Unity 4 is out!
Ahem.
I’m really happy to tell you all that Unity 4 is officially released.
We have been hard at work putting the final touches on this first release in the Unity 4 cycle, and we’re extremely happy with the results.
Before going into the details (but perhaps after you start your download), let me try to define what we think Unity is and what it should be.
Unity is a dream we’ve had for years. A dream of packaging up the fanciest game engine technology into a bundle that’s extremely approachable, affordable, and still flexible and powerful enough for the most demanding users. And a dream of running an important and long-lived company that helps game developers all over the world as much as we possibly can.
A big dream, sure. But the proof is in the pudding and we have come a long way: from three guys in the basement 10 years ago to a company of over 200 brilliant yet humble ninjas all over the globe, who spend most of our waking time serving the game developer community.
Steve Jobs once said that “victory in our industry is spelled ‘s-u-r-v-i-v-a-l’”, and we are still here 10 years later, doing the same as we have always done… just more of it, and for more people!
Thank you so much for being with us thus far.
Unity 4
Unity 4.0 marks the release of the Mecanim animation system and we think it’s mind-blowingly awesome. It’s going to change the way a lot of people make games by giving high class animation tools to a much wider range of developers than ever before. We’re also putting up free motion captured animation on the Asset Store so that you can start making your characters move with lifelike fluidity.
The wealth of new high-end visual features will level the playing field. DirectX 11 support is probably the biggest addition that will open up a huge range of possibilities for developers. Add to that mobile real-time shadows, normal maps when baking lightmaps, skinned mesh instancing and there’s a wealth of lush visual features.
Finally (for the really big stuff anyway), two new supported platforms have made their way to Unity.
Linux Deployment Preview
The Linux developer preview is already looking amazing and is helping games make their way onto one of the most open gaming platforms in the world. Rochard was recently released on Linux and demonstrates that Linux development can be very successful.
Flash Publishing
The Adobe Flash Player add-on is going to push Unity way ahead of the rest of the industry in potential publishing reach. The combination of Unity’s ridiculously broad platform support with the Flash plugin being installed on over a billion computers means that anyone who uses Unity can reach an incredible array of potential customers.
The Future
Unity 4.0 is a great beginning, but we are here for the long haul and we’re going to make Unity better and better throughout this release cycle. As we said in the original announcement, our goal is to have releases come out at a faster pace because we think it serves you better to give you access to awesome new toys (and fixes) faster than ever before.
You already know some of what we’re working on. Things like the new retained GUI, Windows Phone 8 support, and Nintendo Wii U support. Down the line you can expect to see some pretty big additions that we can’t talk about quite yet, but that we know you’re going to be very excited about!
2012 has been a big, big year for Unity and we’re looking to make 2013 even bigger. Enjoy Unity 4.
Comments (63)
Rock’n'Roll
Nice!!! Do you have any ETA for the Windows Phone 8 support? Would be nice to submit our current apps while the market is fresh…
Unity 4. What else?
Congratulations to all of you hard working ninjas at Unity!
wow！！！ Wait long time！！
Great, and congratulations with the release.
Now that the beta period is open, I’m looking forward to my company’s next prototyping project in Unity4!
Great work guys!
I will look forward to downloading this! You guys have really come a long way, and I wish the best of luck to you as you continue your great company! 
Keep up the great work, Unity!
Great news! Releasing the free Mecanim animation starter pack just made my day. I was just commenting last night about how I needed to find some retargetable animations to fill in some gaps for our prototype, and there they are. I’m looking forward to the new ‘Learn’ area, which I’m guessing is still in the works (note that I’m also getting a 404 on the online training tab right now- maybe that’s it).
“Linux Deployment Preview”
What you mean “Preview”…? Wasnt this a feature to be on the final Unity4?
Hell yeah! \o/
And the GUI system is neither finished?
Good work !!!!
fan-freakin-tastic work! Thank you for all your hard work on this!
Amazing, congrats guys….
Btw did the forum down?
