Thoughts on Unity 5.0

Well going by the refunds thread, then extrapolating most people won't have replied on it and as you said hobbyists etc. even if only 1000 users don't buy pro that's 1.5Million bucks, nothing exactly to be sniffed at there.

It doesn't take a lot to have a big impact.

Interesting thoughts..

 

Qualifying for the refund, at least as stated by the FAQ, requires that you do not make $100,000. If that still holds true it at least should remove most of those who would have considered a refund.

 

When you go serious , i mean making money using software you won' t pirate anything. Pirating is for tennagers, or people that don't understand anything about real work.

The response is Asset Store.
It is too much money and investment for Unity to bring some shader editor , cutscene tool, visual script ?
Is hiring people to work on these features too risky or they can't find talented enought people ?
(New Unity GUI was made by the guy that made NGUI, because Unity couldn't find talented people for the task)
There is he real questions.

Meanwhile we will pick up on the Asset Store when we need to get better features and more tools.

 

The asset store is not the answer, neither will it ever be as the amount of discontinued / never updated and / or buggy incomplete tools out there makes it a no go.

If Epic can do it, so can they and hey who says they're not doing it?

 

The Asset Store is a very big money income. Each time we buy some Asset to upgrade terrain, shaders etc ... it's money for Unity. If Unity has already a complete better terrain, nobody would by on the Asset Store a solution, so that would never generate any money.

I depends on your project : small , medium, big ? mobile or not ? Many people make successfull games using Asset Store tools or features.
Some examples ? Shader Forge, Alloy physic shader framework ...
Unity provides for free the core, while you will buy , only IF you need more features and better stuff on the Asset Store.
UT can't provide the perfect solutions for every projects, their key is adaptable core engine and let people create more tools or more features.

 

I'm testing the lighting, the computation is taking forever in an urban, relatively complex scene with 6 blocks of buildings.

 

Tried going with purely RT lighting/shadows? From what I've seen, realtime shading with Enlighten is fairly good, especially with soft shadows (no longer those weird and ugly dotted pattern).

 

Yes but I wanted to test the mighty GI stuff. The RT lighting works ok but not a blast at all.

 

I'll keep testing during the trial but I think if the thing does not scale whell I'll stray in 4.x for a while.

 

I'd risk saying that 5's realtime lighting is at least as good as 4.x's baked one if not better.

 

Kamon! at first I would say you're crazy. But hey, these where my first steps with U5 so who knows. But keep in mind that with beast you can bake really complex lighting. There is an asset that exposes all teh power of beast with hidden params etc. Dynamic is ok for tweaking, but to reach that point it seems that you've to bake for hours.

 

Are you including developing countries in your statement? You'd be surprised how rampant piracy is in some parts of the world. This mentality that it is only done by "teenagers" is pretty limited thinking and simply not true.

 

My opinion on Unity 5 (and the switch to formerly pro-features):

Real-time lighting is the one thing that I missed in the free version. Now it's in, and a lot of headaches are gone
Things like inclusion of NavMesh/Pathfinding is not that important to me because there are excellent free or inexpensive solutions available that are far superior to what is included.
The one big BIG disappointment is that with real-time shadows, and thus Deferred Lighting, I can no longer use the simple but efficient and customizable RenderSettings fog. I now have to use the Global Fog image effect, which, I have to say, plain simply sucks so bad it's unuseable for anything but having a ground-fog effect in the valleys of vast mountain ranges. The normal distance fog starts out so far out it's almost impossible to see even with a starting value of 0, it has no option to change fog color (thank god for user-created shaders), and it doesn't even have a density setting so the sliver of fog at the horizon that IS visible becomes totally opaque after a few meters. It doesn't help that the API is no longer up-to-date and (what is not Unity's fault) there are virtually zero documented experiences from other users on that topic which kind of makes me wonder how all the people who embrace the new technology and especially Deffered Lighting for everyone implement simple stuff like underwater fog.

 

We have an "alpha sorted global fog" on our camera to do just that, I don't recall exactly but either we got it from the wiki, or it was just a couple of modifications from the base global for effect.

As for piracy, I'd say even in developped country you'll have more than that @zenGarden. For small companies stuff like adobe license, 3ds max and stuff can make a dent in the budget quite easily. So even if they did get licenses, when times come for an update, or to get an add-on, it's easy to go to see if it can't be acquired freely..

 

They take some risk , that can cost a lot also. Well i was not aware of that, and they should just go open source or cheap but capable software instead.

It will come in the Asset Store some solution some day.
There is two things that are lacking :
-Trello features suggestions with voting system
- Public big lines roadmap

 

I have the roadmap everyone's asking for. You have my permission to spread it.

