Unity 2018.1 - Documentation lacks information, SSS, general Support/Tutorials ?

Hi,

I have been using Unity Plus for quite a while. Purely as Artist because I don´t know any coding. I had very high expectations about 2018.1 because of the nice marketing videos and Keynote. I thought "Wow, finally I can stop rendering cutscenes in Maya and do it all in Unity because it rocks!"

But somehow I miss a lot of stuff. I don´t know if it´s all there. The thing is: I don´t know how to find out! The documentation is lacking a lot of information. Just check this:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/GraphicsTutorials.html
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/04/2...of-the-new-unity-project-templates-in-2018-1/

"and a subsurface profile asset that includes examples for skin and foliage"
Nice! But no explanation how to use it properly... Why is there no documentation about that stuff?

There is no documentation about Subsurface Scattering for example in the part of the materials & shaders as well.

The preview Videos showed this nice little girl character under a tree. How is that done? How is the skin shader set up? How is the lighting and the shadows set up? How do you even know how to start?

That scene is exactly what I would want to create in order to leave Maya behind and render in Unity. I don´t care about frames per second. If it´s 1 frame per second but it looks amazing that is already like 300x faster than a standard rendering in Maya.

I really don´t have the time to play around and figure out stuff. Despite the fact that I won´t be able to without guidance.

Please correct me if I am wrong: There are features in development, people think a lot about how to implement them in the engine and know exactly what setting does what. And then nobody made an effort to write that down? Are there no internal videos or documentation how to use features like SSS? A simple how-to for the stuff that was shown in the keynote would really help a lot...

I did find this here:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ScriptableRenderPipeline/wiki/Lit-Shader

But for example how is a "thickness map" for SSS supposed to look like? How am I as an artist supposed to know what to create if there is no information about it?

I would really like to have a simple how-to tutorial for a super realistic character setup for cutscenes. Unreal is really good at that and it´s rather easy to use. But I would really like to stay in Unity.

It might be that Unity is even better, but it seems to be a big struggle to find out...

I would like to have a user-friendly experience to focus on the art part!

Any feedback/help is welcome!

PS: Workflow wise it would be AMAZING to have something like the render settings in Maya. You select your renderer (I am using Redshift 3D for example) where you have all your global settings. Quality of SSS, general quality etc. etc. Then for your lights/cameras/objects/etc. you have additional settings (like shadow size for the lights). That way you have ONE place for the overall quality settings. They are easy to set up, you have access to everything there. And if you want you can tweak on top of that.

In the Unity 2018.1 High-Def example there are:

• Edit => Project Settings => Graphics
• Edit => Project Settings => Quality
• HDRenderPipelineAsset
• Post-Process Volume
• Volume Settings
• Post Processing Stack

And of course additional stuff for Materials, Lights, Cameras. And the thing for me as an artist is: How the hell am I supposed to know how all that plays together if there are no tutorials? For all those things (I believe) there is no coding involved so it should be something an Artist should be able to do alone, right?

 

Talking about learning ressources:

 

The new rendering pipelines aren't finished yet so there isn't extensive documentation on it. If you read the tooltips you can see what that setting will do. There's also this section of the documentation on GitHub but its the same information as the tooltips - https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...wiki/High-Definition-Render-Pipeline-overview

 

Thanks, I found that link also before. I just think it's not ok to ship something without proper documentation. If it´s not finished that´s fine, at least some sort of workflow would have been good. They can adapt the documentation when things change. But at the moment it´s just "here you go, figure out". I don´t think that is very user friendly.

 

I would just like to point out that noone has "shipped something without proper documentation". The HD pipeline is not out and wont be until 2018.3 or later. Nothing has "shipped", and I am not sure where you got that info from. So no point saying "this unfinished unreleased thing is not documented!" because thats how development goes. When it has actually been created, as in finished being created, the documentation will follow.

 

2018.1 is already out. In the keynote video they said "Look at all those cool features we will have in 2018.1"

Well then the keynote was a great stunt by the marketing department. Because it was very misleading. "We have all this cool features, you can look forward to them. Yes they are experimental. BUT look at what you can do with it!"