[...] games make their way onto one of the most open gaming platforms in the world.” Explained the blog post. “Rochard was recently released on Linux and demonstrates that Linux development can be very [...]
OMG!
[...] games make their way onto one of the most open gaming platforms in the world.” Explained the blog post. “Rochard was recently released on Linux and demonstrates that Linux development can be very [...]
I am going to second the Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 Store App support, you showed it at Unite You showed it at Build, how about a preview or something? It would seem there is more money to be made on Windows apps than Linux.
Please give us a crumb regarding Windows 8 Store Apps. I’m going crazy watching the early market slip by, but I really, really don’t want to mess with xaml. Win 8 target this year? Or is this a “We really want to do this someday” kind of thing.
Unity rocks! Keep up the good work!
Carsten
@Bigdaddio & Patrick: we are seeding Windows 8 builds to early developers. Get in touch with sales to find out what’s possible!
@Novack: as we talked about at Unite in August, the new GUI system is slated for a Unity 4.x release. Sorry for the wait
Congrats UT!
“Spam protection: Sum of 4 + 3″ Could anyone help me to solve this math issue?!
Godamn you maths, chasing me everywhere…
Where can I download the Linux version? Only Windows and OSX seem to be available.
Congratulations guys! I remember all the way back when you guys were OTT with GooBall. Now look how much you guys have accomplished. I wish I had applied myself in using Unity more back then I would be growing right along with you. Seriously though it is really nice to see a company doing things right. I will continue to be a big fan and look forward to using the features in Unity 4.
@Ismael: unity editor is Windows or Mac only. But you can build a Linux standalone player from each of these.
@Aras Pranckevičius: So much for Linux support… guess I was too excited after announcement.
Will there be native Unity editor for Linux ?
Amazing as always!
Great Job Guys! Unity 4 is awesome!
@ISMAEL Linux is a publlishing target. The game editor only runs on Mac & Windows… I’m with you though, I really hope the editor is ported to Linux as well. I already do all my asset creation with open tools (Blender, Inkscape, Gimp) on Linux.
Great for Linux !!
@sulliwane and how is that great ? We have nothing.
@Guest
Nothing? Thousand of new games will now be playable by Linux players too! And you call this nothing? This may help the linux world in a huge way
@Asancio
Sure. We’ll have people that work with Unity to feed us some games, Valve is on the way too. So right now we’re at their mercy. We are in McDonalds and they are giving us food. What if we want to create our own ?
Its understandable that you can’t make a game on a smartphone. And even if there would be possiblity you wouldn’t, it’d be pain in the…well. But you can create the game on PC just fine. Unity has 3 OS’ that are listed in ‘support’ list. 2 of them have that support and 1 just an option to where you can export to. But porting a game to Linux shouldn’t be that hard to begin with.
So yeah, nothing changed that much.
Really Awesome Guys! Thank yor =)
if you run windows in a VM from linux, will the Unity editor boot?
Great release.. Unity 4 is cool..
[...] о нововведениях можно узнать здесь. Теги: Android, Blackberry, iOS, Unity, Unity 4, Windows Phone, движки [...]
Haha unity 4 released on my birthday EPIC b-day present
Oh yeah baby!
[...] Technologies ogłosiło wydanie silnika do gier Unity 4.0. Pozwala on tworzyć zaawansowanie graficznie gry i aplikacje dla komputerów PC, oraz urządzeń [...]
Congratulation guys. Lots of hard work and man power is being released to the hands of public (partly for free
)
Hope u guys survive much more and by ages. You might be the guys who will be remembered in democratization of games industry
[...] Technologies ogłosiło wydanie silnika do gier Unity 4.0. Pozwala on tworzyć zaawansowanie graficznie gry i aplikacje dla komputerów PC, oraz urządzeń [...]
Alright now is there a download link for the linux unity 4.0 so I can give it a try?
Thank you, thank you…. THANK YOU!!!! for supporting Linux!
