https://unity.comRSS for NodeTue, 19 May 2026 03:07:22 GMTen-usnoLatest blog posts from Unityhttps://unity.com/blog/attain-partnership-measuring-mobile-gaming-sales-outcomeshttps://unity.com/blog/attain-partnership-measuring-mobile-gaming-sales-outcomesWed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-for-humanity-2026-winner-announcementhttps://unity.com/blog/unity-for-humanity-2026-winner-announcementWed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/albion-online-cross-platform-pvp-mmo-architecturehttps://unity.com/blog/albion-online-cross-platform-pvp-mmo-architectureTue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/automating-3d-production-pipelines-with-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/automating-3d-production-pipelines-with-unityTue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/real-time-fluid-simulation-fire-vfx-ignitement-breakdownhttps://unity.com/blog/real-time-fluid-simulation-fire-vfx-ignitement-breakdownThu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-joins-iab-europe-tcf-compliant-data-use-advertisinghttps://unity.com/blog/unity-joins-iab-europe-tcf-compliant-data-use-advertisingWed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-march-2026-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-march-2026-releasesWed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/hidden-costs-traditional-3d-toolshttps://unity.com/blog/hidden-costs-traditional-3d-toolsThu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/eden-games-gear-club-unlimited-3https://unity.com/blog/eden-games-gear-club-unlimited-3Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/10-questions-first-no-code-3d-projecthttps://unity.com/blog/10-questions-first-no-code-3d-projectWed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT50% of content being dynamicAn open-ended designTake or leave them as you wish, but if you hit these three, then you’ve got a recipe for intense (potential) positive player agency. But immediately by looking at this you might run into a few thousand problems.Let’s go over them.Optimizing player engagement through the choice-to-text ratioWhy high choice-to-text ratio mattersA high choice-to-text ratio sounds lovely. It’s a great tool to keep the player awake and engaged, for one. If you force them to read too many blocks of text, then the average player’s eyes will just glaze over. But if you keep poking and prodding at them – forcing them to answer interesting questions, pushing them into difficult decisions, or just forcing them to respond to rude accusations – then it’s like injecting an energy drink into their veins. They’ll jolt awake, and actually engage with the text. At least, statistically they’ll be more likely to do it.The problem here is simple, though: You’d have to be insane to want to add that level of branching to your dialog. It takes a lot of work, and I think more specifically, it requires a very specific toolset. (Skills too, sure, but the tool has to be flexible and quick in order for the process of branching to not turn into an endurance test).Choosing the right toolThe tool I use is the magnificent and incredibly wonderful ink script created by the studio Inkle. By making this open-source tool – that works flawlessly in Unity, by the way – they have quite literally made my career. I owe them a lot. And ink is a tool that, apart from all the other cool stuff it does, is extremely well-suited for fast and nimble branching.When I write a dialog in ink, I write with the same speed as with linear content. As long as there is a loose design outline prepared, I can just go to town. Adding player expressions, managing visuals, or handling dice checks – all take seconds, since everything is handled through basic (mostly customized-to-fit-Ebb) tags and custom code, alongside the regular (and well-designed) ink functions.Planning for variability: Dynamic content and open-ended designBut what about item number two of our list of constraints (“>50% of content being dynamic”)? Dynamic content and open-ended (or nonlinear) designs both stem from a similar goal: to create variability based on player input.Just let them do whatever they want! Go nuts! Have an open world, where you can go in any direction! Well, that’s one way to do it. But the important distinction here is that interactive writing always focuses on an authorial-intent-driven design. In other words, everything is controlled by the writer.You can still do systematic design, and there’s a big overlap, but the practical art of interactive writing is specifically when you do not let emergent storytelling do its thing.What I mean by this is: You have to have variables. And you have to keep track of them. For every choice the player makes, whether it’s stats chosen during character creation, or how mean they were against that goblin chieftain – all of it needs some type of feedback in order to invoke the phenomenon of agency. Whether that involves a dynamic quip towards the end of the game, or an entire branching plotline, those moments of feedback are just as important as the choices themselves, if not more.Keeping track of variablesMy method of tracking variables is simple and flexible: I call it the Story Variable (SV) system. Using the tag system, whenever those tags begin with a punctuation, that indicates the usage of a variable. If that variable has never been encountered before, the SV is created in one giant list. Otherwise, it just accesses the already-existing SV, and either sets or checks it as commanded. A string and an int – usually used as a boolean, but when needed expands to increase or decrease whenever needed. The commands I implemented for Ebb were “==”, “=”, “>=”, “<=”, “+=”, and “-=”.The question then becomes one of organization. I got better at this as I went along, but each SV uses a prefix based on the location or quest. “TE” in this case refers to the Tea Shop area. An SV with the “Q” prefix refers to a quest, and a “QP” refers to a Quest Point –as in, a log entry in the Questing Tree, your quest journal.Narrative design gainsIt’s a rough system, with one major productivity gain: You can just keep writing. Need a new variable for a dynamic dialog choice? Just add it, then copy-paste it into the file where it needs to be set. Easily check for any variable usage via a project-wide CTRL+F, or manage sweeping changes via basic text management. There’s no database to manage. The list itself is just chronological. Forgot the name of a variable? Just search for the relevant area or quest prefixes, and look over the list.I did not expect this to work at first. An average playthrough can end up with more than 3,000 Story Variables in that list by the end of the game. But – like with most things I did on Esoteric Ebb – Unity just worked with it. And ink’s Unity integration has never failed me, not once, even after using it for almost a decade now. A recompile of the ink files takes seconds. Customizing the features to Esoteric Ebb’s liking has always been extremely efficient. And as strange as it might sound, I’m still surprised all these years later that it just flows. If I am able, I want to keep developing this pipeline for years to come.Beyond that, I use Notepad++ for all my writing on Esoteric Ebb. While you could obviously use any text editor of your preference, keeping it lightweight and snappy makes for such a smoother experience. Searching through a million words in a split second is exactly what allowed me to write (and to bugfix!) such a massive game.Final thoughts: Bugfixing and learning to embrace the branchBut that’s also the biggest negative of this system: the bugfixing. I should have invested more time in technical solutions to broken logic and syntax, but really, I ended up just brute-forcing the whole ordeal via playtesting.As Esoteric Ebb receives its 1.1 patch, I have managed to fix approximately 704 ‘text errors’ – whether spelling or code related – in less than four days of work (very chill days, too). This is, again, because the system is extremely nimble. Even still, those bugs were there when we launched Esoteric Ebb because of the setup here as well. It is an insane amount of text, with a ridiculous amount of branching. But I am also certain that I would not have been able to write even a quarter of the final word count had I not been blessed with ink.Afterword: More recommended tools for narrative designersink makes the practical art of interactive writing a fast one, for me. I’ve always had trouble with visual scripting, but I know many writers have the exact opposite problem. So I always recommend looking into other solutions as well to find the one that fits you and your team the best, with some examples being articy:draft, Arcweave, and Yarn Spinner.Esoteric Ebb is available now on Steam. Explore more Made with Unity games on our Steam Curator page, and check out more stories from Unity developers on the Unity Blog and Resource hub. ]]>https://unity.com/blog/interactive-writing-challenges-for-nonlinear-rpg-designhttps://unity.com/blog/interactive-writing-challenges-for-nonlinear-rpg-designTue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/uads-march-updateshttps://unity.com/blog/uads-march-updatesFri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/kinetic-publishing-indie-gameshttps://unity.com/blog/kinetic-publishing-indie-gamesFri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-february-2026-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-february-2026-releasesMon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/offerwall-publisher-dashboardhttps://unity.com/blog/offerwall-publisher-dashboardSun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/top-trends-redefining-industry-in-2026https://unity.com/blog/top-trends-redefining-industry-in-2026Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-2025-releasesTue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-december-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-december-2025-releasesFri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry-customer-success-stories-2025-round-uphttps://unity.com/blog/industry-customer-success-stories-2025-round-upThu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/https://unity.com/archive/blog/Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/17th-unity-awards-wrap-up-2025-winners-revealedhttps://unity.com/blog/17th-unity-awards-wrap-up-2025-winners-revealedTue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-october-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-october-2025-releasesMon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unlocking-playableshttps://unity.com/blog/unlocking-playablesWed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/tailoring-digital-play-by-age-how-storytoys-built-the-lego-bluey-apphttps://unity.com/blog/tailoring-digital-play-by-age-how-storytoys-built-the-lego-bluey-appWed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/synergiz-harbor-innovates-student-learning-mixed-realityhttps://unity.com/blog/synergiz-harbor-innovates-student-learning-mixed-realityMon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/split-screen-and-gameshare-networking-in-survival-kidshttps://unity.com/blog/split-screen-and-gameshare-networking-in-survival-kidsWed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/inside-the-survival-kids-multiplayer-network-infrastructurehttps://unity.com/blog/inside-the-survival-kids-multiplayer-network-infrastructureWed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/holiday-season-shopping-app-downloadshttps://unity.com/blog/holiday-season-shopping-app-downloadsMon, 08 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-audience-hub-helps-marketers-reach-mobile-gaming-audienceshttps://unity.com/blog/unity-audience-hub-helps-marketers-reach-mobile-gaming-audiencesMon, 08 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-august-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-august-2025-releasesThu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/level-layout-and-terrain-workflows-in-survival-kidshttps://unity.com/blog/level-layout-and-terrain-workflows-in-survival-kidsWed, 03 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/graphics-and-rendering-tips-from-survival-kidshttps://unity.com/blog/graphics-and-rendering-tips-from-survival-kidsWed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/evolution-of-rewards-driving-loyaltyhttps://unity.com/blog/evolution-of-rewards-driving-loyaltyTue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/visometry-3d-visualizationhttps://unity.com/blog/visometry-3d-visualizationFri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-june-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-june-2025-releasesMon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-2-beta-release-announcement-data-driven-stabilityhttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-2-beta-release-announcement-data-driven-stabilityWed, 25 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ena-dream-bbq-video-layeringhttps://unity.com/blog/ena-dream-bbq-video-layeringWed, 18 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/reduce-user-churn-aura-remarketinghttps://unity.com/blog/reduce-user-churn-aura-remarketingMon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/making-a-killing-psycasso-2dhttps://unity.com/blog/making-a-killing-psycasso-2dMon, 09 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/multiplayer-stack-visionary-realms-mmorpg-pantheonhttps://unity.com/blog/multiplayer-stack-visionary-realms-mmorpg-pantheonMon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-may-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-may-2025-releasesSun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/tips-strategies-for-marketing-indie-gameshttps://unity.com/blog/tips-strategies-for-marketing-indie-gamesThu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-learn-from-a-failed-gamehttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-learn-from-a-failed-gameThu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/back-to-school-mobile-shopping-insightshttps://unity.com/blog/back-to-school-mobile-shopping-insightsThu, 22 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/iap-to-hybrid-monetizationhttps://unity.com/blog/iap-to-hybrid-monetizationWed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/porting-apps-games-over-android-xr-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/porting-apps-games-over-android-xr-unity-6Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-1-is-now-availablehttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-1-is-now-availableThu, 24 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT “Job Settings” panel.NOTE: DX12 multithreading comes with additional graphics memory cost, due to the allocation of additional resources per thread. This imposes a tradeoff between CPU performance and memory usage, and can increase memory usage compared to the single-threaded DX11.Beyond CPU performance, DX12 exposes the latest GPU capabilities to game developers, unlocking new ways to improve both fidelity and performance.Prevent rendering stutters with PSO TracingWith DX12, we can explicitly state the needed graphics states well ahead of rendering time, by creating and caching Pipeline State Objects (PSOs). This workflow eliminates application stutters/hitches, resulting in smoother rendering and game play.To enable this, Unity 6 introduces support for the new GraphicsStateCollection API. In the below example, we are using the API to precook PSOs before loading the scene. This results in a stutter-less flythrough of the Garden demo.For more information on PSO tracing, check the official Unity Discussions post.Balance shading performance and quality with Variable Rate ShadingDX12 also introduces support for Variable Rate Shading (VRS), to control the shading rate of pixel shaders and draw calls. Using the new VRS API in Unity 6.1, we can generate a shading rate image (SRI) from texture, or procedurally using shaders. Once created, we can apply the SRI using the CommandBuffer API, or using Scriptable Render Passes.In the example below, we are applying a lower shading rate to screen areas affected by motion blur. This reduces the pixel shading overhead, without noticeable degradation to visual fidelity.To learn more about Variable Rate Shading, check the official Unity Discussions post. Improve GPU utilization with Async ComputeAnother capability introduced by DX12 is Asynchronous Compute dispatch. This allows to overlap Compute Shader execution with heavy rasterization workloads, to improve GPU parallelism.. Raster-heavy passes (such as Shadowmaps) are often bound by geometry processing, and may not fully utilize the GPUs shader cores. By dispatching compute kernels asynchronously, we can increase GPU utilization and reduce frame times.For more information on DX12 exclusive features, please refer to the official documentation.Push fidelity to the max with DirectX Ray TracingUnity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) utilizes DirectX 12 Raytracing (DXR), to achieve unparalleled visual fidelity and realism. This is demonstrated by the “Enemies” real time demo, which uses HDRP and DXR to achieve stunning visuals.Unity 6 provides production-ready support for Ray Tracing, along with DXR 1.1 feature level compatibility. This brings many improvements to ray tracing functionality and performance.Solid Angle Culling allows to improve ray tracing performance, by discarding objects that are too small or distant. You can enable angle culling via the HDRP ray tracing setting (Culling Mode), to significantly reduce CPU processing time Additional improvements to DX12 Ray Tracing include:Inline Ray Tracing in ShadersRay Tracing Acceleration Structure Build FlagsIndirect Ray Tracing DispatchIndirect Ray Tracing InstancingUnity 6 also reduces memory usage for DX12 Ray Tracing via:BLAS Compaction reduces the memory usage of static meshes.Custom GPU memory allocator for small BLASes reduces the memory usage of small meshes and details.MinimizeMemory flag can be set per MeshRenderer, to further reduce memory usage.Reduce memory bandwidth usage with DirectX12 Render PassWith the introduction of Windows-on-ARM support, DX12 also improves mobile (tile-based) GPU efficiency, via the new Render Pass API.The DX12 Render Pass is utilized by the Render Graph system in Unity 6, which automatically tracks and merges compatible render passes. In the example below, Render Graph is able to merge the geometry render passes, and load the GBuffer textures directly from on-chip tile memory. This can significantly reduce bandwidth and energy usage, along with thermals, allowing mobile devices to run for longer and at a stable framerate. To learn more about on-tile rendering in URP, see the Render Graph documentation. Accelerate Neural Network Inference with DirectMLIn addition to graphics improvements, DX12 can also improve the performance of Neural Network inference through the Sentis API. When using DX12 and the Sentis GPU backend, we observe up to 50% reduction in inference time when executing larger Convolutional Neural Networks.To learn more about DX12 acceleration for Sentis, check the official Unity Discussions post. Platform supportDirectX 12 is supported on modern Windows platforms. Please follow these instructions for checking which DirectX version is supported by your PC. You can also refer to Wikipedia for per-GPU information on DirectX 12 and feature level support:NVIDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_unitsAMD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_unitsIntel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_processing_unitsDirectX 12 may not be recommended on significantly old GPU models and outdated driver versions. If you are targeting legacy Windows devices, we recommend you still target DirectX 11 or keep it as a fallback API.Please give these latest DX12 improvements a try, and let us know what you think!You can follow our progress via the public roadmap. If you cannot find the feature you are looking for, feel free to submit a feature request, or contact the team directly in this thread or the graphics discussion forum.]]>https://unity.com/blog/directx-12-improvements-in-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/directx-12-improvements-in-unity-6Wed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/niche-to-norm-evolution-gamer-identityhttps://unity.com/blog/niche-to-norm-evolution-gamer-identityWed, 16 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-march-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-march-2025-releasesTue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/playcap-gdc-2025-interviewhttps://unity.com/blog/playcap-gdc-2025-interviewFri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/gdc-2025-recaphttps://unity.com/blog/gdc-2025-recapThu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-engine-2025-roadmaphttps://unity.com/blog/unity-engine-2025-roadmapWed, 19 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/10-tips-succeeding-at-gdchttps://unity.com/blog/games/10-tips-succeeding-at-gdcWed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unlocking-mobile-in-app-potential-magnitehttps://unity.com/blog/unlocking-mobile-in-app-potential-magniteMon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-game-kitchen-stone-of-madness-3-technical-challengeshttps://unity.com/blog/the-game-kitchen-stone-of-madness-3-technical-challengesThu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-prevent-creative-fatiguehttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-prevent-creative-fatigueTue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-february-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-february-2025-releasesMon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-moving-to-in-app-biddinghttps://unity.com/blog/unity-moving-to-in-app-biddingMon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/old-skull-games-cryptical-path-developing-a-roguelikehttps://unity.com/blog/old-skull-games-cryptical-path-developing-a-roguelikeTue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/raph-koster-playable-worlds-stars-reach-kickstarterhttps://unity.com/blog/raph-koster-playable-worlds-stars-reach-kickstarterTue, 25 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/konami-momotaro-dentetsu-world-in-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/konami-momotaro-dentetsu-world-in-unityWed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-boss-fight-brought-squid-game-unleashed-to-lifehttps://unity.com/blog/how-boss-fight-brought-squid-game-unleashed-to-lifeTue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/rewarded-ad-systemshttps://unity.com/blog/rewarded-ad-systemsThu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/leverage-on-device-advertising-q1-growthhttps://unity.com/blog/leverage-on-device-advertising-q1-growthThu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/creating-ads-with-aihttps://unity.com/blog/creating-ads-with-aiThu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-january-2025-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-january-2025-releasesTue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/forgefx-industry-xr-immersive-traininghttps://unity.com/blog/forgefx-industry-xr-immersive-trainingMon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/digital-twins-machinery-robotics-industryhttps://unity.com/blog/digital-twins-machinery-robotics-industryThu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-december-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-december-2024-releasesMon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/2025-mobile-gaming-trends-industry-perspectiveshttps://unity.com/blog/2025-mobile-gaming-trends-industry-perspectivesTue, 07 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/2025-mobile-gaming-trends-unity-perspectiveshttps://unity.com/blog/2025-mobile-gaming-trends-unity-perspectivesTue, 07 