Unity 3.4 launched!

Hey all. I'm new around here but have been using Unity for the last few months and the new features I've tried in 3.4 so far are awesome! Great stuff!

 

Been checking the announcements page for a while hoping. My hopes have been answered. Praise the Unity team. This is fantastic.

 

BUY THE PRODUCT. BUY THE PRODUCT. BUY THE PRODUCT. BUY THE PRODUCT!

You won't get all those nice features if UT are all out of jobs because NOBODY BUY THEIR PRODUCT because they made it TOO FEATURE RICH.

This is like you are demanding Foie Gras, truffle, caviar from the soup kitchen on the street! And you demand it for free!

STOP BEING SELFISH. BUY THE PRODUCT. Then you got the rights to demand for features AS A PAYING CUSTOMER.

 

I try the demo "Angrybot". When I move around in the map for a while and was chased by the large robots, my pc crash and auto-reboot.

Edit:
I try it again. This time the demo is ok. When I go back to editor and press run again, it freeze after I opened the circular door. The screen flash and become a mess. I stopped the play button.
The, this is what I got:

All the text went away. Is it related the substance mat.?

Anyone move around the whole map has similar problems?


win xp - sp3, nvidia gts 250 with 512VRAM, 3GRAM.

 

Totally agree. I can't understand how people can make complaints about features missing from something they are getting for FREE.

If you want those extra features, buy the product that contains them. It's very simple.

 

You rock! Thanks for the info. I know a few of us are excited about the substance feature.

 

Substances are handled like any other materials in Unity, and materials can't be used on terrains.
However, this is one of the feature we'd like to implement in the future with Unity.

 

I was looking in the features, loadlevels work properly so you can now do loading bars or does it still just return 0 or 1?

 

Remember the good old days when there wasn't a free version and people who bought the Indy version thought it was a BARGAIN? Jeesh... FWIW providing a free version that gives you everything you need -except- one or two features that are critical to your project is called "smart marketing". Heck, I've been using Unity for ages now and I've never been able to use the free or indy version as there have always been one or two features in Unity Pro that I just cannot live without.

 

@Noisecrime
Hey Noisecrime, nice that you're around here. :O)


Regarding Substance:
I'm dissapointed about this because after all the fuzz i expected that i would be able to create procedural materials/textures inside Unity without the need to buy/update another third party tool on top. They've choosen their words quite carefully here. I thought that BitmapToMaterial generates a more or less good looking procedural material/texture out of a given normal texture, where it makes sense, and it would be at least part of the texture import settings. Btw. thanks for the hint.


Regarding the rest:
Seems like a big release for Unity regarding the additional platforms but primary a bug fix / smaller enhancements release to me. The sad part is that i have the feeling that they somehow don't invest enough serious development time into the web component. There was a time when the web plugin was somehow working beside of a few quirks, actually it never was free of bugs, but since V3 it seems to be more buggier than before. I also don't understand why you can't choose a fullscreen resolution in the publish settings anymore.

Anyway i did a few tries with windowed and fullscreenmode and got several freezes/black screens on OSX with Chrome, had no motivation to try out other browsers as well.

My enthusiasm for v3.4 cooled down.

 

2 Unity logos in the webplayer? Yes, there is the watermark that appears at the bottom for a few seconds, but if your counting the Unity logo that appears with the initial load of your player, do you realise that you can change this even in the free version? It's controlled by the embbeding options in the HTML on the page where you place it.

I still can't believe there are people complaining about the differences between pro and free, it all just equates to the "give me everything I want in the free version so I don't have to buy pro" mentality.

 

Your definition of 'bare essentials' is entirely that - YOUR definition. If every feature of PRO was a 'non essential feature' why would you buy it?

 

Where there is a will there's a way

Its just a proof of concept at the moment, using the most appropriate free substance materials I had access to, but already it shows just
how much potential there is with Substances.


A Year In Two Minutes - the Demo

or the video (though had some problems capturing it, so its a bit jerky)

edit: Improved video version here

 

That's an odd expectation, given that Unity has always been about importing assets from third-party apps for everything. (The sole exception being the terrain editor, because no third-party apps created Unity terrains.)

But you can, nothing is different there.

