Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Here we are again, putting the final touches on the latest and greatest release of Unity — version 2.6. The team is already amazed at how many new games are being made today! They’re being rolled out so quickly that we can’t always keep up. So to help us make sure that everything in the 2.6 release is going to be 100% silky smooth compatible with all the published webplayer games out there, we’d like to ask the Unity community for some help once again.

If you want to help make Unity 2.6.0 a flawless release, there are two simple things you can do.

1) Auto-update to the 2.6 webplayer plugin by visiting this Auto-Update test page.
2) Go play as many webplayers as possible.  Try out lots of players old and new!

If you have any problems at all during the auto-update process or running a webplayer, we want to know about it immediately. Please post about it in a reply to this thread on the Unity forums. Include the URL of the problematic webplayer, and the OS, browser, and graphics card you’re using. We really want to fix everything so if you run into problems, don’t forget to post! And thanks!

So, most of you have probably heard the news: Apple is going to release Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” this Friday. This release will give Mac users plenty of new feature goodness and new technologies to play with, and brings a lot of changes under the hood. Unfortunately, I must inform you that one of these changes may cause some grief for Unity users, at least for the time being:

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This blog post is written by Ben Throop who is working on a Detonator framework to generate great-looking explosions in Unity games. The project is one of four selected projects that were selected for the Unity Summer of Code.

We’re just 9 days away from the August 31 deadline so it’s time for an update. I’ve been working on Detonator, which is a parametric explosion system. It’s supposed to make getting nice, scalable explosions into your game really easy while at the same time providing a framework for more complex effects.

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This blog post is written by Michał Mandrysz who is working on support for External Lightmapping in Unity. The project is one of four selected projects that were selected for the Unity Summer of Code.

What’s lightmapping?

If you’re not familiar with the terms “baking” and “lightmapping” then let me introduce them to you a little. Baking is an operation of prerendering expensive details (in calculational sense) like illuminated lightning, highlights and shadows into a texture so that it doesn’t have to be renderered at realtime. It requires some additional effort from the game designers, but it benefits hugely in performance. This solution is pretty old, but according to words of John Carmack it’s still up-to-date and will be – even in high end games.

What is the Lightmapping Tool?
It’s a tool for lightmapping scenes in external applications (yeah, I know most of you would  wish to see an integrated system, but it’s not that easy to write this kind of system; however there are several huge benefits from using an external one, especially as powerful one as VRay).
As you may have heard before, my job is to wire lightmapping process tightly with 3dsmax and VRay. The system automates the process of both external baking, and setting up the lightmaps in Unity.
Lightmapping tool manages up to 99 lightmap atlases (could be even more but the interface would have to be modded for such extreme jobs) which hold object information with resolution proportional to their size on the stage. It can start external applications (currently only 3dsmax), assign appropriate renderer or load a preset max scene which holds information about lightning and so on. I’m planning to make a short screencast video when the work is done, so you can be sure you understand everything clearly

This picture presents about 1/6 of a whole scene lightmapped with only one 2kx2k lightmap rendered with VRay on medium settings

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We have a ton of people at Unity who have been or are involved in the demoscene. Assembly is one of the largest demoscene parties, and this year we were sponsoring the event, sent in some folks there and had a couple of seminar presentations. Our presentations were not directly Unity related, but still might be interesting for some of you.

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The Demo Team is putting the finishing touches on the iPhone Standard Assets that will go out with the Unity iPhone 1.1. release. There are plenty of useful assets that you’ll get:

1. Additive-Projector (can be used to fake spotlights)

2. Blob-Shadow

3. iPhone-specific shaders

4. Default Skybox asset

5. Joystick and TouchPad scripts

6. Easy-to-use water reflection script

7. Control schemes aplenty: 2D side scroller, camera-relative, FPS, FPS w/ tilt, player-relative, tap-to-move

With the Unity iPhone 1.1. release imminent, you’ll be enjoying all of these goodies, soon!

Just making characters in your game look around can bring them much more to life as well as express important information to the user. Here we’ll discuss a few use cases and present a script that makes it simple to implement in your game.

First a tech demo video to set the context:

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The Locomotion System for Unity has previously been briefly mentioned on this blog, but this post will go more in depth with what exactly it can do to bring more life to your animated characters.

The Locomotion System is all about making walking and running in games look better and more believable without requiring dozens of animations. The system automatically blends your keyframed or motion-captured walk and run cycles and then adjusts the movements of the bones in the legs to ensure that the feet step correctly on the ground. The Locomotion System is available for free when used in a Unity game.

Video Introduction

The best way to understand what the Locomotion System is all about is by watching a short introduction to it:
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Everyone knows the internet is made up of a series of tubes.  Since Unity has such a strong internet component in the webplayer, nothing but the fastest of all tubes are acceptable to deliver Unity webplayers to you and your players.

To harness the power of these tubes, Unity Tech has begun working with a content delivery service called Akamai.  Akamai provides server mirrors with fast connections around the world in order to make sure your downloads are as speedy as possible.  They do this for lots of big, well-known companies that you can see on their web site: http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/index.html

Because this download service affects users globally, we’d like everyone to help us make sure there are no kinks in the system.  If you can spare a moment, we have two tests for you to run.

Test #1: Download the Unity 2.5.0 webplayer installer through Akamai:

• For Mac: http://webplayer2.unity3d.com/download_webplayer-2.x/webplayer-universal.dmg
• For Windows: http://webplayer2.unity3d.com/download_webplayer-2.x/UnityWebPlayer.exe

Test #2: Auto-update from 2.1.0 to 2.5.0 using Akamai

Steps:

1. Download the 2.1.0 webplayer (not using the Akamai service)
   * For Mac: http://unity3d.com/download_archived_webplayer/2.1.0/webplayer-universal.dmg
   * For Windows: http://unity3d.com/download_archived_webplayer/2.1.0/UnityWebPlayer.exe
2. Install the 2.1.0 webplayer
3. Restart your browser
4. Visit this url to auto-update using Akamai: http://beta.unity3d.com/AkamaiTest/

Both test #1 and #2 should be blazing fast.  If you can, please leave a comment about where you’re located and your average download speed, we’d greatly appreciate it!

With Unity 2.5.1 quickly wrapping up development, the last item on our to-do list is verifying webplayer compatibility.  As a team we do systematic testing on a broad range of weplayers.  However, we really want 200% confidence instead of a measly 100%.  So we’re asking for a little help — from you!

If you want to help make Unity 2.5.1 a flawless release, there are two simple things you can do.

1) Auto-update to the 2.5.1 webplayer plugin by visiting this Auto-Update test page.

2) Go play as many webplayers as possible.  Your own or someone else’s, published or unpublished, anything you can find.

Every game you play should look and behave exactly the same as it did before the update.  In fact, if you see any differences (or problems) at all, write us an email at support@unity3d.com.  Include the url of the problematic webplayer, and the OS, browser, and graphics card you’re using.  It’s best to let us know right away so we can fix it immediately!

We already know the Unity community is amazing, and this is your chance to actively participate along with the development team to ship a new version.  Rock ‘n roll, and send your pre-release 2.5.1 webplayer bugs to support@unity3d.com!