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-2024-releasesMon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/celebrating-award-winning-unity-gameshttps://unity.com/blog/celebrating-award-winning-unity-gamesWed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/2024-technical-content-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/2024-technical-content-roundupWed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/2024-roundup-spotlight-mobile-game-growthhttps://unity.com/blog/2024-roundup-spotlight-mobile-game-growthTue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/2024-industry-xr-innovationshttps://unity.com/blog/2024-industry-xr-innovationsMon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/google-play-indie-games-fund-2024-winnershttps://unity.com/blog/google-play-indie-games-fund-2024-winnersMon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/breaking-down-match-triple-3dhttps://unity.com/blog/breaking-down-match-triple-3dThu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-gaming-shift-hyper-hybrid-casualhttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-gaming-shift-hyper-hybrid-casualThu, 12 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/multiplayer-networking-ebookhttps://unity.com/blog/multiplayer-networking-ebookTue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry-trends-report-2025https://unity.com/blog/industry-trends-report-2025Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-november-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-november-2024-releasesMon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-vfx-graph-ebookhttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-vfx-graph-ebookMon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-for-humanity-2025-grant-now-openhttps://unity.com/blog/unity-for-humanity-2025-grant-now-openMon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/6-ways-to-get-started-with-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/6-ways-to-get-started-with-unity-6Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-ui-toolkit-updateshttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-ui-toolkit-updatesTue, 19 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/complete-guide-version-control-devops-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/complete-guide-version-control-devops-unity-6Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-graphics-learning-resourceshttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-graphics-learning-resourcesThu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/q5-strategies-mobile-user-acquisitionhttps://unity.com/blog/q5-strategies-mobile-user-acquisitionThu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-game-optimization-guideshttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-game-optimization-guidesMon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-october-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-october-2024-releasesMon, 04 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/biggest-edition-urp-ebook-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/biggest-edition-urp-ebook-unity-6Mon, 04 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-horrorhttps://unity.com/blog/games-made-with-unity-horrorMon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/get-ready-for-the-16th-unity-awardshttps://unity.com/blog/get-ready-for-the-16th-unity-awardsTue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-advertising-strategies-holiday-seasonhttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-advertising-strategies-holiday-seasonMon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-features-announcementhttps://unity.com/blog/unity-6-features-announcementThu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/terms-update-runtime-fee-cancellationhttps://unity.com/blog/terms-update-runtime-fee-cancellationThu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-september-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-september-2024-releasesTue, 08 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/muse-chat-prompt-attachment-tipshttps://unity.com/blog/muse-chat-prompt-attachment-tipsThu, 26 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/key-strategies-holiday-seasonhttps://unity.com/blog/key-strategies-holiday-seasonMon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unite-2024-event-wrap-uphttps://unity.com/blog/unite-2024-event-wrap-upMon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/crazy-web-game-jam-2024https://unity.com/blog/crazy-web-game-jam-2024Thu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unite-2024-keynote-wrap-uphttps://unity.com/blog/unite-2024-keynote-wrap-upThu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-is-canceling-the-runtime-feehttps://unity.com/blog/unity-is-canceling-the-runtime-feeThu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-august-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-august-2024-releasesThu, 29 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry-first-ar-solution-for-construction-machineryhttps://unity.com/blog/industry-first-ar-solution-for-construction-machineryWed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/bmw-augmented-reality-glasseshttps://unity.com/blog/industry/bmw-augmented-reality-glassesWed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-elevate-rt3d-build-your-careerhttps://unity.com/blog/unity-elevate-rt3d-build-your-careerTue, 06 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-july-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-july-2024-releasesThu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-2021-long-term-support-extendedhttps://unity.com/blog/unity-2021-long-term-support-extendedThu, 25 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/implementing-ads-guide-formathttps://unity.com/blog/implementing-ads-guide-formatWed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/pixyz-whats-new-2024https://unity.com/blog/pixyz-whats-new-2024Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/game-programming-patterns-update-ebookhttps://unity.com/blog/game-programming-patterns-update-ebookTue, 23 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT ), specifying the selected games data folder in order to switch change. One potential disadvantage of this approach is slower game switching times; therefore it’s important to follow loading best practices to reduce this drawback.No matter the nature of the game we’re developing or on which platform, it’s important to spend as little time as possible from the moment of game selection until it’s fully loaded on the screen. This goal becomes particularly important for game switching applications.A great way to handle loading is by using Addressables. With Addressables, contents are downloaded and released on a need basis. This deferred loading strategy is the most efficient way to reduce load times for games since it limits the amount of data that has to be loaded during initial startup. Furthermore it can help prevent any CPU background activities related to background games, which can contribute to CPU bottlenecks. Addressables: Planning and best practices blog post is a great starting point to learn more about addressables and how they can help improve your game.A great way to ensure faster loading, regardless of how many executables we’re using, is via the asynchronous loading APIs. When loading asynchronously, the Unity main thread will execute a process called “main thread integration” which is responsible for the initialization of native and managed objects in a time-sliced manner. Since this process performs some operations that are not thread-safe it will occur on the main thread, and the time allowed to execute the main thread integration is limited to prevent the game from freezing for a long time. The amount of time that can be spent on the integrations is defined by the Application.backgroundLoadingPriority property. We recommend setting the backgroundLoadingPriority to High, or 50 ms, during loading screens and then returning it to BelowNormal (4 ms) or Low (2 ms) when loading is complete.An additional way to speed up loading is via Asynchronous Texture Upload. Async texture load can decrease the amount of load time by coordinating how much time and memory is used for uploading textures and meshes to the GPU setting. The Understanding Async Upload Pipeline blog post provides detailed information on how this process works.These practices will help speed up loading times:Minimize your scene content as much as possible. Use a bootstrap scene to load only what’s needed for the game to be in a playable state, then load additional scenes when needed.Disable cameras during loading screens.Disable UI Canvases while they are being populated during loading.Parallelize network requests.Avoid complex Awake/Start implementations and make use of worker threads.Always use texture compression.Stream large media files (like audio files and textures) instead of keeping them in memory.Avoid JSON Serializer, and instead use binary serializers.As mentioned earlier, memory is not the only concern for multi-game environments, background CPU activity is also something that can put a toll on the player's gaming experience. When games are not actively being played, their CPU is still running, causing the active game to perform suboptimally by creating CPU starvation. A way to prevent CPU starvations for the active game, and any other backend platform processes is to set the Run in Background player to false in Unity Settings. Run in Background will cause the Unity game loop to stop while the game is not in focus. The setting can also be changed dynamically via scriptOne thing to note is the Run in Background setting won’t stop any custom scripting threads from running, so it’s important to set to sleep any threads of non-playing games via the Thread.Sleep C# method. Remember that working with background threads in Unity requires careful programming. Since these threads don't have direct access to Unity's API, there can be a greater chance of creating issues, such as deadlocks and race conditions. Preventing this requires proper synchronization with the main Unity thread. To properly implement multi-threading, review the Limitations of async and await tasks section of the Overview of .NET in Unity manual page and the MSDN article about using threads and threading. Unity 6 introduces Awaitable class which offers better support for async/await.It can be difficult and time consuming to identify and fix the causes of memory leaks, especially in the later stages of development. As cliche as it may sound, prevention is always better than the cure. Here are a few recommendations that can help prevent leaks in any game environment:When creating new objects/assets in memory, make sure to delete them when not needed. If using Addressable, make sure to release unused assets.When loading/unloading scenes, assets should be properly removed from memory. Unity doesn’t automatically unload assets when a level is unloaded, therefore it’s important to make sure to remove any access from the memory. The Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets API can help clean up assets. However, it can cause CPU spikes, since it returns an object that yields until the operation is complete, therefore it should be used in non-performance-sensitive places.Avoid frequently using Instantiate and Destroy GameObjects. Doing so can lead to unnecessary managed allocations, while also being a costly CPU operation. However, in cases where using Destroy is necessary, make sure to remove all references to the object to avoid Leaked Shell Objects. When an object or its parents are destroyed via Destroy, a C# code holds a reference to a Unity Object, keeping the managed wrapper object–its Managed Shell–in memory. Its Native Memory will be unloaded once the Scene it resides in is unloaded, or the GameObject it is attached to or its parents are destroyed via Destroy. Therefore, if something else that was not unloaded still references it, the managed memory may live on as a Leaked Shell Object.Be mindful when implementing events using Singletons. Singleton instances hold references to all objects that have subscribed to its events. If those objects do not live as long as the singleton instance, and they do not unsubscribe from these events, they will remain in memory causing a memory leak. If the event source gets disposed before the listeners, the reference will get cleared, and if the listeners are properly unregistered there is also no reference remaining. To solve and prevent this problem, we recommend implementing the Weak Event Pattern or IDisposable in all objects that listen to singleton events, and make sure they are properly disposed of in your code. The Weak Event Pattern is a design pattern that helps you manage memory and garbage collection in event-driven programming, particularly when it comes to long-lived objects. It's especially useful when you have subscribers that are short-lived, but the publisher is long-lived. Please keep in mind these are C# specific solutions and work only with C# events and are not directly supported by UnityEvents or the Unity UI Toolkit. As such, we recommend implementing these solutions only in your non MonoBehaviour scripts.Lastly, profiling, performing CI/CD testing and stress testing from the early development stages can be a real time saver, since detecting leaks as they arise will allow you to promptly address the issue, saving time in debugging, and ensuring optimal performance.]]>https://unity.com/blog/optimize-game-menu-for-faster-loadinghttps://unity.com/blog/optimize-game-menu-for-faster-loadingWed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-16th-unity-awards-are-herehttps://unity.com/blog/the-16th-unity-awards-are-hereTue, 16 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/author-scenes-and-prefabs-with-verson-controlhttps://unity.com/blog/author-scenes-and-prefabs-with-verson-controlMon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/multiplayer-summerhttps://unity.com/blog/games/multiplayer-summerMon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-ways-of-applying-global-illumination-in-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-ways-of-applying-global-illumination-in-unity-6Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT/Production Ready Shaders.After importing the samples, get started by opening the scene that corresponds to the render pipeline you’re using (High Definition Render Pipeline,(HDRP), or Universal Render Pipeline (URP):Assets/Samples/Shader Graph//Production Ready Shaders/Scenes/URPProductionReadyShadersAssets/Samples/Shader Graph//Production Ready Shaders/Scenes/HDRPProductionReadyShadersOnce the scene is open, select the Shader Graph Feature Samples Showcase asset at the top of the Hierarchy panel, then follow the guided tour in the Inspector.You can use the Samples dropdown box to select a sample and jump to that location in the scene.Unity continues to add more samples to Shader Graph, with several more sample packs coming in the months ahead. These will help you learn Shader Graph more quickly, understand how to set up specific functionality, and create new shaders faster with premade subgraphs and templates. We hope you’ll enjoy using them.Shader Graph basicsShader Graph documentationUnity Learn tutorialsThis is a deep and rich sample set. We hope you have fun exploring it and use it to speed up your own shader creation process.We’d love to hear your thoughts and impressions on these samples – tell us what you think in the Shader Graph forum.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-shader-graph-production-ready-shaders-in-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-shader-graph-production-ready-shaders-in-unity-6Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-june-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-june-2024-releasesWed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/worldbuilding-xr-free-technical-ebookhttps://unity.com/blog/worldbuilding-xr-free-technical-ebookMon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/trigger-xr-creating-immersive-experiences-for-don-juliohttps://unity.com/blog/industry/trigger-xr-creating-immersive-experiences-for-don-julioFri, 28 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/beyond-50-an-untapped-audiencehttps://unity.com/blog/beyond-50-an-untapped-audienceMon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ad-revenue-and-churn-a-balancing-acthttps://unity.com/blog/ad-revenue-and-churn-a-balancing-actThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/first-guide-animation-in-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/games/first-guide-animation-in-unityThu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/4-ways-to-help-your-app-scale-during-major-sporting-eventshttps://unity.com/blog/4-ways-to-help-your-app-scale-during-major-sporting-eventsMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-may-2024-releaseshttps://unity.com/blog/games/games-made-with-unity-may-2024-releasesMon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-ebook-understanding-unity-dotshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-ebook-understanding-unity-dotsThu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/introducing-all-new-unity-levelplayhttps://unity.com/blog/introducing-all-new-unity-levelplayWed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/llm-integration-relevance-reliability-unity-muse-chathttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/llm-integration-relevance-reliability-unity-muse-chatTue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-6-preview-releasehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-6-preview-releaseWed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT Selection to quickly save or load a selection setChange colors in the Editor via Unity > Preferences > Colors to find certain UI elements or objects more quickly in Editor; adjust the Playmode tint to remind yourself when Play Mode is active so you don’t lose any changes you intended to save on exitPick up pointers from the latest URP 2D sample, Happy Harvest, on how to use Sprite Atlas, 2D Tilemap, 2D skeletal animation, 2D lights, and 2D Sprite Shape.Get tips to help you work in prefab mode, and with nested prefabs, prefab variants, and moreSee how the Animation Rigging package can help bring your 2D characters to lifeSpeed up your lightmapping with the Progressive LightmapperGet tips for for optimizing performance with light probes; for example, if you have set dressing or other static meshes that don’t require lightmapping, you can remove them from your lightmap bakes and use light probes insteadGet updated URP tips like: Basic steps for setting up DecalsUsing URP converters to correctly convert a project made with the Built-in Render Pipeline to URPA brief look at the Add Renderer Feature for injecting scripts into the rendering processAnd, updated HDRP tips for: HDRP Global SettingsThe Volume frameworkLightmapping optimization tipsUse Enter Play Mode settings to reduce compilation timeUnderstand the effects of disabling the Reload Domain and Reload Scene settingsImprove your debugging workflow with tips on how to use the Unity Debugger while in Play Mode: Attach breakpoints within the code editor in order to inspect the state of your script code and its current variables at runtimeLearn how you can use script templates to help create consistency in your code base across your development teamUse custom windows and customize inspectors to streamline workflows for your project needsUse the Platform Dependent Compilation feature to include or exclude certain sections of code based on the target platform for your buildOrganize your scripts into custom assemblies to promote modularity and reusabilityUse the Device Simulator to test your project on a range of devices directly in the Editor.Get the new Unity 2022 LTS productivity e-bookFind all of the technical e-books in Unity’s best practices hub or the advanced best practices page in Unity documentation.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/tips-to-speed-up-in-unity-productivity-ebookhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/tips-to-speed-up-in-unity-productivity-ebookTue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT Create > 2D Match. Items in the shop include: Stars: You collect these after completing each level; in actual match-3 games, stars are often a part of the metagame, decoration, or are used to advance the storyline. 2D puzzle/match-3 games are popular because they’re cute and colorful, easy and fun to play, and accessible to anyone from almost anywhere.They can also include beautiful artwork, but with their static camera, repetitive gameplay, and, in many cases, prebaked lighting and shadows, they’re not known for bleeding-edge light and visual effects. And yet there are plenty of ways you can add pops of sparkles and glimmer for extra fun.A Sprite Custom Lit shader is one of the techniques used for creating the visual effects in Gem Hunter Match. This shader substitutes for scene lighting, allowing us to modify the 2D light texture information and control the lighting on each piece. The result is creative illumination of the sprites, like the shimmery effect that moves over the pieces.The light position data is moved into the shader, eliminating the need for actual light objects in the scene, which also helps to keep it neat. The encapsulated per-object lighting in the shader works well for better isolation and editing at scale and improves performance where batching is possible.With the light and shadow information held in the shader, only the color information is included in the sprites. The normal map is used by the 2D light system to calculate the direction of each pixel, ensuring it receives more or less light based on its position. The mask map is used by lights that can affect a specific RGB channel.The Lights prefab in Gem Hunter Match level scenes contains the 2D lights for the grid. These lights affect the default Sprite Lit shader and are applied to the grid items included in the Sorting Layer that receives light.The following image illustrates the steps in creating the sprites and how the Sprite Custom Lit shader fits into the process.In Gem Hunter Match, a “fictional” light position is represented by the LightRotator GameObject, which is animated to create a glare effect off the gems. The modifications to the 2D light texture and the fabricated highlights with the Dot Product node are both used in the TileShader Shader Graph that’s applied to the gems in the game.The Dot Product node can be useful in 2D projects when you want to do custom lighting. Dot Product measures how close two vectors align. In the sample, the LightDirection position is compared to the apparent direction of each pixel in the Normal map. The sampled black and white image can be used to add light to the sprite and update the values at runtime for all the pieces using the same shader.Get Gem Hunter MatchThe Radial Warp shader uses the URP 2D Camera Sorting Layer Texture setting. This handy feature gives you access to the graphics generated up to the indicated Sorting Layer in the URP 2D Renderer settings that you can then use in Shader Graph to apply effects. In the Happy Harvest sample, the Camera Sorting Layer Texture is used to create a water refraction effect, and in Dragon Crashers, it’s used for smoke distortion. In this sample, we use it to apply a distortion that simulates a shockwave, adding extra visual appeal when you make a match. It’s the kind of effect that creates an impact that your players will remember.We hope you’ll download Gem Hunter Match, play and customize it, then try out its graphics techniques in your own projects. All of these and more are covered in the Unite 2023 session, Lighting and AI techniques for your 2D game.Don’t miss out on these other samples, e-books, and tutorials for URP:E-book: 2D game art, animation, and lighting for artistsE-book: Introduction to the Universal Render Pipeline for advanced Unity creatorsUnite 2023: Accelerate your multiplatform development with the latest for URPLivestream: What’s new in Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline?Video tutorial: Happy Harvest: Custom crops and player notesE-book: The definitive guide to creating advanced visual effects in UnityMake sure to join the conversation about the Universal Render Pipeline on the Unity Forums or join Unity Discussions.