized enough to allow reasonnable perfs.

 

Part of my latent antagonism for Autodesk stems from my introduction to 3D-modeling in the late 90s, early 00's. Back then 3D Studio Max was considerably less stable, and considerably more expensive. You couldn't get your hands on the program for less than $3,500. And if you were interested in some in-game modeling, you had almost no other options, as the majority of game developers at the time used 3DSMax, and would only develop export tools for that one program.

I wasn't particularly happy about Autodesk buying up some of their major rivals in the mid-00's either, but that's not really relevant to the current discussion.

A $30/month subscription is way, way better than the "bad old days." If a decent game engine is thrown into the mix to tie all of your production pipeline into a single package, that definitely adds to the value. I'll probably end up sticking with Unity+Blender, I really like my current development workflow. But I will be watching what transpires with Stingray with interest.

 

Or any discussion on these forums. It's not really the place to discuss businesses which aren't Unity. That would be for a business forum, I think.

These forums aren't general-purpose. And as we are seeing more and more users every day visiting here, it has to be spelled out a bit clearer.

 

I guess you weren't a Softimage user

In any case, I am mildly interested in Stingray because I'm really a big fan of Beast, although it's not clear if it has progressed at all in the last 4-5 years.

Other than that, the video presentations are kind of underwhelming. I didn't see anything to get excited about (maybe HumanIK?). But more competition is always good.

 

I still don't have alot of faith in Autodesk in this regard, they certainly faceplanted with GMax which was a similar attempt at greater integration with the game pipeline and seemed solid in concept and initial implementation. Their approach is wise though, they seem to be making it clear they're targeting devs with larger teams, so if all they really have is a decent art pipeline, that might still make it more attractive than Unreal/Unity. On the flip side, large devs are already using their products... this will help them leverage 3rd party development more, there's tons of stuff, for instance, developed for Unity that has crossover with their tools (modeling tools in Unity, for instance), and that's not going to slow down. So getting game developers to help improve their tech in similar ways would be smart.

I do not believe they're competing with Unity... Unreal, however, would easily be their primary competition.

 

Okay I might chime in - I'm using Unity to build a framework for delivering real-time engineering visualisation for a global engineering consultancy so I can give a bit of perspective from the arch-viz / engineering side of things.

Now I love Unity, but the fact is that engineering visualisation is about to explode in the next 5 - 10 years (imo). Couple this with massive engineering companies with extensive licensing agreements with Autodesk, and you have the potential for Autodesk to dominate this market through nothing more than the fact that they are Autodesk.

I've spent a lot of time building up our framework but at the end of the day I'll use the tool that plays nicest with others - data sharing and compatibility is a hot topic in the emerging BIM / Digital Engineering shift so it's a huge factor for a lot of companies.

I hope Unity sees this as an opportunity - spend a bit of time on expanding model formats, improve the ability to send data in and out of the editor, integrate more fully into established (non-gaming) pipelines and they can beat Autodesk at its own game. I'm certainly not biased against Autodesk as I use 3 or 4 of their products on a daily basis, but I do have a soft spot for Unity and I hope they take this threat seriously, as they could be missing out on a potentially huge revenue stream from engineering consultancies (who would all need pro licenses and are used to dropping far more $$ on single licenses).

 

Looks like a logical move form Autodesk. Like someone said I could imagine this would be ideal for archiviz interactive walkthroughs. I think we are going to see an explosion of diverse 3d interactive media products that use game tech but are not games per se.

Didnt see any scenes with the level of Unity's Blacksmith or the stunning cinematics Unreal has been pumping out, but the engine isnt released yet so it will be really interesting to see what people make with it.

Edit: Looks like mickyg got in just before me

 

Regardless of how you feel about Autodesk, I feel as a consumer that more competition is always welcomed. Whether Stingray is the next engine I use, Unity kicks it into gear with features / fixes, or it flops and nothing really changes, I don't see any negatives to this.

 

Actually, Autodesk is a Sagittarius. They were founded in December 1982.

I believe this quote. I'm sure it's hard to consider the idea when your software is some of the most expensive

Rampant piracy, like all autodesk products

Must be quite a conundrum from for Unity. It's true that these aren't always relevant to... anything, but that's what draws in the page views ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

Well this is how it's playing out. We have CE, UE4, Stingray and Source 2 (on it's way). That's 4 engines to choose from, not including some of the smaller developed ones like Godot and Paradox.

It's going to be a very competitive market soon, may the best make my life easier . If this doesn't give Unity a kick into overdrive, I don't think anything will.