Now there is absolutely no reason to not choose Unity3D for game development
Congratulations on your new major achievement. I so much hope that your recognition of Linux as a potential gaming platform will bear fruit.
You guys rock!
I er simpelthen bare fantastiske!
[...] Представлен релиз популярного игрового движка Unity 4.0, на базе которого построено более 40 популярных 3D-игр. Наиболее интересным улучшением является реализация поддержки платформы Linux, которая была добавлена после многочисленных просьб и запросов пользователей. Поддержка Linux пока декларирована как экспериментальная возможность (developer preview), но разработчики движка считают работу Unity в Linux одним из наиболее перспективных направлений развития. [...]
@KAHLIL yes. Depending on things like gfx hardware, drivers and hypervisor, it works fine. The editor is known to run on Windows guests at least on Intel and nVidia cards under VMWare without problems. You do take a performance hit though.
[...] According to Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason: "Unity is a dream we’ve had for years. A dream of packaging up the fanciest game engine technology into a bundle that’s extremely approachable, affordable, and still flexible and powerful enough for the most demanding users. And a dream of running an important and long-lived company that helps game developers all over the world as much as we possibly can." [...]
@”Guest”: You are so wrong – it’s not like “Linux” developers are sitting on some island at the mercy of big shipping companies living on Windows and Mac continents. Developers – smart, passionate, energetic, developers – will do what it takes to create the games they want to create. If that means having an extra computer around, running a VM, installing a partition, so be it. Some of our developers work primarily or solely on Linux. Many more run Linux at home or on some secondary machines. This doesn’t mean they can’t work with Windows or Mac OS X from time to time. Your argument reminds me of the two cranky old men in the Muppet Show, one says to the other “I wanted to be writer… but I couldn’t find a pencil… hahahahaha”. That is funny. Funny because it’s so ridiculous.
[...] Technologies ha anunciado a través de su pagina web, el lanzamiento de su motor gráfico de alta tecnología Unity 4 que incluye muchas mejoras [...]
Amazing work. Downloading it now. Can’t wait to create my games using Unity 4 Pro!
[...] give you access to awesome new toys (and fixes) faster than ever before.” was stated in the official release announcement for Unity 4.0. Add us on [...]
[...] Technologies ha anunciado a través de su pagina web, el lanzamiento de su motor gráfico de alta tecnología Unity 4 que incluye muchas mejoras [...]
Congratulations to another awesome Unity release!!! Now hoping to get the Windows (Phone) 8 build target soon
[...] s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();Unity Technologies ha anunciado a través de su pagina web, el lanzamiento de su motor gráfico de alta tecnología Unity 4 que incluye muchas mejoras [...]
[...] Unity 4 ist fertig ° Mari & Nuke Trials ° Hair Farm 2.0 für 3ds Max ° UDK Beta upgrade ° Mari 1.5 Review ° [...]
Fantastic new Guys! Unity 4 is awesome!
[...] According to Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason: “Unity is a dream we’ve had for years. A dream of packaging up the fanciest game engine technology into a bundle that’s extremely approachable, affordable, and still flexible and powerful enough for the most demanding users. And a dream of running an important and long-lived company that helps game developers all over the world as much as we possibly can.” [...]
[...] Unity Gaming Engine Arrives with Support for Linux Unity 4 was officially announced just a few days ago. Among other things, one of the biggest highlights was the inclusion of preview [...]
Really a great step forward! Keep up the good work!
[...] Unity Gaming Engine Arrives with Support for Linux Unity 4 was officially announced just a few days ago. Among other things, one of the biggest highlights was the inclusion of preview [...]
[...] we’ll cover the making of the skeleton and skinning.Mecanim & riggingUnity 4 (that was launched last month) features a new animation system – Mecanim – that uses rigging to greatly improve [...]
Enhorabuena por tu sitio web, nos ha gustado mucho, sigue así, un saludo
[...] the free game creation engine Unity4, I’ve started learning programming and game creation. I’ve already learned some [...]
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