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2d-puzzle-match-3-sample-gem-hunter-matchhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2d-puzzle-match-3-sample-gem-hunter-matchMon, 29 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-muse-ai-capabilities-in-editor-plus-new-updateshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-muse-ai-capabilities-in-editor-plus-new-updatesTue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/valeo-xr-racing-game-sxswhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/valeo-xr-racing-game-sxswFri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-2022-lts-updates-urp-hdrp-e-bookshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-2022-lts-updates-urp-hdrp-e-booksThu, 18 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/mazda-unity-partnership-automotive-cockpit-hmihttps://unity.com/blog/industry/mazda-unity-partnership-automotive-cockpit-hmiWed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-maintain-control-and-transparency-with-in-app-biddinghttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-maintain-control-and-transparency-with-in-app-biddingTue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-asset-bundles-tips-pitfallshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-asset-bundles-tips-pitfallsTue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/social-ad-networks-sdk-networkshttps://unity.com/blog/social-ad-networks-sdk-networksMon, 15 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/couch-co-op-multiplayer-ship-of-foolshttps://unity.com/blog/games/couch-co-op-multiplayer-ship-of-foolsThu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/addressability-adapting-your-mobile-programmatic-strategyhttps://unity.com/blog/addressability-adapting-your-mobile-programmatic-strategyWed, 10 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/spatial-computing-with-owlchemy-labshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/spatial-computing-with-owlchemy-labsTue, 09 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/more-players-unity-multiplayer-serviceshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/more-players-unity-multiplayer-servicesMon, 08 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/update-about-zivahttps://unity.com/blog/news/update-about-zivaTue, 02 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/multiplayer-resource-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/multiplayer-resource-roundupWed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/gdc-2024-recaphttps://unity.com/blog/games/gdc-2024-recapThu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-expands-direct-brand-and-agency-support-in-emeahttps://unity.com/blog/unity-expands-direct-brand-and-agency-support-in-emeaWed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT/Feature Examples.After importing the samples, get started by opening the scene that corresponds to the render pipeline you’re using (High Definition Render Pipeline, or HDRP, Universal Render Pipeline, or URP, or the Built-in Render Pipeline) in the Scenes folder.Once the scene is open, select the Shader Graph Feature Samples Showcase asset in the Hierarchy panel, then follow the guided tour in the Inspector.You can use the Samples dropdown box to select a sample and jump to that location in the scene.We’re continuing to add more samples to Shader Graph, and we have several more sample packs in the coming months. These will help you learn Shader Graph more quickly, understand how to set up specific functionality, and create new shaders faster with premade subgraphs and templates. We hope you’ll enjoy using them.Shader Graph basicsShader Graph documentationUnity Learn tutorialsThis is a very deep and rich sample set. We hope you have fun exploring it and use it to speed up your own shader creation process.We’d love to hear your thoughts and impressions on these samples – tell us what you think in the Shader Graph forum.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/shader-graph-feature-examples-2022-ltshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/shader-graph-feature-examples-2022-ltsTue, 19 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-ads-tcpa-optimizerhttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-ads-tcpa-optimizerMon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/unity-google-expand-partnership-with-unitys-networks-as-biddershttps://unity.com/blog/unity-google-expand-partnership-with-unitys-networks-as-biddersSun, 17 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/tapjoy-launches-daily-rewardshttps://unity.com/blog/tapjoy-launches-daily-rewardsTue, 12 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-gaming-trends-2024https://unity.com/blog/mobile-gaming-trends-2024Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/ai-model-improvements-higher-quality-muse-textureshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/ai-model-improvements-higher-quality-muse-texturesTue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT() to the relevant system, and use Foo IComponentData in your scenes as a sort of flag to turn on the update of those systems.“I understand that DOTS improves performance in terms of handling large amounts of data during runtime, during gameplay (rendering especially, from what I’ve heard). However, I’ve also heard DOTS improves production performance in terms of easing any refactoring needed. Could you speak a little on how DOTS helps refactoring?”JOE VALENZUELA: A big appeal of DOTS, ECS, and DoD in general from my perspective is that it makes more of your simulation state visible and inspectable. If you’ve ever tried to add tests for an OOP library, you may have run into the problem where you end up having to mock or instantiate a huge amount of functionality in order to replicate the state necessary to invoke a “simple” method instance. With DoD style systems, you can almost always represent a transformation kernel as a standalone function that turns one value type into another.This is hugely easier to reason about, to test, and to parallelize.“In my (amateur) experience, I find that DoD creates tight coupling between the data and the architecture, causing changes to data structures to introduce large refactoring work. Is this your experience? How did you handle or avoid this problem?”RASMUS HÖÖK: In our experience, when changing the data we usually have to alter the code that’s using it, even before using ECS. So we haven’t suffered more than what we’re used to!JOE VALENZUELA: I don’t think this is a fundamental problem of DoD or even our ECS, at least as it’s evolved over time.For one thing, the traditional method of breaking tight coupling in OOP is typically to make instance-oriented functions and class hierarchies. While that’s nice in theory, that kind of abstraction is one of the first things to go in performance programming.There’s nothing preventing you from writing utility functions in an ECS. While it’s true in our ECS you have to revisit systems when you change the data contract for specific queries, that can be a sign that you’re querying data in a scattered fashion. Are you repeatedly transforming component data? Can that be rewritten to reduce the number of mutations per frame? Repeatedly reading component data? Maybe you can hoist it into an immutable data structure early in the frame.Lastly, I think it’s safe to say DoD, or at least ECS, does make a lot more of the problem state explicit. That’s not a negative: That’s a different tradeoff. I much prefer reasoning about a tight coupling while refactoring than a loose or implied one.“Does the ECS/OOP work well for mobile games, or can you recommend this approach for a mobile game project? Any risks or considerations?”JOE VALENZUELA: We’ve had multiple customers successfully use ECS in their mobile games. Check out this GDC talk to see how Sunblink Entertainment used it for HEROish.“How did you go about networking V Rising? Did you use Netcode for Entities or another framework?”RASMUS HÖÖK: We made our own framework. We started using DOTS for production very early and were aware of the risks of doing that. To eliminate as many risks as we could, we tried to rely on as few packages as possible and rolled our own when possible. We have always made multiplayer games and have always used our own solutions, so we were comfortable with doing it ourselves.“Is ECS stable enough for production? We’ve been struggling with it for the past few months with a prototype and aren’t sure if those were growing pains as we learn or if it isn’t quite ready to strive for a pure ECS production project.”RASMUS HÖÖK: I’d say it’s stable enough for production but it is lacking features that many game developers might take for granted. Our gameplay code is pure ECS in V Rising, but presentation stuff, such as animated characters, particle effects, and UI, are all using GameObjects. Realistically, I think a hybrid approach is the best way for most teams starting a project today.We made V Rising using a one-way approach. We use pure ECS to only push data to GameObjects, never the other way around. For example, we keep the state of a character in ECS data – input, velocity, etc., that will decide the locomotion state, and what animation should be active and at what time and speed. Then we make sure the animator of the GameObject is in that state. Whatever state the animator is in never affects the gameplay. I think this separation overall simplifies the game.JOE VALENZUELA: ECS is production-ready and used by customers worldwide, but we have a long way to go until the experience is as seamless as we’d like. Stay tuned for future developments – and thanks for using DOTS!Make your ambitious game a reality with DOTS, which enables you to create scalable, high-performance games and unforgettable experiences. Get the latest features with Unity 2022 LTS and try out the latest tech in Unity 6 Preview.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/dots-webinar-roundtable-q-ahttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/dots-webinar-roundtable-q-aWed, 28 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-january-february-2024https://unity.com/blog/games/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-january-february-2024Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/dots-bootcamp-resourceshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/dots-bootcamp-resourcesThu, 22 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/football-vr-statusprohttps://unity.com/blog/games/football-vr-statusproFri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-shift-from-hyper-to-hybrid-games-and-why-it-matters-for-everyonehttps://unity.com/blog/the-shift-from-hyper-to-hybrid-games-and-why-it-matters-for-everyoneWed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/hugging-face-ai-models-and-more-sentis-updateshttps://unity.com/blog/games/hugging-face-ai-models-and-more-sentis-updatesThu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/tomas-sala-on-indie-game-bulwark-falconeer-chronicleshttps://unity.com/blog/games/tomas-sala-on-indie-game-bulwark-falconeer-chroniclesWed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/samsung-in-2023-the-users-innovation-and-technologyhttps://unity.com/blog/samsung-in-2023-the-users-innovation-and-technologyTue, 23 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/games/top-learning-tools-of-2023https://unity.com/archive/blog/games/top-learning-tools-of-2023Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/mobile-screen-reader-support-in-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/mobile-screen-reader-support-in-unityFri, 19 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/best-conferences-for-mobile-app-developers-in-2024https://unity.com/blog/best-conferences-for-mobile-app-developers-in-2024Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/dive-into-the-urp-3d-samplehttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/dive-into-the-urp-3d-sampleThu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/best-of-unity-youtube-2023https://unity.com/blog/news/best-of-unity-youtube-2023Fri, 12 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/made-with-unity-2023-reviewhttps://unity.com/blog/games/made-with-unity-2023-reviewThu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/why-folder-structures-matterhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/why-folder-structures-matterThu, 28 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-october-november-2023https://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-october-november-2023Mon, 18 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/implementing-an-offerwall-placement-strategyhttps://unity.com/blog/implementing-an-offerwall-placement-strategyWed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/collective-power-of-communityhttps://unity.com/blog/news/collective-power-of-communityWed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/achievement-unlocked-10-chambers-game-awardshttps://unity.com/blog/games/achievement-unlocked-10-chambers-game-awardsTue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/updated-2022-lts-best-practice-guideshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/updated-2022-lts-best-practice-guidesThu, 07 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/nine-ua-holiday-tipshttps://unity.com/blog/nine-ua-holiday-tipsTue, 05 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/web-runtime-updates-enhance-browser-experiencehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/web-runtime-updates-enhance-browser-experienceThu, 30 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/create-next-gen-ai-models-with-unity-sentishttps://unity.com/blog/games/create-next-gen-ai-models-with-unity-sentisWed, 29 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-ui-toolkit-demos-for-programmers-artistshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-ui-toolkit-demos-for-programmers-artistsMon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/top-selling-assets-supercharge-your-next-projecthttps://unity.com/blog/games/top-selling-assets-supercharge-your-next-projectFri, 24 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/offerwall-special-promotions-holiday-tipshttps://unity.com/blog/offerwall-special-promotions-holiday-tipsTue, 21 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/marketplace-morning-report-skin-in-the-game-podcasthttps://unity.com/blog/news/marketplace-morning-report-skin-in-the-game-podcastMon, 20 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2023-awards-developer-resourceshttps://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2023-awards-developer-resourcesFri, 17 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/unite-2023-unity-industry-updates-unveiledhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/unite-2023-unity-industry-updates-unveiledFri, 17 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2023-2-tech-stream-now-availablehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2023-2-tech-stream-now-availableThu, 16 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2023-keynote-game-development-unity-6https://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2023-keynote-game-development-unity-6Thu, 16 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/responsible-ai-and-enhanced-model-traininghttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/responsible-ai-and-enhanced-model-trainingThu, 16 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-for-humanity-2024-grant-now-openhttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-for-humanity-2024-grant-now-openTue, 14 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/6-fundamental-resources-to-help-you-master-unity-basicshttps://unity.com/blog/games/6-fundamental-resources-to-help-you-master-unity-basicsFri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/trust-and-safety-primer-for-game-communitieshttps://unity.com/blog/games/trust-and-safety-primer-for-game-communitiesThu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT ProBuilder > Cube (for example). ProBuilder includes a number of primitive shapes that are useful for quick prototyping. These shapes, which also come with a Mesh Collider component for physics, can be added in the Scene view.ProBuilder meshes act like regular GameObjects in Unity. You can apply Transform values, add components, physics, and scripts, and animate them. However, standard Unity meshes are not the same as ProBuilder meshes: You can’t edit them with ProBuilder until you convert them into ProBuilder objects.Although it’s common to build a ProBuilder mesh by creating and editing it entirely with ProBuilder tools and actions, it can also be useful to modify existing assets. For example, you can import assets from the Unity Asset Store and modify them with ProBuilder.Smoothing groups serve to create sharp or soft edges between faces. When neighboring polygons do not share the same smoothing group, this creates a hard edge between them. Imagine the polygons that comprise a car’s windshield, or front window: They would make up one smoothing group, while the polygons that comprise the hood would be another. If the windshield and car hood polygons are all part of the same mesh, both will be smoothed but not treated as the same surface.In ProBuilder, new shapes have all faces smoothened by default. For more control with smoothing groups, uncheck the Smoothing option (as shown in the image above).The Smooth Group Editor Window offers options to help you set up and previsualize the different smoothing groups.With the Preview option, you can adjust the transparency of the color code of the faces by smoothing group, and blend them in with a dither effect. You can also previsualize the normals of the vertices.The previous example looks like the following in the Game view:You can manage texture mapping on a selected mesh with the UV Editor. Let’s look at its main work areas.1. This is the same toolbar as that in the Scene view, with options to move, rotate, and scale vertices, edges, or faces.2. These buttons enable you to manipulate the UV mapping coordinates directly from the Scene view when they are enabled. They are colored when active and gray when not.The button with arrows locks the transform tools on the Scene view to manipulate the UV instead of the transform of the selected element in the Scene view (edge, vertice, face, or object).The “brick” button enables the preview of the texture coming from the shader at coordinates 0,0.The camera button will output the texture with the polygon wireframe overlaid on the texture for reference when editing the image in DCC software. By default, it will save the file in your project Assets folder.3. Select UV to edit the UV mapping for shaders. Select UV2 (read-only) to regenerate your baked or real-time lightmaps.4. There are two ways to work on UV mapping for the selected object:Auto: ProBuilder manages the texture mapping according to the settings in the Actions panel, even when you resize the mesh. This is the default option and probably enough for most level design work, especially if you will only work with repeating patterns for prototyping purposes.Manual: This method allows you to precisely unwrap and edit UVs, render UVs, and more. It’s recommended for positioning the UV elements against a detailed image. You can watch this tutorial for a step-by-step look into advanced texturing with manual UVs.5. You can manipulate the elements to neatly arrange them in a way to match the shader texture. In the image above, a selected face is highlighted in blue.Color coding while boxing out levels can help convey your intent and ideas more clearly. For example, you could communicate to the rest of your team which elements are destructible by coloring those red.In the Vertex Colors feature, select the “plus” icon to create a color palette. Customize a palette to define the colors (and the number of colors) that you want in your scene.To color an object, select it in the Scene and click Apply. You can apply color to individual faces as well, then share your saved palette of colors with your team so that everyone is using the same color-coding standards.Under Tools > Probuilder > Dimensions Overlay, you can enable floating labels indicating the size of the current selected object in the scene.You can use the Export feature inside Probuilder or install the FBX Exporter package to export your prototyped level assets, with the correct dimensions, to a DCC application for an artist to polish and refine them.Defining a clear work plan with the team will allow for a smooth and efficient design process where the artists will be able work based on the right size and shape of the 3D environment objects seamlessly.You can also use ProBuilder or Unity Asset Store tools to “kitbash,” which involves combining different assets to create something original and new. The idea comes from modeling hobbyists, who mash up model train or airplane kits to build their own custom projects.Our level design e-book is the latest addition to Unity’s collection of advanced guides for professional developers, artists, technical artists, and designers. All the e-books are written by Unity experts and free to download. You can find them and many other resources on the Unity best practices hub.]]>https://unity.com/blog/games/e-book-for-level-designershttps://unity.com/blog/games/e-book-for-level-designersWed, 08 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-editor-software-terms-updatehttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-editor-software-terms-updateMon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/cross-platform-mixed-reality-development-on-meta-quest-3https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/cross-platform-mixed-reality-development-on-meta-quest-3Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/porting-unity-to-coreclrhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/porting-unity-to-coreclrFri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/5-key-takeaways-on-consumer-engagement-with-shopping-appshttps://unity.com/blog/5-key-takeaways-on-consumer-engagement-with-shopping-appsFri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/toxicity-gaming-escalating-solutions-for-safe-engaged-communitieshttps://unity.com/blog/games/toxicity-gaming-escalating-solutions-for-safe-engaged-communitiesThu, 26 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-september-2023https://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-september-2023Wed, 25 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/user-experience-metricshttps://unity.com/blog/user-experience-metricsSun, 15 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-game-creative-trends-to-supercharge-your-apps-uahttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-game-creative-trends-to-supercharge-your-apps-uaWed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/batchrenderergroup-sample-high-frame-rate-on-budget-deviceshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/batchrenderergroup-sample-high-frame-rate-on-budget-devicesTue, 03 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-our-communityhttps://unity.