 

For work purposes it seems like I won't be leaving unity anytime soon. But I will end up with which ever engine best supports the hydra v2. Also the one that's free for personal use. So... it'll be UE4, Unity or Source 2. Since valve is making controllers I hope that means their engine will have a great input api that makes peripherals easy to use... or something.

It's certainly going to make them remind the forums a few more times about how Unity is a 1 time fee with no subscriptions or royalties

 

For companies and people that make games, this is features they don't need.Also many of us are not very fond of Autodesk products, 3DSMAX ils a very old product that stayed with their old cluncky interface, while Blender is better in many points than Maya. Autodesk destroyed Maya development and efforts and their main concurrent, just buying them.

They are promising indeed. There is also another small 3D engine project named Atomic Engine that is based on Horde 3D.

Yes, this is a big point here.

 

We just speculate until 19 August when will be official out.

30$ per month for MayaLT and Stingray and rest of tools is not a bad price. But from all videos, I've seen nothing impressive. I mean, Stingray as game engine, will have a hard competition from Unity, UE4, CE3. We really need more details on what's inside, there is way to less information about the engine to make a clear opinion.

Also you can't beat Unity+Blender for price. The 30$ can be justified only if you come with something super and better that everything else until now. Again, we will see on 19 August.

 

I actually think it looks very intriguing. Not convinced it's better than Unreal or Unity, but it may at least be somewhat competitive. People should try it before making a knee-jerk reaction. It could be great.

I'll at least give Autodesk the chance to prove themselves in this space. Stingray could be really cool (and, if not, at least might help make Unity or other engines better).

 

Just to clarify, Atomic is actually built on top of Urho3D. Urho itself was inspired by Horde and Ogre, but does not use them.

 

The simple response is, for the price of pro (PC, IOS, Android) you can have Stingray for 18.75 years.

Not that I personally really care about the cost of an engine if it's worth it. I only have an issue when another engine is cheaper and better.

 

And if you update Unity to the new version every 2 years with the 50% of full cost upgrade fee, Stingray will always be cheaper.

 

I wouldn't say "hate", but the thing I don't like about Autodesk, is that they seem to buy the competition just so they don't have to compete with it... once they don't have competition, there's no real need to innovate... other than add 'features' to barely justify next version.

Hence I wouldn't feel good about Autodesk buying Unity, for example.

Nevertheless Autodesk developing its own game engine shouldn't be cause for concern, let alone hate.

 

Firstly doubt they'll ever be able to buy Epic, Tencent dwarfs them. Secondly nothing wrong with buying other companies if it helps them expand their portfolio and thirdly what's innovative about Unity? It's a good engine, don't get me wrong but at the moment it's playing catch up.

Lastly, I'm not sure if they've changed over the years. But my experience with Maya and Autodesk has been mainly positive, there was quite a few bugs in the LT 2016 release. But they fixed it quickly, they were kind, courteous and helpful.. Plus a slurry of new tools to play with ..

 

I'm willing to say that this is who it's really for, at least for now. Until coders get their hands on it, it's just a bunch of artist's tools.

 

I like LUA. I also like not having to build to see results. I'm fluent in all of the technologies and applications they're using, and I'm not alone.

What's not to like, if it works? No way to tell without a hands-on. Something to play with on a long flight.

 

I would like to know about the subs, do you need to pay 30$ as long as you sell a finished game like Crysis ?
Or can you stop paying subs ?

 

Regarding Autodesk, never said they were evil. It's not a customer support issue.

The most important aspect about Unity is the tidy, easy to grasp workflow.

Even if it's not innovative, you can't disagree it's a growing tool.

The fact it's also catching up graphically is a great plus. - You can also think other engines are trying to catch up with Unity in terms of workflow.

But I'll stick with Unity.

 

We all know Unity has some best features : C#, plugins , 3D and 2D, able to run on old hardware, catching with graphics , still growing and bringing new features, Free and no royalties.
Really it's hard to find a better deal.

As always take the tool that suits your game needs and that suits you, there is no absolute choice.

 

@ShadowK : since you're using Maya LT2016, do you have something like a specific window that leads to some kind of "asset Store". It should be linked directly to the CREATIVE MARKET which is Autodesk Market place and should be fully integrated with Stingray as well. I'm only using 3Ds max and i know that they'll do the same for 3Ds max in the near future however i don't know if it's going to happen only in the 2016 iteration... if you have some screenshot it would be nice. I'm just curious how it looks like in Maya.

 

I don't believe so, but then again I've not looked either. I'll let you know if I find anything..

 

Ha... ok. thanks for letting me know if it's the case. appreciate that.