 

1. Fix Stuff
2. Do more Stuff

 

@Cherno

Deferred Lighting has always required a post-process fog, though I agree it's a bit hit and miss and can be hard to control.

Density & Colour btw is set under the Lighting panel's Fog tab. The one that's used for Forward Lighting. Naturally

 

You, sir, are my hero. Who would have thought that the intensity settings are still in the Lighting settings of the fog that can'T be used by itself with DF? Thank a million times! I was really getting desperate for a solution.

 

@hippocoder nailed the "big line roadmap" Lines not big enough though

I think it comes from a good intention, that the global for uses the fog settings of the engine, but yeah, not very clear..

 

They should at least document this fact in the Global Fog API

Another thing I regard as a quite glaring omission is the fact that Render Textures are very dark in Linear Colorspace mode, which is a shame since LC looks much better than Gamma mode in my opinion :/

 

One other thing as well, the colour correction post has a habit of making things completely black. I have a scene which is dark with stars and the skybox pretty much all but disappears.. No matter how much you tweak..

Another thing I guess I'll need to re-write.

 

error: now type & better type dont match.
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What I'm really not liking is how they're forcing the switch for the upgrade by not making possible different version assets in the store. Being assets updated to be only U5 compatible is really anoying and is not that is forcing me to move to U5 but I feel mor that they're forcing me out of Unity with this Autodesk like policy.

 

Did you re done PBR shader or do you use Unity 5 default ones ? Or some asset pack enhancing them ?
(I just can't have good results within Unity)

 

Hmm terrain was a custom shader, tree's used the unity 5 default and some of the meshes used the default shader and some of them were custom.

Personally I'd re-do them all, but they're not bad as such. A lot of the magic is getting the post right, which is a little tricky..

 

That is totally up to the asset creator not Unity.
so go blame the asset creators and ask them to make it for both versions.
This is no fault of unity.

 

I think he meant being able to filter assets by the version of Unity they're for.

 

Unless they changed it recently, the problem is, for now the asset store only keeps the latest version, so all assets that worked just fine with 4.6 and updated to unity5 can only be downloaded from unity 5

 

Ah yes. Totally agree with you on that one. Or the asset creator has the 2 versions in their package. Say a Unity 4.x directory and 5.x directory that way you can delete the one you don't need.
good point.

 

You can drag your prefab / model / whatever to hierarchy view instead of scene view. Then the object is placed at it's own default position which is usually 0,0,0 unless you've set it to something else by yourself. There are lots of these less known features. Here is a small article about 10 of them:
http://www.develop-online.net/tools...u-didn-t-know-you-could-do-with-unity/0204730

 

Exporting from substance painter to UT5 format, the look in UT5 is really different while lot better in UE4.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-5-shaders-low-quality.313553/
For a small PBR based game i would take and i prefer lot more UE4 shaders, you don't need to buy any asset to have a really good look same as substance or 3D coat for example.

 

Seems it's the ambient lighting and / or reflection intensity. Go into the lighting settings tab and play around with the sliders.. I don't believe that's the shaders..

 

Yeah, that example you gave is more of a knowledge difference than a technical difference.

 

Freaking used quixel calibrated for unity 5 not metalness ( I assume it's the specular version of it), model looks awesome in sketchfab that now has pbr rendering, and totally ugly in unity.
Go figure...

 

Yes this is the problem.

I will try to find the issue , what is strange is colors some more white also. That's more strange because in UE4 is just looks good out of the box without tweaking some parameter, this is why i thaught PBR in UT5 to not be so good.

 

Did you export textures with the metallic or specular workflow?
Do you use the same skybox/cubemap for reflections in both softwares?
Do you have any Post Processing setup?
Are you in the right rendering space?
What is your lighting panel setup?

These things all matter.

 

Alternatively, PM me the model and textures and screenshots of what it looks like Substance Painter and I'll give it a shot.

 

Andy, it'll be great if you, or someone else from Unity, could join the discussion in the previously linked thread, as I believe there are things that both Unity and Allegorithmic can improve through a collaboration.

 

Oh you want to reset an already placed object?
You can already right click on your transform component. There are the "Reset Position", "Reset Rotation" or "Reset Scale" options... It's been there at least since 4.x if not longer.

 

4096 maps export is more than 70 Mo.
But anyone that uses subtance painter can make the test, and there is lot of Unity users that own Substance Painter.

In UE4 i drag and drop textures on the material on an empty scene and it looks like in Substance.
In Unity , i create the material , i place a probe , but the metal is too strong and diffuse color is more bright.
Why Unity can't be as good out of the box without needing us to have to tweak anything ? like Unreal 4.

I think all 3D artists will expect dropping PBR textures (metal,rought) on UE4 to looks as good dropping them on Unity, without having to do more tweaks in Unity, as there is not tweaking needed in Unreal 4.