And then when it´s out you are officially told "don´t use those features". I was asking the support and they told me exactly that. I was wondering if I can use the improved performance pipeline for mobiles so I can make the performance of my games better "well... yeah... don't do that..." right...

Well what does make Unity 2018.1 differ from 2017.3 then? The new features (and bug fixes)! But if you are told you should not use them but you can play around than this is nothing more than beta testing for everyone. They just don´t call it like that.

I think this was very very misleading and I am very disappointed. Because I would really like to stick to Unity for several reasons and finally thought "oh cool, they are catching up!" but now it´s just another unofficial beta-testing...

Where is the point in implementing features, telling people how cool the features are, and then you can't use them? This is Beta-Testing, nothing more.

 

Did you read what I said? 2018.3 not .1

HD pipeline does not come out until 2018.3 at earliest. Which is end of this year. Myself and another user have tried to tell you this in this thread and you seem to have ignored our posts entirely.

Please look at the unity roadmap for more information. HD is not out. This was made very clear in the keynote.

You say "This is beta testing nothing more". YES. This IS beta testing, because if you are using HD then you are testing a BETA and UNRELEASED part of unity.

I really dont understand what is so hard to understand about this. You are even in the "Beta" part of the forums.

 

Yes I did read that. Yet in the keynote they made the impression "we are almost done, you can already work with it. Just a few minor things need to be ironed out"

Please answer me that then: How do you call that other than beta-testing? Do you think the keynote was misleading? Why are the features implemented at all if you should not use them?

The features are implemented.

You can use them but you should not. You should not even play around a lot with it because they are experimental.

There is actually NOTHING from the keynote that can be used with 2018.1

This is more a 2017.4 bug fixing release.

 

I am not sure what else to tell you. It is marked as beta, keynote mentioned it will be released at earliest end of year, and it has been mentioned all over the forums and documentation that you can access beta features if you want, but they are not documented, likely to change, and you shouldnt come and moan about those things.

On the one hand you accept that you are accessing parts that are not meant to be finished or "shipped" yet, but on the other hand you are acting like despite that they should magically document and ship them when they are unfinished.

I consider software to be not beta, when the developers say it is released. Funny thing is, so does everyone else.

This just comes across as "I want this NOW and I am ANGRY ITS NOT READY!".

"The features are implemented" - That is a very vague statement. They are not finished, clearly. I am sorry but I am not going to continue explaining why unfinished, unreleased, and in beta parts of the engine are not documented properly. I think the explanation has been put forward pretty well in this thread already.

EDIT: on top of which, if you are doing renders you should be using the Octane renderer in unity. So everything is different for that anyway.

 

Unity 2018.1 is not beta, you can download it here (which is not the beta page):
https://unity3d.com/get-unity/downl...965.1914271052.1526292940-34742230.1501460230

And I think they should at least add some documentation, even if it's experimental. What is the use of adding features if nobody knows how to even test them? That would even be bad for a beta-test.

And don´t get me wrong: I am not blaming you. And yes you are right: I would love to have at least something NOW working from they keynote. With a minimum of documentation so you understand the idea behind those features. Especially because they added them in the not-beta 2018.1 that you can already download. And it´s not like the documentation can´t be also "beta" and then later change.

I wanted to use the features (even if they are experimental) for testing out the capabilities of creating "pre-rendered" (which means I don´t care about performance for that scenario) of Unity 2018 compared to Unreal 4.

And after watching they keynote (and that´s not only me, I talked to a couple of other people that wanted to try exactly the same with cutscenes) I really had the impression: "hey cool! I can give it a shot, it might change a bit, but in general I can start using it".

Long story short: even if it's beta it would be good to have at least also "beta-documentation" to try to understand what the ideas behind those features are. The specific example I have is the SSS shader.

 

You really are not reading!!!!!!

2018.1 is NOT THE SAME as 2018.3

Can you see the difference? you are talking about a version that comes out in 2 versions time.

Again: 2018.1 is NOT THE SAME as 2018.3

One is .1 release. one is .3 release. I cannot make it anymore clear.


Please read properly before posting.

 

I am angry, you are right. They showed this great example of the little girl underneath the tree and said "look what you can do with it, despite the fact that it´s experimantal and things might change"

But you cant. Not even "experimental" you can come close to that look.

