Unity 5 Free Features?

I'm in the same boat. Since unity moves too slow, I've already begun to port my project to UE4. I also upgraded my pc, (more for my dk2, not nesc for development) and i still haven't even came close to spending $1500 and that includes the cost of my dk2!!

If unity allows for oculus development in free (without gimping the VR part) I may come back for some personal projects...but as it stands, why should i?

 

My vote: render textures. that's all I ask for really!
The only real thing holding me back with mobile fx is the lack of RTs on unity free, so having them in Unity 5 free would be nice!

And for those wondering what will happen to real-time GI, the GI would still be there for free version, just not the real-time stuff. that also begs the question: what will happen to light probes?

 

UE4 performance is pretty bad, and even worse for oculus rift. Considering how important framerate is for VR, UE4 is a poor choice imo.

Render Textures in free would be awesome. Either that or a custom solution where hardware VR is achievable in Unity Free.

 

@SunnySunshine: I am not actually much for VR, mainly I am more for custom fx using RTs, such as custom deferred rendering pipeline or, of course, post-process fx!

 

This is exactly why render textures won't be in Free. Probably ever. They open up the window to basically everything else you can possibly do graphics-wise. They are extremely powerful, visually, but there are very few things in terms of fundamental gameplay that you actually need them for. Until there is some new feature with a similar profile - that is, makes games looks much more professional, while not usually being vital to the gameplay - render textures will always be Pro-only.

 

Pro Features:

1. Deffered Lighting
2. Enlighten GI
3. RenderTexture
4. Dynamic Reflection Probes

Free Feature:

1. The Standard Shader.
2. uGUI
3. ...

in my opinion

 

There is lot more important pints to consider than only these points.
What about other lightening features like Light probes , tone mapping and others , what bout performance features like GPU skinning, lod , culling only in Pro version
I think Unity could easyly give Render to texture as this is no more the big major feature like in the past days graphics , GI and PBS beeing the new major ones.

 

PBS is free, anything related to RenderTexture as ImageEffects, Cubemaps are going to be pro because its the key to graphical achievements in my opinion.

 

There is many already limited features as network also or physics , Unity could limit Enlighten features , or limit navmesh things or some multi thread things.
Or we should ask Unity to give us some basic graphic enhancement (motion blurr, hdr , bloom, dof ) like they gave shadows for one directionnal light. In fact Unity free really misses one or two full screen effects actually, this would also make less look the shadows from directionnal light less hard (as soft shadow just don't work in the free version)
We can do good without render to texture when 3D art is good, but for desktop PC games that won't look so good on high resolutions.

 

I haven't used Unity Free for quite along time and I don't know what features are limited, but afaik the key to almost every graphical achievement is RenderTexture including Bloom or any other Image Effect, Dude the tool is FREE. if you want to do graphically amazing games, start a simple game with Unity Free, earn enough money, Buy Unity Pro, Start the amazing game.

 

I agree and i thanks Unity guys a lot , as i can produce Android games for free in some very easy workflow and tools.
For advanced PC graphics desktop (better shadows, GI, reflections ...), i'm working some free time in two teams indie projects as character and level designer, we paid 20$ one time only for UE4 and many advanced effects and particles are just out of the box.
But who knows using some good graphic style (Limbo, tron glows, borderlands, wow hand painted) i could make some personnal entire project for desktops with the free version

I agree , this is the best advice we could give ot any user of Unity Free.

 

Just read this: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/09/18/global-illumination-in-unity-5/

Pretty cool article. A little confused as to real-time precomputed. Sounds a little contradicting. Then I read lower....lower and then THIS:

Sounds like they are actually thinking about adding something to free. I of course do not expect full enlighten but the fact that they are thinking about features is pretty cool. Honestly I was and am still kinda thinking that nothing is going to be different for free users in Unity 5. I mean we just got shadows around a year ago. This does have me intrigued though. Looking forward to the features list.

 

@Baldinoboy: well, since they're killing off beast lightmapper, there will be, to some extent, GI baking in free. (Finally... )
And as for other features... it's a case of wait and see!

 

@FuzzyQuills: Hopefully they can not find a way to remove the GI baking. They probably will if they can.

You are right. All we can do is wait and see. And make awesome scenes to prep for 5.

 

Unity could give to free users some pre made full screen effect , some pre made Bloom , DOF, HDR that UT Free users could add to their game without having the possibility to access Render to Texture.
At least Bloom and DOF to really enhance a minimum indie games on desktop made with Free version.

 

Oculus in Unity free! : http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/09/20/expanded-oculus-rift-support-in-unity/

Very happy with this news. Will keep me to stay with Unity for a while longer.

I think they might just do that. Would be cool but kinda stink at the same time. My primary need for render textures is to make shaders with depth, refraction, and others effects that require render textures. I honestly am not even thinking about image effects right now. Just want an advanced ocean shader. Hard to do that with hard edges on shore lines.

 

I really hope that at the very least the Unity profiler to Unity free, render-to-texture or light probes would be more than enough for me actually so I'm not so needy.

 

Just read this PDF - http://aras-p.info/texts/files/201403-GDC_UnityPhysicallyBasedShading_notes.pdf

Really nice information. What intrigued me is the Deferred Shading. It mentioned that the current deferred lighting will be called legacy in Unity 5. I think they are going to give free users legacy and keep the new deferred in pro. Would love to have the new deferred but hey, would be happy with anything better than forward. Would be nice to be able to put a few lights in the scene besides the directional. Would help with the PB shaders too.