I really think Unity 5 shader PBR has values that are not standard , as i tested with 3D coat also and it seems Unity don't follow same range values or convention for roughness and metalness maps. There is some problem also with diffuse color looking somewhat a bit brighter.

 

@zenGarden

Or you could read the terms both programs are using
Smooth != Rough.
Painter is using the term "roughness" while Unity uses the term "smoothness". Both are correct but they are not the same. If you use roughness map in a texture slot that expects smoothness map, then it's obviously not going to look correct.
Flip your roughness to see correct result. Or do that straight in Painter if possible.

EDIT: But yea, this is really easy to get mixed up. There are so many different PBR workflows at the moment and everyone seems to use slightly different input textures and naming convention.

 

I like how everyone is so focused on a standard shader that they didn't consider standard terminology.

 

So I've been using Unity 5 Personal for a couple weeks now and I have a LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH IT.

AND BY A LOT I MEAN ONE.

AND BY PROBLEMS I MEAN A REALLY MINOR COMPLAINT.

I miss the dark skin from pro.

But honestly? Not enough to really complain about it. In the last couple weeks, my productivity has soared, I've managed to prototype things out really quickly with them looking actually decent thanks to the new standard shader, it runs well on my Mac Mini (something I never expected), and the new lighting system baking everything in the background for me or on my request makes previewing bakes a lot easier.

If this is the honeymoon period, it's certainly lasting a lot longer than the one I had with the new GUI update.

 

Well, you haven't really answered my questions so I can't help anymore. :/

 

My wild guess: unity standard shader isnt compatible because during beta someone accidentally noticed on terrain (as normal mesh NOT built in terrain) that unity implementation matching marmoset standard is slighty incorrect and unity decided to correct this but this might break compatibility. And unity guy said that they will try convince marmoset to change their implementation. When i return to home i try to find topic and paste link.

On topic: awesome work! Maybe lighting is slighty incorrect but who said that games had to be photorealistic? there is always place for mixing real and artistic looking things

 

A Bronto is one of my "business's" mascots but practically speaking I have found an excuse yet to put him in a game.

Anyway with regards to the lighting I have played some more with it and I see a design flaw with the default-skybox. Time of day seems to be tied to light intensity when there are so many other factors.

What's I've found is setting it to 1 or high noon in the default skybox leads to the expected, if overly washed out, colors similar in real life, if you live in a place like Florida or Texas. To me, this looks good in the proper scenes in context. Players should have sense very bright sun at high noon.

If you decrease the light, then it's supposed to be dawn and you can see the sun rising to verify that, but the sky looks like one of the glowing cloudy grey skies just before a storm. To me this lighting looks awesome except those glowing cloudy skies could occur at anytime of the day and there isn't actually any clouds in the sky.

Both of those skies are too hazy looking and the yellow ochre at the horizon is too intense.

I do hope a good terrain modeling tool is made eventually. Every modeling tool I've seen for terrain seems to emphasize rugged mountains to hide the fact they aren't good modeling tools. None of them handle underwater topography in a good way. None of the one's I've seen deal with different forms of island forming. They are all, create pseudo-noise and then pseudo-erode and they don't create natural looking landscapes in most cases.

 

Other thoughts about Unity 5: the Standard Shader has too much shininess. Clothing from those that don't frequent discos usually isn't shiny.

I switch from the Standard shaders to the diffuse or others (or the mobile version).

The standard shader needs improvement in layperson usability in my opinion. The underlying tech nerdiness can always be left exposed for nerd euphoria or special cases.

Hair and skin is arguable but it would be nice if we could create or take existing models and create and name materials with names that are useful with selecting the appropriate shaders and textures. Yes, one could override if they wish. But creating a material called hair or clothing or skin on the relevant vertices and than choosing a Unity shader called hair, skin, or clothing makes sense to me. And the have a slider for shininess or reflectivity or whatever the proper technical jargon is for such a property. In this way, dry washed skin is rather matte in appearance but sweaty skin can be easily implied runtime by adjusting the shiniess slider. And the same thing can be done to simulate wet (or greased) hair or wet clothing.

Also I am getting a lot of crashes, even crashes with my video card driver restarting (Intel HD Graphics original model). I think it has to do with importing an Asset that somehow turns on 'OpenGL 2.0 Emulation' and then changing to a shader that exceeds that emulation level.

I did turn off that emulation level (no emulation) but I've yet to test it be changing the shader to one that was causing the Unity 5 & graphics driver crash (Water4) because I have to do dorky things like manually search the file system to find the Water4 shader and delete it to keep from going in a Unity / graphic driver crash cycle.

 

I've caught Windows using the wrong driver in the past. You may want to check if Intel has anything newer.