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-our-communityFri, 22 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updateshttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updatesTue, 12 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-august-2023https://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-august-2023Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/the-path-to-a-global-creative-workforcehttps://unity.com/blog/news/the-path-to-a-global-creative-workforceWed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/use-muse-chat-in-your-workflowhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/use-muse-chat-in-your-workflowThu, 31 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/louisiana-economic-development-training-real-time-3d-educatorshttps://unity.com/blog/news/louisiana-economic-development-training-real-time-3d-educatorsTue, 29 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/how-creators-launch-scale-multiplayer-games-with-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/games/how-creators-launch-scale-multiplayer-games-with-unityThu, 24 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2023-3-coming-april-2024-with-updateshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2023-3-coming-april-2024-with-updatesTue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-july-2023https://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-roundup-july-2023Wed, 09 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/building-tech-at-scale-ironsource-sdkhttps://unity.com/blog/building-tech-at-scale-ironsource-sdkTue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/stunning-scenarios-in-warhammer-40000-warpforgehttps://unity.com/blog/games/stunning-scenarios-in-warhammer-40000-warpforgeFri, 28 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT Project Setting > Graphics > Render Pipeline Asset.Creating the trails, which show the movement of the water along the stream, is straightforward. By tiling and offsetting two Voronoi Nodes and masking out the desired areas using vertex colors, you can create stylized water trails flowing along the water surface. Then, adjust the speed of the noise node to match with the previous falling water. You now have stylized water trails flowing through the water surface. This is very similar to the technique used to create the waterfall’s stream lines.Now, let’s change gears and look at a less stylized, more realistic shader. The sand shader is in a realistic desert scene, which necessitates the terrain to closely resemble real-world sand visually.Sand rendering is an interesting challenge. A plain PBR shader does not capture the look of desert sand under a strong sun. There are two main features to cover in the sand shader: the sand glitter, which is a subtle but noteworthy aspect, and the blowing dust, a dynamic feature that adds liveliness.Since sand is composed of countless tiny grains, it sparkles when exposed to sunlight. How do you achieve that glitter effect? Similar to how you do specular reflection, first calculate the reflection vector using the surface normal. Taking inspiration from Journey, instead of calculating the dot product between the normal vector and the halfway vector, you calculate the dot product between the normal and the view direction instead. This adjustment ensures that the glitter pattern varies based on the viewing angles, enhancing the visual appeal of the shader.You have two noise maps in the shader. One is used for sampling the sparkles, and the other is used to mask out the main noise texture for a more dynamic and captivating result. Use the previously calculated reflection vector to distort the UV used for sampling the noise mask.The blowing dust sand effect is a combination of two elements: moving sand trails and sand waves. The concept is fairly straightforward. You are tiling different normal maps to achieve the desired outcome. One key point for the sand trails is that you need a mask to mask out the normal map and make the effect look more dynamic. Instead of using the default UV, sample two noise maps with absolute world position.One thing worth noting is that the World option in the Position Node changes based on the setting of different render pipelines, so select the Absolute World option to avoid any behavior changes when switching pipelines. Next, tile the two maps in a diagonal direction, which will create a ripple-like effect. Then scroll another noise map along the sand wave direction to add to the feeling of sand shifting away.An important aspect is how to achieve normal blending in the shader. In a sand terrain, where the albedo map may not be as complex compared to other terrains, the normals play a significant role in the visual appearance. Blend multiple normal maps in the shader. Different from blending albedo maps, the normal maps store directions, and different blending methods can yield very different results.Let’s take the Normal Blend Node in Shader Graph as an example. When blending normal maps A and B, the default option in the Normal Blend node adds the x and y channels of the two maps together, while multiplying the z channels to obtain the third element of the blended normal. The reoriented option, as the name suggests, involves a more intricate process. It rotates the normals in map B to align with the direction of map A. This approach retains the most data from both maps, but it is also the most computationally expensive option.In our shader, we have opted for a simple blending method for the normals. The main reason for blending the normals is to create a vivid sensation of sand blowing or moving across the desert surface. Accuracy is not the top priority. Additionally, the shader is applied to a relatively large terrain mesh, so minimizing computational costs is important.Considering these factors, here is a straightforward approach: Add the red and green channels of the normal maps together, and, for the blue channel, pass in a value of 1. Then, scale up the normal strength a little bit, and the result looks great.In addition to the discussed features, there are other controls implemented in the shader. One of these is a general fading control, which determines where the effects appear on the terrain based on the camera distance. This allows for a gradual transition and fading of the effects as the camera moves further away.You can also adjust the smoothness value in the distance, enabling better blending of the sand dunes and the background terrain. As the viewer zooms in, a detailed graininess normal map replaces the terrain normals. This substitution provides a more realistic desert experience, adding finer details and textures to the sand surface.Now that you’ve gone through all the features in each of these two shaders, don’t hesitate to create your own versions. If you are passionate about creating shaders with Shader Graph, join our forum or find us on Discord. Be sure to watch for future technical breakdowns from Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/nature-shaders-with-shader-graph-in-2022-ltshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/nature-shaders-with-shader-graph-in-2022-ltsFri, 28 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/megacity-competitive-action-multiplayer-sample-gamehttps://unity.com/blog/games/megacity-competitive-action-multiplayer-sample-gameThu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/more-multiplayer-capabilities-for-gameshttps://unity.com/blog/games/more-multiplayer-capabilities-for-gamesWed, 26 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/what-to-expect-at-unite-2023https://unity.com/blog/news/what-to-expect-at-unite-2023Tue, 25 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/speedtree-9-5https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/speedtree-9-5Thu, 20 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-support-for-visionoshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-support-for-visionosWed, 19 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/where-might-ai-take-gamedev-nexthttps://unity.com/blog/games/where-might-ai-take-gamedev-nextMon, 17 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/tackling-toxicity-with-unity-safe-voicehttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/tackling-toxicity-with-unity-safe-voiceThu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/improving-burst-inspector-search-performancehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/improving-burst-inspector-search-performanceTue, 11 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-version-control-smart-lockshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-version-control-smart-locksMon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/social-impact-creators-at-2023-tribeca-festivalhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/social-impact-creators-at-2023-tribeca-festivalMon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/celebrating-the-recent-success-of-our-creatorshttps://unity.com/blog/news/celebrating-the-recent-success-of-our-creatorsFri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-june-2023-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-june-2023-roundupFri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/games/7-must-save-game-tutorialshttps://unity.com/archive/blog/games/7-must-save-game-tutorialsThu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/happy-harvest-demo-latest-2d-techniqueshttps://unity.com/blog/games/happy-harvest-demo-latest-2d-techniquesWed, 05 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-optimize-latency-in-your-ad-waterfallhttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-optimize-latency-in-your-ad-waterfallWed, 05 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/overview-of-carriers-oems-mvnos-and-how-they-benefit-on-device-strategyhttps://unity.com/blog/games/overview-of-carriers-oems-mvnos-and-how-they-benefit-on-device-strategyTue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2023-1-tech-stream-now-availablehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2023-1-tech-stream-now-availableMon, 03 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/9-verified-solutions-on-new-unity-asset-store-ai-marketplacehttps://unity.com/blog/news/9-verified-solutions-on-new-unity-asset-store-ai-marketplaceFri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT Renderer Features > SmallRoom – Stencil in the Editor.The sample project uses the magnifying glass over desk example, and the aim is to convert the lens of the magnifying glass so that it allows you to see through the desk like an x-ray image. The approach uses a combination of Layer Masks, shaders, and Renderer features.Renderer Features are a great way to achieve dramatic custom effects or gameplay possibilities.Exchanging data between CPU and GPU is a major bottleneck in the rendering pipeline. If you have a model that needs to be rendered many times using the same geometry and material, then Unity provides some great tools to do so, which are covered in the cookbook’s instancing chapter.This recipe uses a field full of grass to illustrate the concept of instancing. It uses the SRP Batcher, GPU instancing, RenderMeshPrimitives, and ComputeBuffers.Often used together, toon and outline shaders present two distinct challenges. The toon shader takes the cooler that would be created using a URP-compatible Lit shader, and ramps the output rather than allowing continuous gradients, thereby requiring a custom lighting model.The example in this recipe uses Shader Graph. However, Shader Graph doesn’t support custom lighting, so there’s no node available to directly access the Main and Additional Lights. Instead, you can leverage a custom node to access those.Check out the Toon and outline shading recipe to get the full details.Ambient Occlusion is a post-processing technique available from Unity 2020.2. This effect darkens creases, holes, intersections, and surfaces that are close to one another. In the real world, such areas tend to block out or occlude ambient light, thereby appearing darker.See how you can implement real-time Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) effect as a Renderer Feature using URP.Decals are a great way to insert overlays onto a surface. They’re often used to add visuals such as bullet holes or tire treads to the game environment as the player interacts with the scene.If you want to follow along this recipe, you’ll work with URP Decal Projection properties, creating the material, and even adding a decal with code.The water recipe is created in Shader Graph to make the steps more accessible. It’s built in three stages:Creating the water colorMoving tiled normal maps to add wavelets to the surfaceAdding moving displacement to the vertex positions to create a swell effectWhile this recipe forms the basis of a simple water shader, you can enhance it using Caustic Reflections, Refraction, and Foam.Using LUT Textures is an efficient way to create dramatic color grading, and this approach can be useful in many games. It involves using one filter, but the steps employed apply to all of them.Lighting with URP is similar to using the Built-in Render Pipeline. The main difference is where to find the settings.This chapter in the cookbook covers related recipes for real-time lighting and shadows, including baked and mixed lighting using the GPU Progressive Lightmapper, Light Probes, and Reflection Probes. You’ll pick up enough instruction for a five-course meal!A few things to keep in mind about shaders and color space: When using lighting in URP, you have a choice between a Lit Shader and Simple Lit Shader, which is largely an artistic decision. If you want a realistic render, you can use the Lit Shader, but if you want a more stylized render, you can use Simple Lit for stellar results.Shadow settings are set using a Renderer Data object and a URP Asset using URP. You can use these assets to define the fidelity of your shadows.This recipe includes tips for: Main Light and Shadow Resolution, Shadow Cascades, baking lights, and more.Light Probes save the light data at a particular position within an environment when you bake the lighting by clicking Generate Lighting via Window > Rendering > Lighting panel. This ensures that the illumination of a dynamic object moving through an environment reflects the lighting levels used by the baked objects. It will be dark in a dark area, and in a lighter area it will be brighter.Follow this recipe to find out how to position Light Probes with a code-based approach in order to speed up your editing, how to use Reflection Probes in your scene, and how to blend them.Screen Space Refraction uses the current opaque texture created by the render pipeline as the source texture to map pixels to the model being rendered. This method and recipe is about deforming the UV used to sample the image.Learn how to use a normal map to create refraction effects as well as tint a refraction effect.This is a recipe for using ray marching to render a 3D texture. Unity supports 3D textures, which are an array of images placed in a grid on a single texture, rather like a Texture Atlas. The difference is that each image is the same size. Using a 3D UV value, you can source a texel from the grid of images with UV.Z defining the row and column of the individual image to use.You can also use Houdini when creating the 3D texture. Alternatives to a 3D texture include using multilayered Perlin noise, or prebaking a tileable noise texture using Unity.There are many advanced resources available for free from Unity. As mentioned at the beginning of the blog post, the e-book Introduction to the Universal Render Pipeline for advanced Unity creators is a valuable resource for helping experienced Unity developers and technical artists migrate their projects from the Built-in Render Pipeline to the URP.All of the advanced e-books and articles are available from the Unity best practices hub. E-books can also be found on the advanced best practices documentation page.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/12-recipes-for-popular-visual-effects-using-universal-render-pipelinehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/12-recipes-for-popular-visual-effects-using-universal-render-pipelineThu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT select the High Definition Render Pipeline package in your assets > choose the water samples inside the Samples section).We provide four sample scenes.The Swimming pool scene shows how to set up different “pools” in the same scene at different heights, as well as how to use custom meshes to render the surfaces with custom shapes.The Island scene showcases the ocean body and includes a water mask to remove swells around the island, a water deformer to create waves, decals to place foam on the beach, a foam generator to generate foam behind the waves and around the island, and a water excluder to exclude water from inside a boat. It also focuses on leveraging Burst with the water query API to parallelize the computation of multiple objects (i.e., seagulls) to float on water.The Glacier scene showcases many features, including:River water bodyWater deformer to create a waterfallCurrent simulation to make the water flow through the glacierWater query API to make icebergs float down the riverFoam generator to add foam behind icebergsCustom foam on the borders of the river and for the waterfall swirl using Shader Graph and the Water master nodeDecals to animate water falling in waterfallSample caustics to project outside of waterThe Water Line scene showcases the customization of the water’s surface level and underwater rendering using a custom pass, generating a larger blurry separation and simulating the effect of water on a camera lens.Now that you’re fully briefed, let’s dive into each system.The Water System comes with an off-the-shelf, physically based water shader designed from a recently introduced lighting model in HDRP, also available for Shader Graph for customization. You can adjust the smoothness, refraction, absorption, diffusion, and light-scattering properties of a water surface.The scattering color works like the base color of the water, so you need to start there to set up the general feel. Then you can change the absorption distance and refraction color, to control how transparent your water is and the tint applied to objects you see through water refraction. For a clean Caribbean Sea, you’d have a large absorption distance coupled with a cyan scattering and refraction color, whereas for a dirty river, you’d want a dark brown scattering color and a quasi-opaque river with a small absorption distance.There are limitations to water rendering in 2022.2, some of which have been addressed in 2023.1 (seeing water behind Volumetric Clouds, precise waterline) or will be for 2023.2 (improved performance, support for rendering transparent surfaces overlapping water).If you’re as fan, as we are, of Commandant Cousteau, you will enjoy diving under water with the Water System. It can detect when the camera is under the water plane and simulate underwater rendering according to the water’s physical properties.Caustics can be generated procedurally to simulate the light refraction from the surfaces projected on the ground surface. Note that caustics can be reused as projections outside of water, using a decal, for example, to simulate water caustics reflected inside a cave.When the camera sits between water and exterior, a water line is generated, and underwater rendering is composed on the submerged part of the camera. Water line rendering is improved in 2023.1, allowing you to customize it with a custom pass (see: The Water Line sample scene).What makes water even more visually attractive is how it moves. Note that the provided water simulation system focuses on the water plane deformation and not on fluid or splash simulation.The waves are procedurally generated using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) simulation. Simply put, this works by summing a lot of simple waves of different frequencies to form complex waves. By controlling the range of frequencies, you can control the agitation of your water.The system works by adding up varied ranges of frequencies, which we call bands.HDRP supports up to three bands, which simulates three effects of the real world on water and covers most use cases:The swell, representing the waves generated by the effects of the moon and the distant wind. It is solely controlled by the distance wind parameter and allows you to orient the swell's direction.Agitation, representing the chaos generated by the wind.Ripples, representing currents or local wind effects. This is the band with the highest frequencies, or smallest waves and adds fine detail to the water.For example, since pools have small perturbations, they only use the highest frequency band: the ripples. A river, which is a bit more complex, will have ripples and an agitation band. And an ocean has the full frequency range to be able to cover all the various wave sizes we see in real life. The simulation is done on a square patch that is then repeated infinitely.In 2023.1, we are adding support for currents that will make ripples flow according to flowmaps. The simulation is completely deterministic, so you can have consistent results when doing multiplayer games, physics simulations, or recording a short movie or a cinematic.For rendering the water plane deformation, the system uses vertex displacement and can either apply to the provided procedurally generated geometry or to a custom mesh that you provide. The procedural geometry works by instantiating quads next to each other, similar to what terrain does for rendering. This can also be used when creating an infinite ocean or long rivers to make sure the vertex density adapts to where the camera is.On top of that, in order to have finer vertex density to render small ripples, HDRP can rely on GPU Tessellation, which is a way to subdivide triangles using special shaders. With this capability, when the camera is at a certain range from the water surface, you can see that more triangles are generated close to the viewpoint.The system also provides various options to balance between visual quality and rendering performance. Learn more about optimizing performance in our documentation.As we just explained, the simulation runs entirely on the GPU for efficiency, but some of it can be mirrored on the CPU to allow you to sample the water height and currents (for example, to make objects float along a river).This has a high CPU cost since there are a lot of computations required for the simulation, but this is kept reasonable by using burstified jobs to more efficiently parallelize operations.Note that, based on feedback, the scripting API has evolved between 2022.2 and 2023.1 and might require adjustments to your code between the two versions.To get started, you can find two code samples in the water scenes: one in the Island scene, leveraging Burst to parallelize the sampling of many objects, and the other in the Glacier scene, showing how to make icebergs float along the currents of the river and fall down the cascade with simpler, non-parallelized code.Foam simulates the bubbles generated on or under the water by the wind at crests, by waves breaking against the shore or rocks, or by a moving boat or character in the water.The Water System can automatically generate foam based on the water body simulation and the distance wind speed for rivers and oceans. It then allows you to adjust the amount of foam and tweak the look, choosing its smoothness and the tiling of the texture.For 2023.1, a Foam Generator was added to simulate white water for a boat trail, waves, or around rocks in open water, so that foam can be spawned and continue its own course according to the waves. In the sample scene, you will see different examples of usage for the Foam Generator: In the Island scene it’s used to generate foam at the top of the breaking waves and around the island, and in the Glacier scene to generate foam behind the icebergs floating down the river.Using Shader Graph, you can inject custom foam to the Water master node and use it to add custom procedural foam for things like river borders or swirl down a waterfall. For example, in the Glacier sample, the swirl at the bottom of the waterfall is done by simply scrolling and blending a custom foam texture in Shader Graph. The foam on the borders is made by sampling the Depth Buffer to approximate depth.Simulation foam will be injected where the agitation of the waves requires it. But for artistic purposes, you may want to mask out some regions from receiving foam using a foam mask.To look more realistic, the water surfaces and simulations need to be modified locally to better integrate with your world and props. For example, to remove the water geometry inside a boat, add breaking waves near the shore on the seasides exposed to the swell, produce foam around rocks, modify local currents, shape calm areas inside bays, create a waterfall in the middle of a river, or generate small whirlpools in a river or a giant vortex in the middle of the ocean.Multiple components allow you to customize the simulation, foam, and currents to create these local variations or more complex effects:The Water Mask allows you to attenuate or suppress ripples, swell, and foam on a specific portion of a water surface.Decals can be added on the water to create local foam, override