And have you ever tried Octane for Unity? Do you know how it works? I do, and I tried it. The render-times are EXACTLY the same as if I rendered the stuff directly in Maya with Octane. The core engine of Octane is the same for any platform. No matter if you use Unity, Maya, 3dsmax.

The idea behind the (still experimental) pipeline is that you don't have 1 frame every, let's say 3 minutes, but rather 3 frames per 1 minute. At least for people who want to create movies with it.

And then they show this example of the girl, with nice SSS shader, great lighting, in realtime: yet, you can't even somehow get close to that right now.

Yes, that makes me angry. Because it is misleading.

 

Ok, obviously you are taking this too personal now because you start shouting. And you also don´t seem to understand my point.

I do understand that 2018.1 is not as close in development as 2018.3

Yet they implemented features "for testing". I do get that. I do get that it is not final. But even for experimental features they should have "experimental" documentation for people to test stuff.

Don´t you think that would have been clever? Just for testing purposes?

 

I guess they should hire extra documentation developers just to handle that?

There are already released parts of engine still needing documentation, and your saying they should focus on the newer parts first?

Yes, I was getting irritated because you were completely ignoring me and not even saying you read what I said. Now you have said one is not the other thats fine, but before you could have at least shown a little acknowledgement over the answers posted here by me and another user.

Also, there is experimental documentation on most of the githubs. Yes, finding it will be hard because: its experimental.

I believe you seem to think "for testing" is same as "evaluating". Testing is about finding problems with workflow, performance etc and reporting back. It is not for testing out whether the features are good for your game.

TLDR: wait for it to come out.

EDIT: Noone said that girl under the tree can be done now. You have obviously looked at it, got all excited and assumed its out. Its not, and in none of those videos did they say it is out "now". Watch them again.

They were preview videos of whats coming. Not out. Coming.

 

Took 5 seconds to find experimental docs location:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hd+pipeline+documentation+unity



https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ScriptableRenderPipeline/wiki


From docs "This wiki contains beta documentation for the SRP, Lightweight Pipelines and HDRP. Documentation on this wiki is subject to change and may be incomplete. At this stage we are seeking feedback, but this feature is incomplete and subject to changes (API, UX, scope). It is not ready for production yet, and not covered by regular Unity support. You can direct your questions and feedback to the preview forum. (link: https://forum.unity.com/categories/betas-experimental-features.86/)"

So like I said, its not out and wont be documented for a while because its all subject to change. Have some patience please.

EDIT: you can always file an issue here about docs: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ScriptableRenderPipeline/issues

 

Yes, I think it would be wise to start documenting from the very beginning. It's not that Unity is a small company that can´t afford to do that. And sorry if I did not seem to get my point across from the start. So now we are on the same page.

And now that you are saying "even older parts still needing documentation" just shows the way they handle things. I didn´t even know that the older stuff is not properly documented. Which is shining an even worse light at Unity...

Especially since the Unreal guys seem to get it right. One might think competition does have an influence on things like that.

Yes evaluating is the word I wanted to use. So right now you can´t even evaluate properly. Believe me I tried... a couple of days. Just for minor stuff like SSS...

I guess yes I have to wait until it comes out and then start evaluating. Or I switch to Unreal. Which is a shame because in general I really like Unity.

 

This one I know. But it´s super incomplete. They made marketing about this great SSS shader. There is no documentation about that in there. Which is super important to evaluate, especially for guys like me.

 

Again, if you want to evaluate you need to wait for it to be released they have said so many many times that it is not ready for anything that will ship this year or even next year potentially.

I am done explaining this. If this is really it; your here to complain about unfinished things that are still subject to change not being documented (hence no point continuously paying for new docs to be made, and yes - unity is a big company but it cant just throw money away it has investors it has to answer to), then I wish you the best of luck. I do hope you work out how to use the HD pipeline, and it should'nt be too hard given there are enough posts on these forums with users who have worked out a lot of the internals that you could work it out.

 

Alright, I see it different but thanks a lot for clearing things up. I will just wait and then hopefully don´t need to complain anymore. Fingers crossed