Friday 30 August 2013

Unite 2013 Day 1

Keynote
Day 1 of Unite 2013 in Vancouver kicked off with  Keynote Speech from David Helgason (CEO) and Joachim Ante (CTO). The Keynote was very exciting and talked about new features in the upcoming version 4.3 of the Unity engine as well as the newly created 2D components and GUI features (the 2D components will be available in 4.3, but the GUI features were later announced as coming in version 4.x of Unity. So that's a little disappointing, but there are GUI solutions available in the Unity asset Store in the mean time.

Also announced was Unity Cloud which is a new Ad Service for in-game advertisements. At the moment they are in beta phase and targets iOS and Android only.

Also mentioned was the new Subscription model that Unity launched earlier this year as well as mentioning that the Android, iOS, etc., tools for the Free version of Unity are also free now (previously each component was $400).

If you want to see the Keynote for yourself (as I know there are some things I have missed here), then the folks at Unity put it online and you can view it here.

*** The following are notes on the sessions I attended and do not represent the full schedule of events at Unite 2013 ***

Introducing 2D in Unity 4.3 & The State of (New) GUI in Unity 4.x
These 2 sessions followed on from the Keynote by further exploring the 2D and GUI features that were announced in the Keynote.
The 2D component was demonstrated live and the toolset fully explored. The Unity Learn Team have put a video on the Unity Blog that describes the new component here.
The new GUI feature was also presented live. The GUI editor allows you to create 3D menu systems such as like in the Unreal and CryTek engines.

Photon : Realtime Multiplayer with Ease (Exit Games - Sponsored Session)
This session by Exit Games addressed the features of Photon and how they are solving the problem of online games for developers large and small. I found it interesting how the went from just developing an SDK that you ran on your own servers, to implementing a full solution hosted by themselves.

Create Game-Ready Characters in seconds with Mixamo and Substance (Mixamo & Allegorithmic - Sponsored Session)
Mixamo are providing fantastic resources for small teams that may only have a 3D modeller who cannot rig, or animate, or for a team that has no 3D artists at all. Mixamo provide 3D Characters (some of which are free and others you purchase with credits (1 credit = $1 so you know how much you're spending, but you can buy packs of credit and the information on that is here) as well as a service (Auto-rigger) that animates your character. Simply upload your (humanoid) character to their site and apply the animation pack you require. Again, some of the animations are free, but most are purchased using credits.
Mixamo also have a product called Face Plus that provides the real-time capture of facial expressions (via your web cam) and maps them to your character for voice-over and animation. Face Plus is a plugin for Unity, however you have to get the All Access Pass to utilize Face Plus and that is (at time of writing) $1499 a year. However, that price gives you access to other features, not just Face Plus. The demo of Face Plus was amazing! As soon as the presenter called up Face Plus it immediately began registering his facial expressions and mouth movement and mapped them to the character.

Rapid Level Creation with Procedural Tools: Introducing Houdini plug-in for Unity (Side Effects - Sponsored Session)
The Houdini session concentrated on their "Houdini Engine" which was quite impressive, however, no date has been announced for the tool so I'm not going to go into too much information here. You can read an article about the Houdini Engine here on their website.

Bringing Unity to Consoles
I really can't remember this session right now (I really wish I'd written these notes on the day). As soon as I remember, then I will update this post.
I do remember that the presenters mentioned the difficulties when you can be approached 2/3 through a project by a hardware manufacturer that demands a version of your game to run on their new platform.

Targeting Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 with Unity
This session was presented by an indie developer who had been one of the first to go through the process of making a game for the Windows 8 store. The presentation was engaging as he used content from his game to make the presentation rather than PowerPoint to make the presentation.
It was great hearing about the process from someone who'd been through it, rather than it being a pitch on how great the Windows Store is.

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