the smoothness of the water, or simulate small local deformations such as droplets, impacts, or custom ripples by using a normal map. They can be also used to simulate wetness on the sand or rocks (see: the Island sample scene) or caustics on the walls (see: the Glacier sample scene) independently from the water system. Note that color cannot be changed since decals are only treated as grayscale.Water deformers can locally modify the simulation to create waves, as showcased in the Island sample, or a waterfall, as illustrated in the Glacier sample.We measured the performance of the Glacier scene, where most of the features are activated on various consoles, and have profiled the Water System based on this. Through measuring, we learned that water rendering time takes approximately 4ms on the GPU on the latest generations, whereas previous generations’ consoles took around 7ms. This, of course, is highly dependent upon the quality settings of your water, the complexity of the simulation, and the amount of water pixels displayed on screen. But the system is performant enough to run smoothly on various platforms.Furthermore, the system is using deferred clustered lighting to optimize shading and support a high number of light sources. Most of the rendering time is coming from the GBuffer pass due to the important number of vertices required to get nice waves, even in the distance. When enabling GPU tessellation on the surface, this cost can be controlled by changing the maximum tessellation level and the fade distance when the camera is far away from the water.In the Miscellaneous section of each water surface, you have access to various debug modes to visualize current direction, deformation, foam, and other masks that are applied on the water.To see the Water System running on more complex scenes, we created a demo project showcasing pool, island, and river scenes.The Island scene showcases an infinite ocean with shore waves arriving on the beach. It shows how to use the water masks and make deformers and foam generators using custom render textures. It also uses decals to create complex interactions with the water surface when a wave approaches the beach.The Pool scene showcases an indoor water surface with realistic color, depth, underwater, and caustics.The River scene showcases the use of instanced quads and leverages a current map to simulate the flow, as well as decals, a custom Shader Graph, and VFX Graph to enhance the visuals.You can download the demos on GitHub.To use the water system, you must be working with HDRP and Unity 2022.2 or above.While you can use some of the initial functionalities in 2022.2, we recommend starting with 2023.1 where multiple improvements and features have been added, including some API changes.You can download the water samples in the Package Manager, from which you can start reusing sample code and systems. Also, check out our WaterScenes demo project on GitHub for more complex examples of water systems integrating together.To learn more, watch Rémi and Adrien’s Water System deep dive from GDC 2023 or read our documentation.We have yet to plan for any new features at this stage and are currently concentrating on stability. You can share your feedback with us or ask questions on our dedicated Unity forum thread.To propose new features and vote for upcoming features under consideration, check out our public roadmaps.Please share feedback on the new Water System in the HDRP forum. For future technical blogs from Unity developers, stay tuned to the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-hdrp-water-system-in-2022-lts-and-2023-1https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/new-hdrp-water-system-in-2022-lts-and-2023-1Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/introducing-unity-muse-and-unity-sentis-aihttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/introducing-unity-muse-and-unity-sentis-aiTue, 27 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/reducing-your-android-anr-rate-and-improving-your-uxhttps://unity.com/blog/reducing-your-android-anr-rate-and-improving-your-uxThu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/get-started-developing-for-quest-3-with-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/get-started-developing-for-quest-3-with-unityTue, 20 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/how-to-add-vr-support-to-your-universal-render-pipeline-projecthttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/how-to-add-vr-support-to-your-universal-render-pipeline-projectWed, 14 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/updating-unitys-guiding-principles-for-ethical-aihttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/updating-unitys-guiding-principles-for-ethical-aiTue, 13 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/the-2023-mobile-growth-and-monetization-report-is-herehttps://unity.com/blog/games/the-2023-mobile-growth-and-monetization-report-is-hereMon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/the-fundamentals-of-monetizing-with-offerwallshttps://unity.com/blog/games/the-fundamentals-of-monetizing-with-offerwallsThu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/how-digital-twins-are-transforming-large-scale-airportshttps://unity.com/blog/industry/how-digital-twins-are-transforming-large-scale-airportsThu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/cross-domain-data-mapping-for-augmented-realityhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/cross-domain-data-mapping-for-augmented-realityTue, 06 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-runtime-on-arm-based-windows-deviceshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-runtime-on-arm-based-windows-devicesMon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-may-2023-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-may-2023-roundupThu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/back-to-school-shopping-trends-for-your-app-or-brand-2023https://unity.com/blog/back-to-school-shopping-trends-for-your-app-or-brand-2023Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/3-reasons-editors-love-parsec-for-teamshttps://unity.com/blog/industry/3-reasons-editors-love-parsec-for-teamsTue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/po-fundamentals-busting-the-myths-surrounding-player-ownershiphttps://unity.com/blog/po-fundamentals-busting-the-myths-surrounding-player-ownershipMon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/advanced-tips-for-character-art-production-in-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/games/advanced-tips-for-character-art-production-in-unityMon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT(mip, GetPixelData(mip))2.87 ms – LoadRawTextureData(source.GetRawTextureData())0.00 ms – Graphics.ConvertTexture(source, target)0.00 ms – Graphics.CopyTexture(nonReadableSource, target)These are the median CPU times for PlasmaTexture.UpdateTestCase with a texture size of 512.You’ll see that SetPixels32 is unexpectedly slower than SetPixels. This is due to having to take the float-based Color result from the plasma pixel calculation and convert it to the byte-based Color32 struct. SetPixels32NoConversion skips this conversion and just assigns a default value to the Color32 output array, resulting in better performance than SetPixels. In order to beat the performance of SetPixels and the underlying color conversion performed by Unity, it is necessary to rework the pixel calculation method itself to directly output a Color32 value. A simple implementation using SetPixelData is almost guaranteed to give better results than careful SetPixels and SetPixels32 approaches.Results126.95 ms – SetPixel113.16 ms – SetPixels3288.96 ms – SetPixels86.30 ms – SetPixels32NoConversion16.91 ms – SetPixelDataBurst4.27 ms – SetPixelDataBurstParallelThese are the Editor GPU times for TransferGPUTexture.UpdateTestCase with a texture size of 8,196:Blit – 1.584 msCopyTexture – 0.882 msYou can access pixel data in various ways. However, not all methods support every format, texture type, or use case, and some take longer to execute than others. This section goes over recommended methods, and the following section covers those to use with caution.CopyTexture is the fastest way to transfer GPU data from one texture into another. It does not perform any format conversion. You can partially copy data by specifying a source and target position, in addition to the width and height of the region. If both textures are readable, the copy operation will also be performed on the CPU data, bringing the total cost of this method closer to that of a CPU-only copy using SetPixelData with the result of GetPixelData from a source texture.Blit is a fast and powerful method of transferring GPU data into a RenderTexture using a shader. In practice, this has to set up the graphics pipeline API state to render to the target RenderTexture. It comes with a small resolution-independent setup cost compared to CopyTexture. The default Blit shader used by the method takes an input texture and renders it into the target RenderTexture. By providing a custom material or shader, you can define complex texture-to-texture rendering processes.GetPixelData and SetPixelData (along with GetRawTextureData) are the fastest methods to use when only touching CPU data. Both methods require you to provide a struct type as a template parameter used to reinterpret the data. The methods themselves only need this struct to derive the correct size, so you can just use byte if you don’t want to define a custom struct to represent the texture’s format.When accessing individual pixels, it’s a good idea to define a custom struct with some utility methods for ease of use. For example, an R5G5B5A1 format struct could be made up out of a ushort data member and a few get/set methods to access the individual channels as bytes.The above code is an example from an implementation of an object representing a pixel in the R5G5B5A5A1 format; the corresponding property setters are omitted for brevity.SetPixelData can be used to copy a full mip level of data into the target texture. GetPixelData will return a NativeArray that actually points to one mip level of Unity’s internal CPU texture data. This allows you to directly read/write that data without the need for any copy operations. The catch is that the NativeArray returned by GetPixelData is only guaranteed to be valid until the user code calling GetPixelData returns control to Unity, such as when MonoBehaviour.Update returns. Instead of storing the result of GetPixelData between frames, you have to get the correct NativeArray from GetPixelData for every frame you want to access this data from.The Apply method returns after the CPU data has been uploaded to the GPU. The makeNoLongerReadable parameter should be set to “true” where possible to free up the memory of the CPU data after the upload.The RequestIntoNativeArray and RequestIntoNativeSlice methods asynchronously download GPU data from the specified Texture into (a slice of) a NativeArray provided by the user.Calling the methods will return a request handle that can indicate if the requested data is done downloading. Support is limited to only a handful of formats, so use SystemInfo.IsFormatSupported with FormatUsage.ReadPixels to check format support. The AsyncGPUReadback class also has a Request method, which allocates a NativeArray for you. If you need to repeat this operation, you will get better performance if you allocate a NativeArray that you reuse instead.There are a number of methods that should be used with caution due to potentially significant performance impacts. Let’s take a look at them in more detail.These methods perform pixel format conversions of varying complexity. The Pixels32 variants are the most performant of the bunch, but even they can still perform format conversions if the underlying format of the texture doesn’t perfectly match the Color32 struct. When using the following methods, it’s best to keep in mind that their performance impact significantly increases by varying degrees as the number of pixels grows:GetPixelGetPixelBilinearSetPixelGetPixelsSetPixelsGetPixels32SetPixels32GetRawTextureData and LoadRawTextureData are Texture2D-only methods that work with arrays containing the raw pixel data of all mip levels, one after another. The layout goes from largest to smallest mip, with each mip being “height” amount of “width” pixel values. These functions are quick to give CPU data access. GetRawTextureData does have a “gotcha” where the non-templated variant returns a copy of the data. This is a bit slower, and does not allow direct manipulation of the underlying buffer managed by Unity. GetPixelData does not have this quirk and can only return a NativeArray pointing to the underlying buffer that remains valid until user code returns control to Unity.ConvertTexture is a way to transfer the GPU data from one texture to another, where the source and destination textures don’t have the same size or format. This conversion process is as efficient as it gets under the circumstances, but it’s not cheap. This is the internal process:Allocate a temporary RenderTexture matching the destination texture.Perform a Blit from the source texture to the temporary RenderTexture.Copy the Blit result from the temporary RenderTexture to the destination texture.Answer the following questions to help determine if this method is suited to your use case:Do I need to perform this conversion?Can I make sure the source texture is created in the desired size/format for the target platform at import time?Can I change my processes to use the same formats, allowing the result of one process to be directly used as an input for another process?Can I create and use a RenderTexture as the destination instead? Doing so would reduce the conversion process to a single Blit to the destination RenderTexture.The ReadPixels method synchronously downloads GPU data from the active RenderTexture (RenderTexture.active) into a Texture2D’s CPU data. This enables you to store or process the output from a rendering operation. Support is limited to only a handful of formats, so use SystemInfo.IsFormatSupported with FormatUsage.ReadPixels to check format support.Downloading data back from the GPU is a slow process. Before it can begin, ReadPixels has to wait for the GPU to complete all preceding work. It’s best to avoid this method as it will not return until the requested data is available, which will slow down performance. Usability is also a concern because you need GPU data to be in a RenderTexture, which has to be configured as the currently active one. Both usability and performance are better when using the AsyncGPUReadback methods discussed earlier.The ImageConversion class has methods to convert between Texture2D and several image file formats. LoadImage is able to load JPG, PNG, or EXR (since 2023.1) data into a Texture2D and upload this to the GPU for you. The loaded pixel data can be compressed on the fly depending on Texture2D’s original format. Other methods can convert a Texture2D or pixel data array to an array of JPG, PNG, TGA, or EXR data.These methods are not particularly fast, but can be useful if your project needs to pass pixel data around through common image file formats. Typical use cases include loading a user’s avatar from disk and sharing it with other players over a network.There are many resources available to learn more about graphics optimization, related topics, and best practices in Unity. The graphics performance and profiling section of the documentation is a good starting point.You can also check out several technical e-books for advanced users, including Ultimate guide to profiling Unity games, Optimize your mobile game performance, and Optimize your console and PC game performance.You’ll find many more advanced best practices on the Unity how-to hub.Here’s a summary of the key points to remember:When manipulating textures, the first step is to assess which operations can be performed on the GPU for optimal performance. The existing CPU/GPU workload and size of the input/output data are key factors to consider.Using low level functions like GetRawTextureData to implement a specific conversion path where necessary can offer improved performance over the more convenient methods that perform (often redundant) copies and conversions.More complex operations, such as large readbacks and pixel calculations, are only viable on the CPU when performed asynchronously or in parallel. The combination of Burst and the job system allows C# to perform certain operations that would otherwise only be performant on a GPU.Profile frequently: There are many pitfalls you can encounter during development, from unexpected and unnecessary conversions to stalls from waiting on another process. Some performance issues will only start surfacing as the game scales up and certain parts of your code see heavier usage. The example project demonstrates how seemingly small increases in texture resolution can cause certain APIs to become a performance issue.Share your feedback on texture data with us in the Scripting or General Graphics forums. Be sure to watch for new technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/accessing-texture-data-efficientlyhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/accessing-texture-data-efficientlyThu, 25 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/ai-changing-how-we-learn-and-createhttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/ai-changing-how-we-learn-and-createWed, 24 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-2022-lts-is-coming-in-junehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-2022-lts-is-coming-in-juneTue, 23 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/why-we-are-excited-about-aihttps://unity.com/blog/news/why-we-are-excited-about-aiWed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/3-ways-mixed-reality-is-driving-change-in-car-developmenthttps://unity.com/blog/industry/3-ways-mixed-reality-is-driving-change-in-car-developmentFri, 12 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/start-creating-for-magic-leap-2-with-new-unity-learn-coursehttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/start-creating-for-magic-leap-2-with-new-unity-learn-courseMon, 08 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/6-community-videos-to-get-you-started-with-multiplayerhttps://unity.com/blog/games/6-community-videos-to-get-you-started-with-multiplayerFri, 05 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-april-2023-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-april-2023-roundupWed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/top-5-rewarded-video-placements-to-boost-puzzle-game-revenuehttps://unity.com/blog/top-5-rewarded-video-placements-to-boost-puzzle-game-revenueSun, 30 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT Preferences > Scriptable Build Pipeline > Use Detailed Build Log.Check out visuals and documentation on how to view the log.Q: Does Resources.Load() also have a duplication problem? A: Yes. It can be useful to think of Addressables content and Resources content as different “worlds.” If you have a texture in /Resources, one copy of that texture is included in the Resources file. If bundles in Addressables depend on that texture, each bundle includes an implicit copy of it. You end up with multiple copies of the texture on disk and potentially multiple copies in memory.To avoid this duplication, move the texture out of /Resources and add it to an Addressables group.Q: Do you get similar size on disk issues that are resolved by removing duplicate bundles when you don’t use Addressables? A: Yes. In the webinar and slides we show how deduplicating the two water racing scenes significantly reduced build size.Q: How can I prevent shader variant duplicates? A: Shaders can be deduplicated in the same process as any other asset – explicitly declare them in a group.If an asset is explicitly declared in an Addressables group that is going into your build, that asset will not be duplicated across multiple bundles.For shaders specifically, it is common practice for projects to use a “Shared shaders” group to contain shaders that you expect to need in memory for the lifespan of your app, and that are shared across many assets.Q: Do two Unity scenes sharing the same prefab duplicate build size? A: This depends on if the prefab the scenes depend on has been explicitly included in Addressables, and if the scenes are in the same or different bundles.See the visual explanation of how duplication occurs in the webinar slides and in this blog post under Stage 4.The key to remember is that all content going into a bundle needs to be able to access all of its dependencies. If you put a scene into a bundle, all of its dependencies need to either be:Explicitly included somewhere in AddressablesImplicitly included in the same bundleQ: Is it possible to compare duplicates in given groups to prevent having all the game assets packed together into an isolated group? A: Yes. You can run the built-in deduplication rule and then sort the assets in the Addressables Groups window into better groupings.Or, a more scalable approach is to write your own Addressables AnalyzeRules, which will appear in the Analyze window. The built-in rules are delivered as C# in the Addressables package and can serve as a baseline.For example, you may want to find every duplicate across all of your groups that start with “Character-”. Any implicit duplicates can be placed in a “Shared-Character” group.Q: Are you going to cover remote builds and local paths? A: We did not cover remote and local paths, which are called “Addressables Profiles” in the webinar. However, we do describe what Addressables Profiles are and how to use them in this documentation.Q: How does Addressables work with Cloud Content Delivery (CCD)? A: CCD integration is discussed in this documentation.Q: Can you please give pointers on best practices to implement low- and high-resolution Addressables variations? A: You can find an example in the Addressables Sample on GitHub.Q: What if bundle content is encrypted? Does the UnityDataTool also decrypt the content? A: No. The data will need to be decrypted before UnityDataTool can analyze the content.Q: Is it a supported use case to build bundles from one Unity project and load the bundles at runtime from an app built from a different project? A: Yes. This is covered by using multiple catalogs at the same time.Q: Are there drawbacks to using InstantiateAsync, or situations where it is better to use LoadAsync + manual Instantiate? A: It is recommended to use Addressables.LoadAssetAsync() and call Object.Instantiate(). Addressables.InstantiateAsync() has a larger performance cost.Q: I have a lot of ScriptableObjects with at least 1–2 sprites referenced as variables. If I want to change the sprites to Addressables, do I have to change the references to Addressables one by one, or is there any trick to do this? A: An Editor script is probably the way to go to convert these references.You can add the AssetReference fields to your ScriptableObject (and temporarily keep the Sprite fields). Then, you can write an Editor script that iterates through your ScriptableObjects, looks up the Sprite asset in Addressables to find the associated AddressableAssetEntry, and stores the address or creates an AssetReference to be stored on the ScriptableObject.Lastly, you can remove the direct Sprite references and swap any related code to use the AssetReference.Q: Can I use addressables for WebGL games? If yes, are there any specific things to look for? A: Yes, and yes. Two things to note: First, WebGL does not support threading, so don’t use Tasks. Second, caching works differently on WebGL – we’ve seen issues with caching remote AssetBundles before.Q: If I use Shader.Find(“ShaderName”), is this coming from the build or Addressables? A: These are coming from the build of the Unity Player, not Addressables. Shader.Find() does not return results from AssetBundles.Q: How can I organize the Addressables Groups window when I have many similarly-named groups? A: For organizing the Addressables Groups UI, you can enable Group Hierarchy with Dashes. This will group similarly-named groups together. For example, “Character-person” and “Character-person2” will appear in the UI under the “Character” grouping.This does not affect how bundles are created. This is only a UI organizational change.Share your feedback with us in the Addressables forum. Be sure to watch for new technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/extended-q-a-optimizing-memory-and-build-size-with-addressableshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/extended-q-a-optimizing-memory-and-build-size-with-addressablesFri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/6-ways-scriptableobjects-can-benefit-your-team-and-your-codehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/6-ways-scriptableobjects-can-benefit-your-team-and-your-codeThu, 20 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/more8bit-bleak-sword-minimalist-mobile-game-designhttps://unity.com/blog/games/more8bit-bleak-sword-minimalist-mobile-game-designWed, 19 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/rapid-design-iteration-in-breachers-using-assetpostprocessor-and-blenderhttps://unity.com/blog/games/rapid-design-iteration-in-breachers-using-assetpostprocessor-and-blenderTue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/prepare-future-creators-for-in-demand-careers-with-the-unity-workforce-granthttps://unity.com/blog/news/prepare-future-creators-for-in-demand-careers-with-the-unity-workforce-grantMon, 17 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/meet-the-2023-unity-for-humanity-grant-winnershttps://unity.com/blog/news/meet-the-2023-unity-for-humanity-grant-winnersMon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/build-a-production-ready-multiplayer-game-with-netcode-for-gameobjectshttps://unity.com/blog/games/build-a-production-ready-multiplayer-game-with-netcode-for-gameobjectsWed, 05 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-march-2023-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-march-2023-roundupTue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/introducing-unity-industryhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/introducing-unity-industryMon, 03 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/analyzing-physical-memory-footprint-using-memory-profilerhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/analyzing-physical-memory-footprint-using-memory-profilerTue, 28 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/developing-for-blindness-low-vision-in-vr-with-cosmonious-highhttps://unity.com/blog/games/developing-for-blindness-low-vision-in-vr-with-cosmonious-highThu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT sleep cycle can end up being quite expensive and limit the amount of parallelism the job system offers.You might be thinking, “Isn’t overhead from signaling threads and context switching a cost of doing business when dealing with threads in the first place?” You certainly aren’t wrong. But, while you don’t have direct control over how expensive signaling or waking up threads is, you can control how often those operations occur.One solution to avoid waking up workers for no reason is to only wake them when you suspect there are lots of work items in the queue for workers to take justifying the wake-up cost. This can be done by batching: Instead of signaling workers as soon as you schedule a job, add the job to a list and, at specific times, flush that batch of jobs into the job system, waking up an appropriate amount of workers at the same time.There is still a risk that the actual wake-up takes too long, the batched jobs are very small, or the number of jobs in a batch is just not very high. In general, the more jobs you include in the batch, the more likely it is to avoid overhead from waking up threads for no reason. Unity maintains a global batch which is flushed whenever a call to JobHandle.Complete() is called. So if you need to explicitly wait for a job to complete, try to do so as late and infrequently as possible, and generally prefer scheduling jobs with job dependencies to best control safe access to data.You might also be asking yourself, “If signaling threads and waiting for them to wake up/go to sleep is purely overhead, why don’t we keep our threads awake all the time looking for work?” When there are plenty of jobs in the queue, this can actually occur naturally. Unless the operating system deems the worker thread to be lower priority than some other work (or is explicitly time sliced and should be swapped to give other threads their fair share of CPU time – it depends on your platform), worker threads will happily keep working.However, as with the PartialUpdateA and PartialUpdateB functions we saw in part one, not all jobs are parallelizable and free of data dependencies. As such, you usually need to wait for some subset of jobs to complete before you can run others. As a result, we see bottlenecks in a job graph’s parallelism when there becomes fewer runnable jobs (jobs with no outstanding dependencies) than there are worker threads, resulting in some workers having nothing productive left to do.If you don’t everlet worker threads sleep, you can run into a handful of issues. When worker threads constantly check for new jobs and fail to find any, this is considered “busy waiting,” or work that’s wasteful and doesn’t progress the program. Keeping all cores running with maximum parallelism, but without progressing the game, is a drain on battery life. Not only that, if a core doesn’t have idle time, without sufficient cooling the CPU’s temperature will rise, leading to downclocking – running slower to avoid damage from overheating. In fact, on mobile platforms, it’s not uncommon for entire CPU cores to become temporarily disabled if they get too hot. For a job system, being able to use cores efficiently is very important, so there is a balance between putting workers asleep, and having them constantly loop looking for new jobs, hoping they get lucky.Another area that can generate overhead in the design above is the lock-free queue and stack. We won’t go into all the nuance of implementing these data structures, but one common trait of lock-free implementations is the use of a compare-and-swap (CAS) loop. Lock-free algorithms don’t use locking synchronization primitives to provide safe access to shared state, but instead use atomic instructions to carefully create higher-order atomic operations such as inserting an item into a queue in a thread-safe manner. However, perhaps unintuitively, lock-free algorithms can still prevent one thread from progressing until another is complete. They can also have secondary effects on the CPU instruction and memory pipelines, hurting performance scaling. (“wait-free” algorithms would allow all threads to always progress, but that doesn’t always provide the best overall performance in practice.)Here is a contrived example of adding a number to a member variable, m_Sum, with a CAS loop:CAS loops rely on the compare-and-swap instruction (here we use the C# Interlocked library abstracting platform specifics away), which “compares two values for equality and, if they are equal, replaces the first value.” Since we want Add() function users to not worry about this function potentially failing, a loop is used to retry if it fails because some other thread beat us to updating m_Sum.This retry loop is, in essence, a “busy-wait” loop. This has a nasty implication for performance scaling: If multiple threads enter the CAS loop at the same time, only one will ever leave at a time, serializing the operations each thread is performing. Fortunately, CAS loops generally do an intentionally small amount of work, but it can still have large negative impacts on performance. As more cores execute the loop in parallel, it will take each thread longer to complete the loop while the threads are in contention.Further, because CAS loops rely on atomic read-and-writes to shared memory, each thread generally requires its cache lines to be invalidated on each iteration, causing additional overhead. This overhead can be very expensive in comparison to the cost of redoing the calculations inside the CAS loop (in the case above, redoing the work of adding two numbers together). So, how high the cost is can be non-obvious at first glance.Under the 2017.3 job scheduler, when worker threads were not running jobs, they were looking for work in either a shared, lock-free stack or queue. Both of these data structures used at least one CAS loop to remove work from the data structure. So, as more cores became available, the cost of taking work from the stack or queue increased when the data structures had contention. In particular, when jobs were small, worker threads proportionally spent more time looking for work in the queue or stack.In a small project, I’ve generated deterministic job graphs that a typical game may have for its frame update. The graph below is composed of single jobs and parallel jobs (each parallelizing into 1–100 parallel jobs), where each job may have 0–10 job dependencies and the main thread has occasional explicit sync points where it must wait for certain jobs to finish before scheduling more. If I generate 500 jobs in the job graph, and make each take a fixed amount of time to execute (each portion of a parallel job takes this time as well), you can see that, as more cores are used, overhead in the job system increases.For jobs that take 0.5μs, once there are 20 workers, the frame updates as fast as not using the job system at all, and runs nearly twice as slow when using all cores on my machine. By default, all cores are used in Unity, so with 1μs jobs, there is almost no improvement in performance despite using 31 worker threads. This is a direct result of high contention on the lock-free queue and stack. Luckily, user jobs tend to be larger in size and can hide this overhead. However, the scaling issue is there, and small jobs are still common enough (especially for parallel jobs). Even when using larger jobs, your scheduling patterns and worker timing can cause large amounts of overhead due to contention with the global, lock-free stack and queue in the job scheduler.By now, you can see that there are a few areas our team needed to address to reduce overhead in the job system, both on Unity’s side and on the game creator’s side:Avoiding stalls on the main thread: Signaling to wake worker threads is expensive – keep this to a minimum.Modifying state on the main thread shared with worker threads is likely to lead to cache invalidations and potential busy-waiting.The main thread should schedule jobs frequently – avoid explicitly waiting on jobs to .Complete(). Prefer submitting jobs with dependencies instead.Avoiding stalls on worker threads:Worker thread efficiency directly impacts parallelism. Avoid contending on shared resources where possible.Busy-waits on worker threads will drain battery life and can result in downclocking due to increases in temperature.While Unity can’t change how many jobs users submit in their games, there are a decent number of issues that our engineers can tackle with a different job scheduler approach. In the 2022.2 release, the job scheduler, at a high level, breaks down into a few basic components:Array of worker threadsArray of queues for jobsArray of semaphoresThis is very similar to the previous job scheduler. However, the main difference is the removal of the shared state between the main thread and worker threads. Instead, we make the queues and semaphores (or futex on platforms that support it) local to each worker thread. Now, when the main thread schedules a job, it’s enqueued into the main thread’s queue rather than a global queue.Similarly, if a worker thread needs to schedule a job (e.g., a job schedules a job in its Execute), that job is scheduled in the worker’s own queue rather than in the main thread queue. This reduces memory traffic, since workers reduce the frequency of invalidating cache lines when they write to a queue. As such, workers don’t read/write to all the different queues at the same frequency.The worker loop has also changed, now that there are more queues to work with:Workers look in their own queue for work and only look at other worker queues when theirs is empty. Since workers prefer their own queues for dequeuing and enqueuing work, the amount of contention on any one queue is reduced.Another difference is how threads are signaled to wake up. Worker threads are now responsible for waking up other worker threads, and the main thread is responsible for ensuring that at least one worker thread is awake when it schedules a job.This change in responsibility allows the main thread to remove excessive overhead since it no longer needs to be solely responsible for waking threads when parallel jobs are submitted. Instead, the job system performs tracking to know if it needs to wake any workers at all. The main thread can ensure a worker is always awake to make progress on jobs and when workers wake and find a job in its own queue or another’s, workers can signal other workers to wake up and help empty the queue if needed.The queue separation for workers also provides some interesting leeway for configuration and optimizations, which our team is continuing to add to and improve on. In 2022.2, users should see reduced cost on the main thread to wake up worker threads and improved throughput of jobs on worker threads, regardless of how many cores their platform has. Additionally, while Unity has not backported the queue separation to 2021.3 LTS, we have brought back the design change to make worker threads responsible for signaling each other rather than the main thread solely. High job system overhead on the main thread due to signaling the global semaphore should no longer be an issue as of 2021.3.14f1.If you have questions or want to learn more, visit us in the C# Job System forum. You can also connect with me directly through the Unity Discord at username @Antifreeze#2763. Be sure to watch for new technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/improving-job-system-performance-2022-2-part-2https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/improving-job-system-performance-2022-2-part-2Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/whats-new-in-xr-interaction-toolkit-2-3https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/whats-new-in-xr-interaction-toolkit-2-3Mon, 13 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/technology-behind-avatar-the-way-of-waterhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/technology-behind-avatar-the-way-of-waterFri, 10 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/setting-up-scalable-devops-toolchainhttps://unity.com/blog/games/setting-up-scalable-devops-toolchainThu, 09 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-gaming-at-all-hours-7-facts-about-how-users-engage-with-their-phoneshttps://unity.com/blog/mobile-gaming-at-all-hours-7-facts-about-how-users-engage-with-their-phonesTue, 07 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/3-reasons-why-unity-at-gdc-is-all-about-youhttps://unity.com/blog/news/3-reasons-why-unity-at-gdc-is-all-about-youMon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-february-2023-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-february-2023-roundupWed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/inspecting-memory-with-the-new-memory-profiler-packagehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/inspecting-memory-with-the-new-memory-profiler-packageTue, 28 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-run-effective-ua-campaigns-for-your-subscription-app-by-measuring-long-term-goalshttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-run-effective-ua-campaigns-for-your-subscription-app-by-measuring-long-term-goalsMon, 27 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/improving-job-system-performance-2022-2-part-1https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/improving-job-system-performance-2022-2-part-1Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/the-next-generation-of-vr-gaming-on-ps5https://unity.com/blog/games/the-next-generation-of-vr-gaming-on-ps5Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-overcome-the-in-app-purchase-revenue-gap-in-2023https://unity.com/blog/how-to-overcome-the-in-app-purchase-revenue-gap-in-2023Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/inclusion-starts-here-hbcu-msi-pilot-programhttps://unity.com/blog/news/inclusion-starts-here-hbcu-msi-pilot-programFri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/9-statistics-about-how-users-engage-with-streaming-appshttps://unity.com/blog/9-statistics-about-how-users-engage-with-streaming-appsThu, 16 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/rt3d-creators-and-social-change-in-2022https://unity.com/blog/news/rt3d-creators-and-social-change-in-2022Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/addressables-planning-and-best-practiceshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/addressables-planning-and-best-practicesWed, 08 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/reflections-on-my-first-year-leading-inclusion-and-diversity-at-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/news/reflections-on-my-first-year-leading-inclusion-and-diversity-at-unityMon, 06 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-january-2023-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-january-2023-roundupThu, 02 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/how-i-achieved-my-dream-career-with-unity-learn-pathwayshttps://unity.com/blog/games/how-i-achieved-my-dream-career-with-unity-learn-pathwaysMon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/3-monetization-mistakes-your-strategy-game-is-making-and-5-must-have-rewarded-video-placementshttps://unity.com/blog/3-monetization-mistakes-your-strategy-game-is-making-and-5-must-have-rewarded-video-placementsMon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/everything-you-need-to-know-about-memory-profilerhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/everything-you-need-to-know-about-memory-profilerMon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/google-partnership-expanded-to-help-creators-accelerate-game-development-and-growthhttps://unity.com/blog/news/google-partnership-expanded-to-help-creators-accelerate-game-development-and-growthThu, 26 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/8-ad-placements-to-boost-your-hyper-casual-ltv-meta-gameplayhttps://unity.com/blog/8-ad-placements-to-boost-your-hyper-casual-ltv-meta-gameplayMon, 23 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/offerwall-special-promotions-tipshttps://unity.com/blog/offerwall-special-promotions-tipsThu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/apps-and-games-are-a-safe-place-for-your-ads-according-to-consumer-researchhttps://unity.com/blog/apps-and-games-are-a-safe-place-for-your-ads-according-to-consumer-researchWed, 18 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-december-2022-rounduphttps://unity.com/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-december-2022-roundupFri, 06 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/my-year-of-conferences-for-unity-diversity-recruitinghttps://unity.com/blog/news/my-year-of-conferences-for-unity-diversity-recruitingWed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-what-why-and-how-of-using-nano-influencers-for-performance-marketinghttps://unity.com/blog/the-what-why-and-how-of-using-nano-influencers-for-performance-marketingTue, 03 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/overview-of-on-device-advertising-trendshttps://unity.com/blog/overview-of-on-device-advertising-trendsSun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2021-lts-improvements-to-shader-build-times-and-memory-usagehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/2021-lts-improvements-to-shader-build-times-and-memory-usageWed, 28 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/made-with-unity-2022-in-reviewhttps://unity.com/blog/games/made-with-unity-2022-in-reviewTue, 27 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/get-to-know-unity-employee-resource-groupshttps://unity.com/blog/news/get-to-know-unity-employee-resource-groupsMon, 26 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/havok-physics-now-supported-for-productionhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/havok-physics-now-supported-for-productionMon, 19 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/going-off-autopilot-in-ad-monetization-samantha-benjaminhttps://unity.com/blog/going-off-autopilot-in-ad-monetization-samantha-benjaminThu, 15 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/ultimate-guide-to-creating-ui-interfaceshttps://unity.com/blog/games/ultimate-guide-to-creating-ui-interfacesThu, 15 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT Spline > Draw Spline.2. Click in the Scene view to place points for your spline. If you want to add a curve to the path, click and drag when you place a point.3. When you are done drawing, press Escape, or select a tool in the Tools overlay.4. Use the Editor’s standard select and transformation tools to edit the shape of the spline. For more information, see the Splines documentation.Splines is the first major feature to use our new tooling system, contextual workflows. Contextual workflows use overlays to get you the right tools at the right time. You can see them in action in these cases:Simplify editing with Tool context: Select a spline to see an icon appear at the beginning of the Tools overlay. This icon indicates the Tool overlay’s Tool context. Click the Tool context icon to change your Tool context from GameObject to Spline. Now you can dive right into editing the spline’s finer details using the standard Editor tools and controls.Customize with Tool Settings: Activate a spline tool to see new options in the Tool Settings overlay. This shows you which options are available so you can pick what you need on the fly.Discover new tools with component tools: Select a spline, and if that spline has any component tools, they appear at the bottom of the Tools overlay. If a package or asset uses components to add new tools, you can find them at the bottom of the Tools overlay – no need to search through the Editor.The best part here is that contextual tooling can work with any toolset in Unity, including the Unity Asset Store or other custom creations. If you’re a tool developer and need help setting this up, start with the tools documentation, or reach out on the Unity Forums.Speaking of components, we’ve included three to meet the common uses cases:Instantiate: Generate copies of an item along a spline. Use the Instantiate component to create objects like fences, trees, stone walkways, and so on.Animate: Move a GameObject along a spline. Use the Animate component with cameras, characters, or in situations where you need to define movement in Unity.Extrude: Build a tube mesh along a spline. Use the Extrude component to create and easily edit shapes like wires, pipes, ropes, noodles, and more.New in Splines 2.1, you can build splines with multiple, branching paths. Activate the Draw Splines tool, and begin drawing new parts onto the spline. This also enables you to create disconnected spline sections.You can directly manipulate splines quickly without having to hunt through menus for the right transform tool or gizmo. When you are editing spline points, click-drag a point to move it. No tool activation needed! This is designed to bring 2D-like simplicity of editing to splines.When editing spline points, these new options are available in the handle orientation dropdown. Parent enables you to move, rotate, or scale items relative to their parent element. Element gives you precise editing using the selected item’s directionality.Splines was built to be a foundation for other tooling, especially tools from the Unity Asset Store and custom creations. The package includes a robust API and samples for developers to learn from or customize. Check out the Splines API documentation to get started.The Splines package has been publicly available for almost a year now. Your continuous input has been fantastic, and we’re excited to hear even more, especially from artists, with this major update. Comments here are great, and for deeper discussions we hope to see you on the Splines forum thread.