Unite Berlin Keynote (and Upcoming Free Webinar)

Unity had the Unite Berlin conference and in the keynote they talked about a lot of cool things.

You can see what I considered the most important bits here.

Also, I’ll be doing a live webinar next Wednesday at 2PM ET. It will talk about mixed reality and HoloLens development and talk about some of the new opportunities for developers.

Head to https://LearnHoloLens.com/webinar to signup.

Unity Project Templates

Starting with Unity 2018.1, Unity Technologies introduced new Project Templates. The 2D and 3D project templates have been a part of Unity for years, but now there are additional ones. They include the following:

  • 3D with Extras
  • Lightweight Render Pipeline
  • VR Lightweight Render Pipeline
  • High Definition Render Pipeline
  • AR Basic
  • AR Sample

Each one has its own strength and weaknesses. High Definition Render Pipeline has the best graphics, but requires a lot of computing power.

If you are doing work for the HoloLens, you probably want to stick with the Lightweight Render Pipeline or just 3D.

If you are using an immersive mixed reality headset / VR headset, you probably want the VR Lightweight Render Pipeline.

In this week’s video I talk more about it here.

You can see Unity’s official blog post which has more information here.

Unity LTS Explained

There has been some confusion in the community around Unity’s versions and which ones should be used.

(If you’d rather watch a video, you can see it at the bottom of this post).

There are two streams – the Long Term Support or LTS stream and the TECH stream.

When you need a stable environment that won’t change for two years, except for security fixes or major issues that affect a lot of people, you want to go with the LTS stream. This can be thought of as the last released minor version of a major version of Unity. For example, Unity 2017.4 is the LTS version of Unity 2017.

When you want to work with the latest features that Unity has to offer, you want to take advantage of the TECH stream. Currently, the Unity 2018 version is in the TECH stream.

In general, if you are doing new development, you most likely want to be utilizing the TECH stream. If you release your game, app, or experience using Unity 2018.2, for example, then you will want to update your code once 2018.4 LTS is released. That way you can be on the latest stable version that has long term support. You will effectively move from the TECH stream to the LTS stream.

If you are doing active development for additional content, or whatever, you could choose to stay on the TECH stream and upgrade your project to the latest version of Unity, which in this example would be Unity 2019.1 (which would be released at about the same time as Unity 2018.4 LTS).

There is a great image that Unity has that shows how this works.

image

Here’s a video where I talk about this some more:

Awesome Five Star Unity Assets

Unity is having a crazy sell right now with many of the popular assets being 50% off. It is the May Madness Sale.

There are 1,386 5 star assets on sale right now. Here is my curated list of 57 unique assets that are on sale. From scripting frameworks, to toolkits, to 3d models, to effects, to VR and AR, there is bound to be an asset you’ll love. Check them out…

 

VR

Space for Unity

clip_image002

Spaceship Cockpit

clip_image004

Curved UI – VR Ready Solution

clip_image006

VR Hands and FP Arms Pack

clip_image007

Racing

Realistic Car Controller

clip_image009

NWH Vehicle Physics

clip_image010

Edy’s Vehicle Physics

clip_image011

Realistic Car HD 02

clip_image012

IK Driver Vehicle Controller

clip_image013

Motorbikes Package animated

clip_image014

AR

Dlib FaceLandMark Detector (Requires OpenCV for Unity)

clip_image015

OpenCV for Unity

clip_image016

Curved UI

clip_image018

Mesh Tools

Mesh Effects

clip_image020

UVPaint (skinned mesh Decal System)

clip_image021

Mesh Materializer

clip_image022

Colorify

clip_image023

Tools and Frameworks

Bolt

clip_image024

Playmaker

clip_image026

Adventure Creator

clip_image028

UFPS

clip_image029

I2 Localization

clip_image030

uMMORPG

clip_image031

Dialouge System for Unity

clip_image033

Love/Hate

clip_image034

U Chroma Key

clip_image035

Environment

CTS – Complete Terrain Shader

clip_image036

GeNa

clip_image037

Aquas

clip_image038

Enviro – Sky and Weather

clip_image039

Vegetation Studio

clip_image040

Exteriors

Village Exteriors Kit

clip_image041

Victorian Alleys

clip_image043

The Wasteland

clip_image045

Interiors

HQ Abandoned School

clip_image046

Village Interior Kit

clip_image047

House Furniture Pack

clip_image048

HQ Residential House

clip_image049

ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.1

clip_image050

ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.2

clip_image051

ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.3

clip_image052

ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.4

clip_image054

ArchVizPRO Interior Vol.5

clip_image055

PBR Stage Equipment

clip_image056

Easily Interiors

clip_image057

Bachelor Pad Pack

clip_image058

Animals

Unka the Dragon

clip_image059

Low Poly Animated Animals

clip_image061

Animals Full Pack

clip_image062

Audio

Radio

clip_image064

Animations

UMotion Pro – Animation Editor

clip_image065

PuppetMaster

clip_image066

Final IK

clip_image067

Moveen

clip_image068

Movement Animset Pro

clip_image069

IK Driver Vehicle Controller

clip_image013[1]

Motorbikes Package animated

clip_image070

Effects

Realistic Effects Pack 3

clip_image072

Realistic Effects Pack 4

clip_image073

Camera Filter Pack

clip_image074

Magic Effects Pack 1

clip_image075

CharacterFX Shader Pack

clip_image076

 

These are affiliate links, but you can open them in an incognito window should you not want to support me. I did spend about 7 hours today curating this list, so I do hope you found it beneficial!