 

That's a scary point to consider. The ball is in your court, Unity.

It'll come down to unity or unreal for most of us, I'm sure. But as a VR enthusiast, plugins are what will sway me the most.

 

So after searching about, before back to work tomorrow:

It will be released August 19th, there is deep integration for Maya and Max. It's free with Maya LT, or $30.00 a month without.. It has visual scripting and a material editor, uses all the middleware stated before.

Just a note, it's not the handicapped version of Beast (apparently) it has the e RnsT preview system that never came to Unity.

It's only really going to of interest to the following: 3D developers working on PC / Android / IOS / Xbox One and PS4.

Live link is streamed over Wifi to the device, which a hot reload will actually test on the device itself to see how your changes affect it which is cool.

For programmers you have Lua and Visual scripting which isn't anything particularly exciting, bar you don't have to use C++ which was one of THE most complained about things I've seen with UE4.

The biggest thing is going to be the artwork flow (never heard of a 3D game without it), it also interacts with Mudbox (I've heard, so take it with a pinch of salt). So in a nutshell those excessive tweaks and hundreds of hours back and forth between the 5 - 7 apps you have open at one time will be negated. I'm unsure as to whether or not substances can be exported into Stingray, although Maya LT fully supports them and can be baked and tweaked as you need.

It negates the procedural thing, but it's still not off the cards.. Talking about materials, both Maya LT and the engine supports shaderFX. What you export is what you get..

I've spoke to the team, we will be testing it for a week at date of release. I can give a proper rundown then ..

 

So I'm going to dig in as soon as I can download the program. Hopefully current Maya LT subscribers, like me, won't get the shaft (they said it comes out "later this summer" for Maya LT folks so who knows what that means).

There are a few things I like from the videos:
- Graphics look good, at least in the ballpark of Unity or Unreal
- Art asset pipeline looks great, and could save time or aid iteration
- Live preview looks good, especially for mobile devices over WiFi
- Materials carry over from Maya. Material editor is node based, one of the best features of Unreal
- I like visual coding, and Lua is pretty cool.

Some unknowns:
- How robust is debugging, either with Lua or visual coding? With Unity you have the power of Visual Studio, and Unity errors are typically verbose enough to fix problems. Unreal has a clear disadvantage here. Blueprint debugging is a joke, and much of the C++ code requires macros and things that don't play nice with Intellisense. So if Autodesk can nail the debugger, this could be interesting.
- Scaling. Graphics look nice, but do you need a beast rig? Unreal looks great, but only on high-end hardware. Unity scales much better to lower-end PCs. Once you consider mobile, this is a big deal.

Maybe bad:
- Autodesk have a lot of products. How dedicated will they be to a game engine if it's not widely successful? At least with Unity, that is their whole business. Epic I guess is dedicated too. Autodesk, I'm not sure. It could make a big difference if you're working on a PC title for 3 - 4 years and Autodesk pulls the plug before release. Hopefully that won't happen, but it's a concern for sure.

All in all though, I'm happy to try a new engine. If anything, it helps you think better. Sort of like learning a new programming language or framework. Some things may be better, some worse, but you learn.

 

I have Maya LT I think they should give it to their current customers first. What I might to is drop my Maya Lt subscription and pick up Stingray when it comes out. What would be the advantage if they are both 30/month why wait until the end of summer/

 

Stingray is kind of a dumb name.

Marketing aside, as someone that doesn't use Maya or 3d Studio this engine has absolutely nothing for me.

Also, I feel that Unity's editor extensions are what is going to push it ahead of everyone else and keep them there. It's getting to the point where Unity can do everything everyone else can do, only cheaper and faster.

I'd say before to long someone will make an in engine 3d modeler comparable to zBrush, Maya, 3d Studio, and Mudbox.

 

Looks good, but is far away from what CE3 can do. I mean, they showed nothing impressive so far.

That's the most interesting stuff, the Live Link feature.

Again, we will have to wait until 19 August.

So far, even if it's $30 per month, I doubt peoples will hurry to adopt, when they have other free alternatives, and better in terms of visuals.

 

@Not_Sure

I will admit, I'd miss pro-builder.. It's one of the reasons I like Unity. There are some things the Editor Extensions won't help with. Unity really needs a decent AA solution for DR, apart from that if you have the money everything else can pretty much be bought on the asset store.

They're not trying to build the tools "in-editor", it's just integrated (instant push / pull).. The main issue always has been getting the same results as you get in your DCC package.

@Teo Unreal pounds CE in terms of shiny features and graphics, it's also easier to use but not as performant. From the examples the art could be better, but looks pretty good. It's performance really that'll be the interesting bit..