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/building-better-paths-with-splines-in-2022-2https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/building-better-paths-with-splines-in-2022-2Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/2022-2-tech-stream-availablehttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/2022-2-tech-stream-availableThu, 08 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/accessible-vr-game-design-tips-from-owlchemy-labshttps://unity.com/blog/games/accessible-vr-game-design-tips-from-owlchemy-labsWed, 07 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMT Best practices guide.]]>https://unity.com/blog/games/create-spellbinding-visual-effects-with-advanced-vfx-guidehttps://unity.com/blog/games/create-spellbinding-visual-effects-with-advanced-vfx-guideTue, 06 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/industry/enemies-evolution-of-digital-humans-with-zivahttps://unity.com/archive/blog/industry/enemies-evolution-of-digital-humans-with-zivaFri, 02 Dec 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-monetize-non-payers-in-your-gamehttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-monetize-non-payers-in-your-gameTue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/making-vr-education-accessible-with-metahttps://unity.com/blog/news/making-vr-education-accessible-with-metaTue, 29 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-hyper-casual-gaming-industry-past-present-and-futurehttps://unity.com/blog/the-hyper-casual-gaming-industry-past-present-and-futureMon, 28 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/how-to-immerse-your-players-through-effective-ui-and-game-designhttps://unity.com/blog/games/how-to-immerse-your-players-through-effective-ui-and-game-designFri, 25 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/aiming-tapjoy-offerwallhttps://unity.com/blog/aiming-tapjoy-offerwallThu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT General > Default Prefab Mode to make this change.Now, with 2022.2, Undo is recorded as a single Undo operation when exiting Prefab Mode. This results in all changes made to the Prefab being reverted if you perform an Undo after leaving Prefab Mode.Over the course of multiple releases, the error handling and reporting during scene load (and Prefab load in Prefab Mode) has substantially improved, and will now indicate which Prefabs the errors are related to and/or the GUID for missing Prefabs. In fact, the way we handle missing Prefabs’ assets during scene loading is safer and more stable than before.In an effort to further improve error handling and avoid introducing bad data into your project, we’ve added a Broken Prefab Asset Type, which will be produced by the Prefab Importer when errors that cannot be rectified are encountered.The most common case is when a Prefab Variant has lost its parent Prefab, perhaps because it was deleted. In this case, we can’t produce a meaningful Prefab Variant, so a Broken Prefab Asset is created instead. This new asset will show information about what is wrong in the Inspector when selected in the Project Browser. If it’s a case of a missing Prefab parent, then the GUID of the missing Prefab is shown. Alternatively, if it’s a chain of Prefab Variants that is broken, you can go up the chain through the Inspector until you find the Variant with the missing parent.The concept of Disconnected Prefab instances no longer exists as of 2022.1. We still support loading Disconnected Prefab instances, but when the Editor encounters them during scene loading, the Disconnected Prefab instances are stripped of all their Prefab information and become regular GameObjects.As mentioned, our team has fixed a series of bugs you’ve graciously reported to us over time. Some of them derive from the original Prefab system, but many have only become apparent upon the introduction of our improved Prefabs.Today, we are confident you will enjoy the stability of the latest Prefab system. We hope you will find it smooth and efficient to work with.Have more Prefab-related questions or comments? Join us in the forums to share your feedback.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/prefabs-whats-new-2022-2https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/prefabs-whats-new-2022-2Tue, 22 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/perception-open-source-toolbox-for-synthetic-datahttps://unity.com/archive/blog/engine-platform/perception-open-source-toolbox-for-synthetic-dataMon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/man-vs-machine-3-ways-you-can-impact-growthhttps://unity.com/blog/man-vs-machine-3-ways-you-can-impact-growthSun, 20 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/games-focus-creating-and-operating-connected-games-with-multiplayer-networkinghttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/games-focus-creating-and-operating-connected-games-with-multiplayer-networkingWed, 16 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-for-humanity-grant-application-tips-inspirationhttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-for-humanity-grant-application-tips-inspirationWed, 09 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT Editor > Enter Play Mode Settings.Disabling the Domain Reload when entering Play Mode can cause some issues if your code isn’t prepared for it, with the most usual issue being that static variables aren’t reset after playing. If your code can work with this disabled, go for it. For this prototype, Domain Reload is disabled, so you can enter Play Mode almost instantaneously.A separate issue with iteration times has to do with recalculating data that is required in order to play. This often involves selecting some components and clicking on buttons to trigger the recalculations. For example, in this prototype, there is a TeamController for each team within the scene. This controller has a list of all the enemy buildings so that it can send the units to attack them. In order to fill this data automatically, use the IProcessSceneWithReport interface. This interface is called for the scenes on two different occasions: during builds and when loading a scene in Play Mode. With it comes the opportunity to create, destroy, and modify any object you want. Note, however, that these changes will only affect Builds and Play Mode.It is in this callback that the controllers are created and the list of buildings is set. Thanks to this, there is no need to do anything manually. The controllers with an updated list of buildings will be there when play starts, and the list will be updated with the changes we’ve made.For the prototype, a utility method was set up that allows you to get all the instances of a component in a scene. You can use this to get all the buildings:The rest of the process is somewhat trivial: Get all the buildings, get all the teams that the buildings belong to, and create a controller for every team with a list of enemy buildings.Besides the scene being edited, you also need to load other scenes in order to play (i.e., a scene with the managers, with the UI, etc.) This can take up valuable time. In the case of the prototype, the Canvas with the healthbars is in a different scene called InGameUI.An effective way of working with this is by adding a component to the scene with a list of the scenes that need to be loaded along with it. If you load those scenes synchronously in the Awake method, the scene will be loaded and all of its Awake methods will be invoked at that point. So by the time the Start method is called, you can be sure that all the scenes are loaded and initialized, which gives you access to the data in them, such as manager singletons.Remember that you might have some of the scenes open when you enter Play Mode, so it’s important to check whether the scene is already loaded before loading it:Throughout parts one and two of this article, I’ve shown you how to leverage some of the lesser known features that Unity has to offer. Everything outlined is just a fraction of what can be done, but I hope that you’ll find these hacks useful for your next project, or – at the very least – interesting.The assets used to create the prototype can be found for free in the Asset Store:Skeletons: Toon RTS Units – Undead DemoKnights: Toon RTS Units – DemoTowers: Awesome Stylized Mage TowerIf you’d like to discuss this two-parter, or share your ideas after reading it, head on over to our Scripting forum. I’m signing off for now but you can still connect with me on Twitter at @CaballolD. Be sure to stay tuned for future technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/advanced-editor-scripting-hacks-to-save-you-time-part-2https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/advanced-editor-scripting-hacks-to-save-you-time-part-2Tue, 08 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-ironsource-merger-growing-great-mobile-gameshttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-ironsource-merger-growing-great-mobile-gamesMon, 07 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2022-event-recaphttps://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2022-event-recapFri, 04 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-the-versatility-of-vr-featuring-cas-and-charyhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-the-versatility-of-vr-featuring-cas-and-charyThu, 03 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-for-humanity-summit-2022-recaphttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-for-humanity-summit-2022-recapWed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2022-keynotehttps://unity.com/blog/news/unite-2022-keynoteTue, 01 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/angles-of-acquisition-holiday-webinar-summaryhttps://unity.com/blog/angles-of-acquisition-holiday-webinar-summaryMon, 31 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/recipe-behind-smash-hit-cult-of-the-lambhttps://unity.com/blog/games/recipe-behind-smash-hit-cult-of-the-lambFri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/5-steps-to-launching-a-hyper-casual-game-2022-lior-shekelhttps://unity.com/blog/5-steps-to-launching-a-hyper-casual-game-2022-lior-shekelTue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/advanced-editor-scripting-hacks-to-save-you-time-part-1https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/advanced-editor-scripting-hacks-to-save-you-time-part-1Tue, 18 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/complete-overview-of-unity-toolsets-workflows-for-technical-artistshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/complete-overview-of-unity-toolsets-workflows-for-technical-artistsMon, 17 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/level-up-your-code-with-game-programming-patternshttps://unity.com/blog/games/level-up-your-code-with-game-programming-patternsThu, 13 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/games/level-up-your-game-development-skillshttps://unity.com/archive/blog/games/level-up-your-game-development-skillsThu, 06 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/learn-connect-and-celebrate-at-the-unity-for-humanity-summithttps://unity.com/blog/news/learn-connect-and-celebrate-at-the-unity-for-humanity-summitMon, 03 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-4-sales-and-marketing-trends-you-can-jump-on-nowhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-4-sales-and-marketing-trends-you-can-jump-on-nowFri, 30 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/announcing-the-higher-ed-xr-innovation-grant-recipientshttps://unity.com/blog/news/announcing-the-higher-ed-xr-innovation-grant-recipientsThu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/games-focus-profiling-and-performance-optimizationhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/games-focus-profiling-and-performance-optimizationWed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/4-things-multiplayer-gamers-want-2022https://unity.com/blog/games/4-things-multiplayer-gamers-want-2022Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT Rendering > Lighting), make sure that the Lighting Settings Asset field is not left blank. If there is no asset assigned, click on the New Lighting Settings button. This will create and assign an asset, unlocking the properties in the window for editing.Once this is complete, verify that:You have ticked the Baked Global Illumination checkbox, which enables Baked GI computations. This checkbox will also expose the Lighting Mode drop-down list.The Max Bounces value is not set to zero. The higher this value, the more the light will bounce around the environment.The Indirect Intensity slider is not set to zero. Setting this slider to zero will diminish all indirect lighting in the scene.Custom shaders could be the reason why GI computation has failed. For debug purposes, use the built-in shaders that come with the Unity Editor. Those are:Standard Shader: Available in the Built-in Render PipelineLit Shader: Available in the Universal Render Pipeline (URP)Lit Shader: Available in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP)If Unity generates lighting after switching to one of the shaders outlined above, the problem might be with the custom shaders. In this case, make sure that the surface shaders contain the LIGHTMAP_ON shader keyword.Check out the Meta Pass page for details on how to further customize the Baked GI output using shaders.Other potential fixesIf the above steps have not solved your problem, consider trying these potential fixes:Select a different lightmapping backend in the Lighting window. If lighting fails to bake when using the Progressive GPU, but succeeds when baking with the Progressive CPU, this might be the result of a hardware or driver problem.Update the GPU drivers. Please refer to the GPU manufacturer’s page for the correct drivers for your system. (For Linux machines, check the Linux driver setup section in this forum thread).Ensure that your GPU meets the minimum requirements. Please refer to this forum thread.Clear the GI Cache. To clear it, navigate to Preferences > GI Cache and click on the Clean Cache button. Keep in mind that this will delete all lighting data present in the scene, requiring you to regenerate lighting.Certain objects that appear unlit or out of place might indicate a problem with the scene setup, which often reproduces when dynamic objects have no Light Probes to sample the lighting from. Furthermore, any glossy metallic material in the scene might appear as black if no local Reflection Probes are present.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Dynamic objects – or GI Contributors receiving GI from Light Probes – need Light Probes to sample indirect lighting data. If none are present, objects will fall back to sampling the Ambient Probe (i.e., the Light and Reflection Probe that is always present in the scene).To mitigate this, set up a Light Probe network in the scene, adding more probes in areas of high importance. Make sure that there are enough Light Probes to encompass all affected objects, and generate lighting again to see the effect.Reflective metallic objects might still render as black, even after placing a dense network of Light Probes. To shade such objects, you need to place a Reflection Probe that encompasses the affected object. Generate the lighting again or re-bake the probe in the Reflection Probe Component by clicking the Bake button.If you observe black areas in the reflections, try increasing the Bounces count. This will increase the number of bounces, thus creating reflections within reflections. You can access this property in Lighting > Environment > Environment Lighting.Visit Objects are missing lighting forumIf performing the previous steps still does not solve the issue, inspect the Mesh Renderer component of the affected object. Under the Probes section, make sure that the Light Probes and Reflection Properties are set to anything other than Off.Pure black materials will absorb all direct and indirect light. This is physically correct behavior. In real life, no naturally occurring material is completely black. For example, one of the darkest natural materials, coal, measures at “50, 50, 50” on an RGB luminosity scale.Adjust your material color values to follow the physically based shading standards. In the Built-in Render Pipeline, you can use the Validate Albedo Scene View Draw Mode to determine whether Albedo values are PBR-compliant. You can use the Rendering Debugger in URP and HDRP to do the same.If you are working with multiple scenes, check that the scene containing lighting is set as the Active Scene. By default, Unity sets the first loaded scene as the Active Scene, which might have a detrimental effect in the standalone player builds.There are two types of issues related to emissive material rendering:Emissive materials do not appear as “glowing,” which indicates a post-processing issue.Emissive materials are not contributing to Global Illumination, which indicates an issue with object or material setup.To correct either of these issues, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.To create the impression of a glowing material, enable Bloom in your post-processing stack of choice. Refer to Built-in RP, URP, or HDRP documentation for tips on how to do this.If you intend on using emissive objects for lightmapping, make sure that:You have marked the GameObject in question as a GI Contributor. Due to the self-illuminating nature of emissive objects, you can set their Receive Global Illumination property to Light Probes. This will save space in the lightmap atlas.The Global Illumination property is set to Baked in the Material Inspector. This property is available under the Emission input. Refer to Built-in RP, URP, or HDRP documentation for more details.In the Lighting window, make sure that the Indirect Intensity property is not set to zero. Setting it to zero will disable all indirect lighting, including baked contribution from baked emissive objects.Visit Emissive materials not rendering forumWhen baking in Non-directional mode, the Unity Editor will not create a separate texture to hold directionality information. This will result in objects looking flat after baking.It is worth noting that low frequency normal maps are hard to capture using directionality textures. Such textures will appear flat when generating lighting using fully baked lights.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.In the Lighting window, set the Directional Mode property to Directional. This mode will generate a secondary texture that will store dominant light direction. Normal maps will have a good representation of relief, but will lack specular response.Visit Flat normal maps ForumMixed lights provide real-time specular and normal response. The Progressive Lightmapper bakes indirect lighting into a lightmap. This combination ensures the highest quality material response when using baked lighting.If your project allows for it, switch the light Mode to Mixed in the Light component. Note that Mixed lights have the same performance cost as real-time lights. Depending on the Lighting Mode used, Mixed lights will cast real-time shadows but not baked soft shadows.Probe-lit GameObjects will often have a better material response than those lit by Baked lights. If your art direction allows for it, set their Receive Global Illumination property to Light Probes in the Mesh Renderer component. Note that you can also use Light Probe Proxy Volume (LPPV) to add a spatial gradient to probe-lit objects.One of the inherent limitations of Baked lights is that they do not provide real-time specular response to materials. This means that glossy materials will lack specular highlights after generating lighting.To correct this, I recommend trying one of the fixes laid out below.Unlike Baked lights, Mixed lights provide real-time direct specular response to materials. If specular highlights are important in your scene, switch the light Mode to Mixed in the Light component.Visit Missing specular response forumIt is possible to imitate specular response from lights by using emissive objects. To do so, follow these steps:Place a Reflection Probe in your scene.Right-click in the Hierarchy panel and select 3D Object > Sphere. Select the newly created object and set its Static Editor Flag to Reflection Probe Static.In the Project panel, create a new material by right-clicking and selecting Create > Material.Select the newly created material and enable the Emission checkbox. Set the Global Illumination property to None.Drag and drop the material onto the sphere to assign it.Place the sphere in the same position as your light.Generate lighting.After following the above steps, you should be able to see the emissive objects captured in the Reflection Probe cubemap. You can hide those objects after baking or set up a Culling Mask in the Camera component.For more tips on troubleshooting the Progressive Lightmapper, check out the full guide in the forums. If you’d like to discuss this article or share other solutions, feel free to connect with me there or here. Finally, be sure to watch for new technical blogs from other Unity developers as part of the ongoing Tech from the Trenches series.