--Eric

 

Please reproduce the problem on your machine and send in a bug report immediately after, detailing what happened on your machine up to the crash.

 

It is indeed possible to change it to a 1st person view. You have the entire project source available.

 

Thanks a lot for your bug reports on the asset store crash. It has been resolved and we're looking into how a backend issue managed to propagate all the way to client side like that.

 

Thanks to Unity Technologies, I now have a future of substance abuse ahead of me.

 

Also, if you check out the asset store Unity Technologies account, you'll see the available 3.x demo projects. Currently those are:

Astro Dude.
Third Person MMO Controller.
3rd Person Shooter.
Car Tutorial.
Penelope.
Character Customization.

We will be adding both Bootcamp and Angry Bots on there. Unfortunately we've been a bit busy with, you know, shipping 3.4 and all that

 

@Eric5h5
Nope, i don't think so because Unity somehow raised the expectation that you can create procedural materials/textures inside Unity directly by a) not stating the opposite clearly so far, b) because they also integrated other third party tools into Unity which you can make proper usage out of inside Unity only, c) you can alter parameters in Unity for substances but you for instance don't get further tweaking options for other assets like PSD files and d) Unity so far had quite a good track record in understanding that it's better to fully integrated a technology into Unity instead of just offering the option to use it, one of the things Shiva does wrong/simply can't afford.

I just had a few tries with some demo substances and it seems that either my MacBook Pro is to slow or that using animated textures via Substance is very choppy.

I know where to define the resolution for the windowed mode but would you mind telling me where i can set the resolution for fullscreen mode in the publish settings for the webplayer as well?

 

I can assure you (having played in the Indie version in Editor first) - it doesn't
It looks cool but so much cooler in Pro.

I still agree that the differences between Pro and Free are very reasonable. The could be MUCH MUCH worse restrictions that wouldn't make it fun any more. This is not the place to discuss these things, though.

Another thing - now that the Substances are in: How uch does the Substance Designer cost for Unity Pro Users? I wasn't able to find out so far since the Allegorthmic site seems to be hammered, right now.

 

Filed a report yesterday using UniSciTE. I can not be bothered to use MonoDevelop. I can not wait for so long just to edit a small script. UniSciTE is quick, simple and easy. But now, when you click errors in the error console, you are no longer taken to the line with the errors.

 

So, how do you use the new water prefabs for making a big ocean ?

With Water3 I just changed the X and Z scale values, but if I do the same now with water4 the result is pretty strange (distorsion on the reflections, huge waves...), do I have to make a lot of duplicates of the water prefab and align them ?

 

1) you comment woes, since when the free was still indie, those users where paying customers, and even then they where not allowed to complain/ask in the mind of the PRO licensees. Don't forget UT made indie free, it was their choice to do so.
Since it's conception, UT has been discriminating Unity indie (now free), which is bad business practice. (as every veteran in the industry would agree with)

2) Unity (free) has not changed significantly throughout the years, while the PRO did. (features and such)
This makes the gap between PRO and free widening per release, instead of going parallel. (bad practice again)
Infact, there are 18 differences between PRO and free (or back then Indie for 200 USD), thus the actual pricing difference for those 18 differences would be worth 1500 - 200 = 1300 USD. But then Indie became free, which if everything went fair, the pricing difference should remain intact. (meaning we must gain an increase in features wortth of 200 USD in the free version)
So, where are those features worth the 200 USD? i don't see them?

3) as an extension of point 2, UT made the "light" model, that's ok (by the industry standards back then), but from it's birth till now, nothing has changed under the hood at all (except some bugfixes), while the PRO has gained quite alot in the same time (talking about 2 to 3 years). (Occlusion Culling, Beast, AssetBundle support, 3d Audio, Deferred Rendering, Lens Effects, etc etc etc, list goes on and on)
While not all gains in features are essential in game making, or in other words the bare basic needs in production use, there are some that many will need, and should be included in both versions. UT lacks to review their feature lists and evolution of the PRO product in relation to the free one, and adjust it throughout time. (as they should)
The difference should remain equally towards eachother, if PRO gains many features, while free does not, then free should also gain some features from the PRO to keep it balanced. (pricing wise, but also marketing wise)

4) i understand that many will disagree with what i'm writing, mainly because they have the PRO license, and psychologic studies show that people who have bought something they really wanted, will protect their investment under any circumstance (even if they would bought something that was broken or overpriced).
Because if they would have critics towards the product, it would also critic themselves (as buyer). Logic, but not wise.
Let's become more critical towards products, it will give better feedback to the producers/developers, and opens an opertunity to increase the quality/usefulness/adoption for that product in future releases.