 

Unreal is not even close to CE3. The kid with kite demo is cool on Titan X, but you don't need Titan X for all CE3 features. I wonder what you can do with CE3 if you make a game only for Titan X, heh.

 

pretty this ! what we can expect, at least, AD being the editor of both DCC and game engine, is that the workflow will be pretty fast, easy , flawless and reliable..... wich can save lots lots of time.

i just hope it won't be a Gmax-like adventure.

i hope AD realized that a lot of things are going real-time.... and that a realtime-3d autoring tool is nothing much than a renderer.
i bet that soon, movies won't be only edited footages, but all interactive movies, it's a matter of time.
in the same time, the progresses of realtime rendering quality will allow film makers to use realtime 3D engine to build their movies... CE3 tried it with "cryengine for movies"... i bet.

mmm having both engines , i doubt strongly ... CE3 is AAA graphics out of the box... and much easier to run (i can hear it with my cooling fans)...but that's another discussion

 

Dude, at least add a trigger warning. Some of us are still trying to forget.

 

I'm not saying it isn't impractical / difficult or a performance nightmare to beat CE3, but UE can.. Just look at the arch viz stuff it's probably the best I've ever seen. Whilst CE can run on tons of hardware whilst looking good and that's all that really matters..!

That's what you want out of an engine. Shame about it being completely user unfriendly, lacking documentation, support etc.

 

A good Deal unity - Houdini - Houdni engine / UE4 - Houdini - Houdni engine will be great is the seamless workflow and procedural workflow
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2739&Itemid=381

 

If Cryteck would move their ass and bring
- easy C# interface or some complete scripting like Lua to access all C++ functions
- Or a new programming language
- simplified material editor more easy to import stuff and more easy to use
- simplify engine usage bringing high level classes
- official Blender FBX support (complete and bug free working in all common cases)
- Simplify all XML and config files or bring them to some new editor panels for config
- a new team to make lot more simple game examples and more documentation continuously bringing stuff (like Unreal 4 do)
If all that would happen , i think Cryteck would be a really serious challenger that could blow everything else, because yes it runs fast delivering great graphics without asking you last 3D hardware unlike Unreal 4.
Another point is the size of the project files , all is incredibly compact and small compared to some unreal 4 project for example.

But i doubt Cryteck will put money to invest in the indie side of the engine, they never done it, they don't hire teams to make things easy and better , making the engine as easy to use as Unreal 4, so until that happens ,it will remain a great engine but really not usable for indies not skilled in C++ and the engine is really complicated to handle in it's actual state.

 

Actually it does have LUA: http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDOC4/Lua+Scripting
It also supports C# in Mono, I was using it ..

It's just a pain in the ass to do anything, I mean it took me 10 hours just to get an imported model working correctly. There's little to no examples of how to make games in the bloody thing and when you hit a bug you've no where to turn..

You still have to make HUD's in a specific version of Adobe Flash to use scaleform, it'd be fine if you could use a more current version. No speedtree support, no proper .FBX pipeline yet although at least now you can import static meshes.. If you want to do anything outside of it's standard format, it can be extremely touchy..!

Some things are so simple to do, whilst others require you to move the earth and moon. Plus in actual gameplay it looks GORGEOUS!..

Finally the community is non-existent nearly, also I'm not sure why they attached it to steam..! Daft idea.

Although at this stage, UE4 is heading down a similar path in places.. It's so stuffed full of things and disjointed in areas it's becoming hard to manage.

 

Unity also to an extent. Several new features (Mechanim, Shuriken, new GUI, etc.) have had their own interfaces and workflows. It is not as standardised as it used to be, which is a pity for usability.

 

since ther are some CE3 lovers, i agree with most of the critics....
CE3 in steam is not a good idea... i hope they come back as before wit a more indie comprehensive licence Policy.
the CE3 community being small is not a problem, it is in fact more an advantage , i have benn in CE3 forums and always found great help from great gals there, while i posted more than 10 threads here with no reply....unity community is too big.
the only big issue with CE is the docs, agreed, too sparse..
the other is the animation import pipeline that is way too complex (as somone said, they must get rid of xml stuff and make an user friendly unity-like interface)
the materials editor is simple, no access to shader code can be frustrating, but at least they provide optimized beautiful default shaders...

 

Most threads receive an answer here. It may take a day or two, especially if it's in the wrong section of the forums, but that's how it will be when you're relying solely on a forum for your answers. What amazes me is that quite a number of them are questions that could have been answered in less than a minute with a Google search.