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/5-common-lightmapping-problems-and-tips-to-help-you-fix-themhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/5-common-lightmapping-problems-and-tips-to-help-you-fix-themTue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/get-your-game-on-at-unite-2022https://unity.com/blog/news/get-your-game-on-at-unite-2022Thu, 22 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/programmatic-video-advertising-the-complete-guidehttps://unity.com/blog/programmatic-video-advertising-the-complete-guideFri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/pro-enterprise-new-pricinghttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/pro-enterprise-new-pricingTue, 13 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/clean-up-your-code-how-to-create-your-own-c-code-stylehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/clean-up-your-code-how-to-create-your-own-c-code-styleWed, 07 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-august-2022-rounduphttps://unity.com/archive/blog/news/made-with-unity-monthly-august-2022-roundupThu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/3-ways-you-can-optimize-your-app-business-with-app-analyticshttps://unity.com/blog/3-ways-you-can-optimize-your-app-business-with-app-analyticsThu, 25 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-what-why-and-how-of-web-to-app-acquisition-campaignshttps://unity.com/blog/the-what-why-and-how-of-web-to-app-acquisition-campaignsWed, 24 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/understanding-the-impact-of-rewarded-ads-on-iap-retention-and-engagementhttps://unity.com/blog/understanding-the-impact-of-rewarded-ads-on-iap-retention-and-engagementWed, 24 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/whats-next-for-computer-vision-an-ai-developer-weighs-inhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/whats-next-for-computer-vision-an-ai-developer-weighs-inWed, 24 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-3-most-important-kpis-running-an-on-device-acquisition-campaignhttps://unity.com/blog/the-3-most-important-kpis-running-an-on-device-acquisition-campaignTue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-choose-a-programmatic-video-advertising-platform-8-considerationshttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-choose-a-programmatic-video-advertising-platform-8-considerationsFri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/optimize-waterfall-cpm-bucketshttps://unity.com/blog/optimize-waterfall-cpm-bucketsWed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/industry/new-real-time-demo-lion-unity-art-tools-in-action-and-the-future-of-weta-digital-for-rt3dhttps://unity.com/archive/blog/industry/new-real-time-demo-lion-unity-art-tools-in-action-and-the-future-of-weta-digital-for-rt3dWed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/blockchain-technology-is-changing-the-gaming-ecosystem-but-what-value-does-it-add-for-developershttps://unity.com/blog/blockchain-technology-is-changing-the-gaming-ecosystem-but-what-value-does-it-add-for-developersTue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manage-china-operationshttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-forms-new-venture-to-manage-china-operationsTue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/screens-are-the-new-horsepower-leading-luxury-auto-brand-innovates-with-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/screens-are-the-new-horsepower-leading-luxury-auto-brand-innovates-with-unityMon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-and-microsoft-announce-cloud-partnership-for-game-developers-and-beyondhttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-and-microsoft-announce-cloud-partnership-for-game-developers-and-beyondMon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/changemakers-showcase-felix-bohatsch-of-gibbon-beyond-the-treeshttps://unity.com/blog/games/changemakers-showcase-felix-bohatsch-of-gibbon-beyond-the-treesFri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/merge-games-rewarded-videohttps://unity.com/blog/merge-games-rewarded-videoThu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/diversity-interactivity-accessibility-how-three-studios-approach-impactful-game-designhttps://unity.com/blog/games/diversity-interactivity-accessibility-how-three-studios-approach-impactful-game-designThu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/an-inside-look-at-the-japanese-mobile-economyhttps://unity.com/blog/an-inside-look-at-the-japanese-mobile-economyTue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/what-is-programmatic-video-advertisinghttps://unity.com/blog/what-is-programmatic-video-advertisingFri, 29 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/understanding-unitys-serialization-language-yamlhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/understanding-unitys-serialization-language-yamlThu, 28 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/how-norconsult-improves-collaboration-with-unity-reflect-review-and-quest-2https://unity.com/blog/industry/how-norconsult-improves-collaboration-with-unity-reflect-review-and-quest-2Wed, 27 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/4-tips-for-quicker-and-easier-creative-optimizationhttps://unity.com/blog/4-tips-for-quicker-and-easier-creative-optimizationSun, 24 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-cross-promotion-solution-uniquehttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-cross-promotion-solution-uniqueFri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/animation-curves-the-ultimate-design-leverhttps://unity.com/blog/games/animation-curves-the-ultimate-design-leverThu, 21 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-ad-quality-levelplayhttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-ad-quality-levelplayThu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/welcome-ironsourcehttps://unity.com/blog/news/welcome-ironsourceTue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/serializereference-improvements-in-unity-2021-ltshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/serializereference-improvements-in-unity-2021-ltsMon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/reimagining-community-with-digital-twin-technologyhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/reimagining-community-with-digital-twin-technologyFri, 08 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/boost-game-ltv-on-device-advertising-campaignhttps://unity.com/blog/boost-game-ltv-on-device-advertising-campaignTue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/aura-the-first-30-days-of-an-on-device-campaignhttps://unity.com/blog/aura-the-first-30-days-of-an-on-device-campaignThu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/mobile-performance-optimization-with-adaptive-performance-40https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/mobile-performance-optimization-with-adaptive-performance-40Wed, 29 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-app-cmo-manifesto-why-unified-marketing-is-the-best-way-forwardhttps://unity.com/blog/the-app-cmo-manifesto-why-unified-marketing-is-the-best-way-forwardMon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/making-the-most-of-your-in-app-advertising-campaigns-qa-with-liftoffhttps://unity.com/blog/making-the-most-of-your-in-app-advertising-campaigns-qa-with-liftoffTue, 21 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/detecting-performance-bottlenecks-with-unity-frame-timing-managerhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/detecting-performance-bottlenecks-with-unity-frame-timing-managerThu, 16 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/creating-games-for-everyone-introducing-unity-learns-new-accessibility-coursehttps://unity.com/blog/games/creating-games-for-everyone-introducing-unity-learns-new-accessibility-courseThu, 09 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/world-oceans-day-rt3d-projects-make-waves-and-encourage-conservationhttps://unity.com/blog/news/world-oceans-day-rt3d-projects-make-waves-and-encourage-conservationWed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT.WaitForLastPresent. This means that your application is GPU-bound. You will therefore need to focus your optimization efforts on GPU bottlenecks to improve overall performance.The following capture was taken on a Samsung Galaxy S7 using the Vulkan graphics API. Although some of the time spent in Gfx.PresentFrame in this example might be related to waiting for VSync, the extreme length of this Profiler marker proves that the majority of time is spent waiting for the GPU to finish rendering the previous frame.If your application appears to be GPU-bound, you can use the Frame Debugger to gain a quick understanding of the draw call batches being sent to the GPU. However, this tool can’t present any specific GPU timing information. It only reveals how the scene is constructed.To carefully investigate the cause of GPU bottlenecks, examine a GPU capture from a suitable GPU Profiler. The tool that you use depends on the target hardware and chosen graphics API.Common causes of poor GPU performance include inefficient shaders, expensive post-processing effects, transparent overdraw (often from particle effects or UI), large or uncompressed textures, meshes with excessively high polygon counts, and excessive output resolutions (i.e., rendering at 4K).Performance optimization and profiling are massive topics. If you’re looking for more information, check out our recently released e-book, Ultimate guide to profiling Unity games. You’ll get more than 80 pages of tips and tricks created in partnership with multiple experts, including those on our Integrated Support services team.In fact, some of these experts also helped put together our 100-page guide on performance optimization for mobile and PC/console – packed with actionable tips on how to avoid creating bottlenecks in the first place. For additional resources, take a look at our previous blog post series on physics, UI, and audio settings, graphics and assets on mobile or console, and memory and code architecture.If you’re interested in learning how your team can gain direct access to engineers, expert advice, and project guidance, peruse Unity’s Success Plans here.Tune in to our new Ultimate profiling tips webinar featuring experts from SYBO Games, Arm, and Unity for tips on how to identify common performance challenges in mobile games, using both Unity and native profiling tools.This webinar will cover:Key considerations for creating lean, performant code and optimized memory usage for smooth performance across low- and high-end devicesManaging thermal control to conserve precious battery cycles on mobile devicesProfiling strategies at all stages of game development and how to test them to build a solid methodologyExpert insights on Android profilingJoin our roundtable and live Q&A on June 14, 2022 at 11:00 am ET / 8:00 am PT.We want to help you make the most of your Unity applications. If there’s any optimization topic that you’d like us to further explore, please let us know in the forums. We’d also like to hear about the formats that you prefer so we can improve our e-books and other learning materials.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/profiling-in-unity-2021-lts-what-when-and-howhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/profiling-in-unity-2021-lts-what-when-and-howWed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/p2e-vs-pe-models-for-using-blockchain-technology-in-gaminghttps://unity.com/blog/p2e-vs-pe-models-for-using-blockchain-technology-in-gamingWed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/the-metaverse-minute-auggie-awards-editionhttps://unity.com/blog/industry/the-metaverse-minute-auggie-awards-editionThu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/4-myths-about-cross-promotionhttps://unity.com/blog/4-myths-about-cross-promotionThu, 19 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT. Because Unity is a C++ engine with a C# Scripting layer, there’s a lot of data being exchanged between the two. This can be inefficient since it often requires either copying data back and forth or allocating new managed objects.Span was introduced in C# 7.2 to improve such scenarios and is available by default in .NET Standard 2.1. In recent years, you might have heard or read about many significant performance improvements made to the .NET Runtime thanks to Span (see improvements details in .NET Core 2.1, .NET Core 3.0, .NET 6, .NET 6). We want to leverage its usage in Unity since this will help to reduce allocations and, consequently, Garbage Collection pauses while improving the overall performance of many APIs.We hope that you’re all as excited as we are about these changes and features.Let us know what you think about our plans on the forum. We’re also going to be regularly updating the engineering section of the Unity Platform Roadmap, and you can share your feature requests and prioritization suggestions with us there.Editor's note: This article was last updated in February 2023.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-and-net-whats-nexthttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-and-net-whats-nextWed, 18 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/ambitious-art-how-mistwalker-fulfilled-their-magnificent-vision-for-fantasianhttps://unity.com/blog/games/ambitious-art-how-mistwalker-fulfilled-their-magnificent-vision-for-fantasianMon, 16 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/5-myths-about-playable-ads-that-are-ending-here-and-nowhttps://unity.com/blog/5-myths-about-playable-ads-that-are-ending-here-and-nowSun, 15 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/expanding-the-robotics-toolbox-physics-changes-in-unity-20221https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/expanding-the-robotics-toolbox-physics-changes-in-unity-20221Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-20221-tech-stream-is-now-availablehttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/unity-20221-tech-stream-is-now-availableTue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/archive/blog/games/upgrading-from-legacy-analytics-to-unity-gaming-services-analyticshttps://unity.com/archive/blog/games/upgrading-from-legacy-analytics-to-unity-gaming-services-analyticsFri, 06 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/our-biggest-e-book-yet-2d-game-art-animation-and-lighting-for-artistshttps://unity.com/blog/games/our-biggest-e-book-yet-2d-game-art-animation-and-lighting-for-artistsThu, 05 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ad-monetization-qa-with-sweatcoinhttps://unity.com/blog/ad-monetization-qa-with-sweatcoinMon, 02 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/customizing-performance-metrics-in-the-unity-profilerhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/customizing-performance-metrics-in-the-unity-profilerFri, 29 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-secret-to-more-efficient-playable-productionhttps://unity.com/blog/the-secret-to-more-efficient-playable-productionThu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-3-ways-xr-is-helping-to-tackle-climate-changehttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-3-ways-xr-is-helping-to-tackle-climate-changeThu, 21 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/4-ways-to-scale-and-optimize-your-apps-ua-strategy-backed-by-datahttps://unity.com/blog/4-ways-to-scale-and-optimize-your-apps-ua-strategy-backed-by-dataThu, 21 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/3-kpis-to-watch-when-a-b-testing-your-ad-placement-strategyhttps://unity.com/blog/3-kpis-to-watch-when-a-b-testing-your-ad-placement-strategyWed, 20 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/five-a-b-tests-to-increase-revenuehttps://unity.com/blog/five-a-b-tests-to-increase-revenueSun, 17 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/introducing-unity-2021-ltshttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/introducing-unity-2021-ltsTue, 12 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/unpredictably-fun-the-value-of-randomization-in-game-designhttps://unity.com/blog/games/unpredictably-fun-the-value-of-randomization-in-game-designMon, 11 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-and-urban-arts-are-creating-brighter-futures-for-underserved-studentshttps://unity.com/blog/news/unity-and-urban-arts-are-creating-brighter-futures-for-underserved-studentsMon, 11 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/getting-started-with-offerwall-why-its-important-and-how-to-succeedhttps://unity.com/blog/getting-started-with-offerwall-why-its-important-and-how-to-succeedThu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/2021-unity-uk-binary-gender-pay-gap-reporthttps://unity.com/blog/news/2021-unity-uk-binary-gender-pay-gap-reportThu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/whats-the-next-big-thing-for-brands-interactive-end-cards-for-in-app-advertisinghttps://unity.com/blog/whats-the-next-big-thing-for-brands-interactive-end-cards-for-in-app-advertisingWed, 06 Apr 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/your-ua-strategy-could-be-better-heres-why-it-needs-playable-adshttps://unity.com/blog/your-ua-strategy-could-be-better-heres-why-it-needs-playable-adsThu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/supporting-the-next-generation-of-game-developers-in-pakistanhttps://unity.com/blog/news/supporting-the-next-generation-of-game-developers-in-pakistanTue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/dealing-with-latency-in-your-multiplayer-gamehttps://unity.com/blog/games/dealing-with-latency-in-your-multiplayer-gameTue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/announcing-our-2022-unity-for-humanity-grant-winnershttps://unity.com/blog/news/announcing-our-2022-unity-for-humanity-grant-winnersMon, 28 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/introducing-unitys-latest-sample-game-gigayahttps://unity.com/blog/games/introducing-unitys-latest-sample-game-gigayaWed, 23 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/introducing-enemies-the-latest-evolution-in-high-fidelity-digital-humans-from-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/news/introducing-enemies-the-latest-evolution-in-high-fidelity-digital-humans-from-unityMon, 21 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/celebrating-women-trailblazers-in-technologyhttps://unity.com/blog/news/celebrating-women-trailblazers-in-technologyFri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/7-questions-to-ask-yourself-when-evaluating-a-new-user-acquisition-channelhttps://unity.com/blog/7-questions-to-ask-yourself-when-evaluating-a-new-user-acquisition-channelFri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-analyze-and-optimize-your-monetization-strategyhttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-analyze-and-optimize-your-monetization-strategyThu, 17 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-9-women-building-the-metaversehttps://unity.com/blog/industry/metaverse-minute-9-women-building-the-metaverseTue, 15 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/mobile-multiplayer-101-your-ideal-tech-stackhttps://unity.com/blog/games/mobile-multiplayer-101-your-ideal-tech-stackMon, 14 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-leverage-on-device-advertising-to-create-a-frictionless-install-experiencehttps://unity.com/blog/how-to-leverage-on-device-advertising-to-create-a-frictionless-install-experienceMon, 14 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT Burst > Open Inspector…) is an incredibly useful tool for optimization work. With this tool, you can view the assembly code that will be executed on your target CPU(s). In Burst 1.7, we have added several much-requested features. A screenshot says a thousand words, so without further ado:As you can see, we have added branch markers to make it easier to visualize code execution paths. Note that branch markers can be switched off with the “Show Branch Flow” checkbox so they don’t get in the way when you don’t need them. A particularly nice aspect of this feature is that you can click on a branch flow arrow, and you’ll jump to the other end of the arrow, like this:Example of clicking on branch marker to jump to branch destinationLess important blocks of disassembly (e.g., directives or constant data) are now automatically collapsed, but these can still be toggled when you want to view them.Also new in Burst 1.7 is the ability to select just a section of disassembly and copy it.Example of selecting and copying a specific section of disassemblyHere’s a list of smaller but no-less-important improvements in Burst 1.7.Arm Neon vst1* APIs are now fully supported. We added these APIs in Burst 1.6, but guarded them behind an experimental #define. In Burst 1.7, they are no longer guarded behind that #define and are fully supported.System.Span and System.ReadOnlySpan are now supported within Bursted code. These types are not allowed as entry point arguments.Burst now uses LLVM Version 12.0.0 by default, bringing the latest optimization improvements from the LLVM project.We changed the LLVM optimization pipeline to run the loop unroller exclusively after the loop vectorizer. This improves codegen in a lot of cases.We made fmod and floating-point modulus use a faster algorithm to improve performance.Burst now generates a link.xml automatically to avoid IL stripping, causing missing symbols at runtime from static constructor usage.We improved compiler performance when doing large struct copies by detecting more cases where a load/store can be safely converted to a move-memory operation.We made a change to how we display timings when the “Show Timings” option is enabled in the Burst menu. By cleaning up and presenting the information in a clearer way.Note that Burst 1.7 is the last version to support Unity 2019.4. The next Burst version will have a minimum requirement of Unity 2020.3. If you have any thoughts, questions, or would just like to let us know what you are doing with Burst, then please feel free to leave us a message on the Burst forum.]]>https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/raising-your-game-with-burst-1-7https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/raising-your-game-with-burst-1-7Mon, 14 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/faces-of-unity-carol-carpenterhttps://unity.com/blog/news/faces-of-unity-carol-carpenterWed, 09 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/twitching-with-excitement-for-our-unity-showcase-live-at-gdchttps://unity.com/blog/news/twitching-with-excitement-for-our-unity-showcase-live-at-gdcMon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/we-stand-with-ukrainehttps://unity.com/blog/news/we-stand-with-ukraineMon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/should-you-be-bringing-your-creatives-in-househttps://unity.com/blog/should-you-be-bringing-your-creatives-in-houseTue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/the-metaverse-minute-celebrating-american-heart-month-with-medi-verse-applicationshttps://unity.com/blog/industry/the-metaverse-minute-celebrating-american-heart-month-with-medi-verse-applicationsThu, 24 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/on-device-advertising-101-a-report-by-singular-and-ironsource-aurahttps://unity.com/blog/on-device-advertising-101-a-report-by-singular-and-ironsource-auraThu, 24 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/5-ways-to-boost-ad-monetization-with-user-segmentationhttps://unity.com/blog/5-ways-to-boost-ad-monetization-with-user-segmentationWed, 23 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/take-on-version-control-for-stronger-collaborationhttps://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/take-on-version-control-for-stronger-collaborationWed, 23 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/how-agencies-can-drive-incremental-growth-through-mobile-on-device-campaignshttps://unity.com/blog/how-agencies-can-drive-incremental-growth-through-mobile-on-device-campaignsTue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-mobile-advertising-ecosystem-in-spainhttps://unity.com/blog/the-mobile-advertising-ecosystem-in-spainTue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-a-marketing-developer-and-does-your-game-studio-need-onehttps://unity.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-a-marketing-developer-and-does-your-game-studio-need-oneSun, 20 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/breaking-down-the-walls-between-teams-to-improve-your-apps-ua-from-all-sideshttps://unity.com/blog/breaking-down-the-walls-between-teams-to-improve-your-apps-ua-from-all-sidesSun, 20 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/games/the-changing-same-creators-explore-black-history-and-healinghttps://unity.com/blog/games/the-changing-same-creators-explore-black-history-and-healingWed, 16 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/testing-and-optimizing-creatives-for-casual-gameshttps://unity.com/blog/testing-and-optimizing-creatives-for-casual-gamesTue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/5-missed-opportunities-that-can-destroy-your-playable-adhttps://unity.com/blog/5-missed-opportunities-that-can-destroy-your-playable-adTue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/optimize-app-performance-with-real-time-pivot-reportshttps://unity.com/blog/optimize-app-performance-with-real-time-pivot-reportsSun, 30 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/4-ways-advertisers-can-optimize-their-5g-on-device-advertising-strategyhttps://unity.com/blog/4-ways-advertisers-can-optimize-their-5g-on-device-advertising-strategyFri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/industry/introducing-the-metaverse-minutehttps://unity.com/blog/industry/introducing-the-metaverse-minuteThu, 27 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/5g-the-consumer-perspectivehttps://unity.com/blog/5g-the-consumer-perspectiveThu, 27 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/grow-your-career-at-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/news/grow-your-career-at-unityWed, 26 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-levelplay-6-exclusive-products-we-built-into-our-mediation-producthttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-levelplay-6-exclusive-products-we-built-into-our-mediation-productWed, 26 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-expands-its-ad-exchange-with-powerful-new-toolshttps://unity.com/blog/ironsource-expands-its-ad-exchange-with-powerful-new-toolsThu, 13 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/news/sharing-your-feedback-with-unityhttps://unity.com/blog/news/sharing-your-feedback-with-unityTue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://unity.com/blog/the-fundamentals-of-rewarded-video-ad-placementshttps://unity.com/blog/the-fundamentals-of-rewarded-video-ad-placementsThu, 23 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT to behave just like List or List, where T is any type.For years, IL2CPP has used generic sharing in cases where T is a reference type (string, object, etc.) This works well because reference types in C# are always represented by a pointer, so the size and implementation of List will match the size and implementation of List