Sidenote: Don't forget the total of 17 Million USD, UT received from it's investors..

 

I can't find the solution to this either.
water4 was supposed to be an "artist friendly" water but now it is more confusing then water3?

2 Lines of instructions would be enough ...

Also the "gerstner displace" script is considered to be always checked when ou build your app. You can disable it only in the editor.

 

Quite the little psychologist, aren't we? Well - I didn't buy Pro yet so I won't protect anything there (and for the record I even bought indie when it was still a paid product).
Just as an example... You don't see things like ... well ... Beast integrated even into the standard version for friggin' NO MONEY AT ALL as something that makes Unity Free an awesome product? You don't see that while they made it free they still allowed you to make money off it - WITHOUT HASSLE? Or anything about the interface changes that have improved since 2.5? Nothing of that matters to you? Tough luck, I guess.

You can complain all you want. It won't change a thing. And you probalby won't accept it either. It's their model of how they sell things and whether or not you see it as fair is ... well ... unfortunate for you. It's not an unfair model at all compared to other companies if you ask me (I know - you don't). Would I rather have most of the Unity Pro features for free? Hell yeah! Of course. It's not how things work though. Unity want to make money off of it - righteously so - they can set the rules. Customers accept them or the company goes down in the long run. Unity doesn't seem to go down right now - so it's probably just you.

 

I said, mainly, as in most of them. Beast is only used to generate a very basic lightmaps in the free, most extensive features are locked still (like the indepth tweaking). Anyway, i was not talking about Beast (as in the full feature) being a essential thing. I'm talking more in terms of Asset Bundles, occlusion Culling and the likes, which do not have any form of support in Free, thus not even partial.

I'm not the only one complaining, i'm just one that is more verbal apparently. (others either left Unity, or where mouth shut by the hostile counter reactions. Yes, throughout time in many occasions the defending party was utterly aggressive, conspirative in response: "how dare the prosecuting party speak negative over our holy product! outrage! Heretic!" -you get the idea.
Not that it is going now in this case (as of writing).
But if you scatter throughout these forums, you will notice many posts about points i made in recent posts in this thread. Critism is a good thing, if UT listens carefully, it can gain them allot of advantage. (customer feedback is not to be ignored in any case, even if it is not aligned with current strategies, it should be taken into consideration)

I also opted for a modular approach, giving the free users the ability to buy modules (feature unlocking), for a fixed fee per module. That way, everyobody wins, UT receives money for the PRO modules, the PRO users are not betrayed upon (pricing wise, all modules together are equal to the PRO license price), and the free users have the ability to build up to the PRO version module by module. etc.. that would be the most fair approach in sales strategy.

 

For me the company is fine as ever.
Use the free version for me is a beginning, because I am a beginner, is the free version is a good start for many, before moving on to the Pro version.

My brother uses the pro version, but for me I get the free version.

For several reasons. First, because I'ma beginner and hobbyist
When I make a little game, and share with friends, I'm not gaining anything because I do not want.
Second, use Unity because I like to create things, and do not carry products made by me or the team seriously.

Third, if it were to put a game on the market, chose to market the company's own unity, because they are experts in the aria of games and multimedia. So both parties win.


PS:

Keep a good working guys.
And good luck to the industry. I'll always be here to support.

 

There are only a measly 600 Substances on TurboSquid, and the parameters are quite poor on the ones I have tried (there is a cool online previewed written using Unity). eg. Bricks never have enough mortar width or brick roundness for my case.

Compare that to FilterForge's 8000 free filters... plus if a FilterForge filter is not quite perfect you can tweak it (and upload the tweaked filter to share and grow the library).

 

Check your Sizes in Editor log. Make level 0 very small. Work for it. I have Pro and I don't use AssetBundles. It's amazing what you can do in 2MB or so.

If you actually knew what you were missing, you'd be begging for the Profiler (and probably shadows), not AssetBundles!

 

a dream comes true

 

Indeed, I'd actually rather they dropped the toy terrain editor and better-supported importing height map files (most tools like WorldMachine produce an easily imported image, but Unity makes it cumbersome).

 

Post it and let the community decide. Quite sure that many would be happy to "clean up" your messy code. I suspect that most people would like to see how certain things are done, and more importantly, using the same projects that were used to create the training videos from.

 

To what extent can we make our own substances and sell them?

 

Selling substances is for the moment not allowed for third parties (cf. EULA from Substance Designer), however this is gonna change soon. We'll provide more information when everything is set up.

 

If you buy Substance Designer, you can make and [edit:] not sell Substances like any Asset. A hotdog cart may be more profitable though, considering the proportion of Texture consumers to Hotdog consumers. Substance Designer is perhaps more like a tool for designing new hotdog carts. Not a huge Market for those. Good luck profiting $15 from every hotdog vendor who utilizes your design.

Such is the middleware market gloom.

Edit: Liatti says otherwise (for now). Good change - community development is critical to asset supply. No wonder there are so few Substances, and why they aren't quite right for many real-world situations (I tried about 10 bricks and none suited my purpose!). I'll be reading the License very carefully to check such ill-conceived tactics truly are a thing of the past. Hurry up though, guys, you've dropped the ball already by not going out simultaneously with the Unity 3.4 release!

 

Taumel and Saymoo should get a room where they can moan all day long about how unity isn't good enough. Thats all I see from those two. Moan, moan moan moan.

Guys for gods sake shut up.

 

Most of the people disagreeing with you don't have Pro - amazing how easy it is to making sweeping generalisations without any proof You'll also find that most Pro users are more critical towards the product than free users, as they have a larger investment in the software, and don't feel offended when something is fairly criticised.

Perhaps you percieve these "how dare they" posts to be so simply because they don't agree with you view point that every feature you want should be free - I personally haven't seen many of them around. There's a fine line between criticism and whining - and i've yet to see a real point in any of your posts as to why the free version should have more features, that didn't ammount to simply "because i want them".

They already stated why this wasn't a good option, and the main reason was the version control nightmare it would create.

Sidenote: Don't mention investor capital if you don't know how investment works. Just because they raised $17 million (i'm sure it was $12 million in the news) for expansion and company development, doesn't mean they should use that money to finance the company for the next 2 years while giving away free copies of Pro to everyone who wants it and sailing around on giant gold yachts... that would be a very disasterous business model.

 

I haven't recieved my cheque for $100 million dollars from you yet. What? you haven't sent it? Well you didn't say that you weren't going to...

 

So .... anyone with a Pro license know how much of a discount Unity users get for the Substance Designer?

 

The discount for Substance Designer with Pro license will be announced very shortly.

 

UniScite used to highlight functions, but it doesnt anymore after updating to 3.4.
Too bad, it was my favourite editor.

 

cool thanks

 

thanks for the fixes mainly for android !!

 

Yeah, they've really killed it. It's actually a big down point to this release as far as I'm concerned.

 

+1.
What I love about it is the way that it highlights near everything - it really helps you see your mistakes quicker. Very disappointed about this, might go back to 3.3 - I preferred where Unity was heading then.

 

Yeah you do that.

1. you downgrade to an editor that sucked up unity's resources and development, didn't make much sense in terms of what it could do

2. and the other guy: yeah lets all step backwards and use a more buggy version of unity. Way to go.

Come on guys. Embrace change. You can make monodevelop behave *exactly* like uniscite does. It's called the preferences screen.

 

I've grown to enjoy using MonoDevelop..

But you have to admit it has it's problems. Often times very buggy, and very slow and unresponsive on some machines. Having a working lightweight alternative has it's advantages..

In the meantime for those looking for a lightweight code editor that should mostly work, check out the Unity wiki on customizing Notepad++ to work properly with Unity. Not sure how well it will work with 3.4 though.

http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Using_Notepad_Plus_Plus_as_a_script_editor