 

Until UT5 is out, Fre eversion will remain a total mistery , for now we use UE4 on a prototype so we have no limitations and full lightening and features. We will switch our prototype demo to UT5 Free depending on what it will contain, if Free version will still be too limited we will keep UT5 Free for another smaller game idea instead.

 

Recently, i though about GI in free - static GI seems be mandatory, but what about allow one limited real-time gi directional light? Exactly how shadow is done. Maybe this is too optimistic but could be interesting move as unity moved directional shadow from pro to free....

 

They have many things , like the new fast raytracer with preview possible to generate hight quality lightmaps.
If we can combine this new lightmapping system with PBR and some dynamic lights this could also allow us to make great looking games
Enlighten features for UT Free is also a mistery, and there is many questions like it is really suited for vast outdoors ? Will it be simple to use ?

 

Enlighten is simple to use. suited for almost every situation i came up with, so. it's still in beta and its great.

 

Did you tested it with vast outdoors and vegetation also ? Does it works with trees or grass ?
I hope Unity will bring perhaps one or two hard coded post effects for free users.

 

Same question as zenGarden. Have asked it but no one answers. How does enlighten do in a nature scene? Would love to try it out in a dense jungle.

 

I feel like a big disapointment coming out for big outdoors nature scenes lightening and shadowing

 

I think it will do good. If it is anything like Frostbites' integration of Enlighten it should look great.

Just want to see a picture. Even if it is the terrain assets from Unity. Just to see trees with the GI.

 

Just give me ONE render texture per scene or something, that's extremely useful for 2D work.

 

I think at least you will be able to have great lightmapping for great looking scenes : http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr-deve...cing-behind-the-lightmaps-in-the-unity-editor)

Just one thing i wante to point is for people wanting Bloom on UT Free, i use FXLab plugin, this is a slow plugin for some effects eating half frame rate, but the bloom effect it has is super lightweight as my frame rate is unchanged.

Some features UT Free would need in the 3D domain is :
- real soft shadows ( soft shadow on directionnal light don't work are not soft at all)
- perhaps shadows on other lights ?
- camera culling is a pro feature , and this is a basic feature for most 3D engine, it hsould be in UT Free

I just can say UT Free is so complete and have so many things , there is no other totally free engine proposing 3D and 2D games for desktop and mobile and so easy to use.

But Unity could make some intermediate offer like "Unity basic" version , it has been asked already.
For example we would pay some affordable indie price and we would have Unity Free + some render to texture and some other things , but it would not have other Pro features. This way people not wanting to put money will continue using UT Free and others that could put some indie price could buy some boosted version

 

I highly doubt we will see this level of lightmapping in free. Hopefully I am wrong.

I have FXLab and have used it. The water is beautiful. The only thing is the dev is gone. @FlatterBacke is supporting it now. Not sure how much he is going to support it in the future as it is not his job.

-Soft shadows would be nice. Especially on vegetation.

-Shadows with the other lights I think might be a possibility if the UT give us legacy (current but in Unity 5 outdated deferred rendering system).

- Do you mean Occlusion Culling or Frustum Culling? Occlusion Culling would be nice. Along with static batching it would be possible to make a larger scene. There are things on the asset store that can provide this effect. They still cost money though.

That is for sure. Unity is amazing because of its ease of use. Very nice to know that if you wanted to you can work on so many platforms so easily.

Good idea. Would be helpful to a lot of people.

I am going crazy waiting for some news of Unity 5. Especially involving the free version. I wonder when it is coming. Hopefully before 2015.

 

Same here! Pitty I can't get it now for my school project...

EDIT: Hang on, did that PDF read "legacy deferred rendering?!" That could definitely mean deferred lighting in free...

 

waiting for light profiler...

 

I am curious to see games with PBS but without GI if Unity 5 free have not GI.

 

The profiler functionality a professional a get around without having Unity Pro the render textures they can't. I'd like to see free render textures.

 

@goat they could, unity have internal Set(or Allow)TemporalRenderTexture() function which let unity enable RT in free in editor only. I guess we can only wait for official blog though... maybe Xmas?

 

Well, maybe they will bring RT into free. If they are thinking of giving us legacy deferred, that means they will have to have RT in free for the renderer to work

 

Legacy deferred may be dropped. I hope they do drop it, we don't want any extra garbage, do we?

 

Well, they could drop it... Or give it to us free users!

It would make do for me! so long as I can put a half a million lights in a scene...

And wouldn't having it dropped break a lot of projects?

 

no, they have a new deferred shading for 5.0 which may replace the old light pre-pass [legacy deferred].

 

I am desperately hoping they are going to give legacy deferred to free users. I posted a link in this thread to an article that said they were keeping legacy deferred. Of course it is old and Unity 5 will probably not come out till 2015 spring so who knows what they are going to change by the public release. I am just hoping they keep it in and give it to free users. That and linear lighting.

 

then i have bad news for you http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/of...ss-rendering-path-for-unity-5-0.275250/page-2

bid for keeping legacy is far outnumbered by bid for drop (cca 20% vs cca 75%) so i doubt they will keep legacy and i agree with them even i use free version too due to easier (thus faster) maintain future unity version

 

At the bottom of the first post it says "Update: looks like we're keeping deferred lighting in Unity 5.0.".

 

Well I would like quality in my projects so if I could use deferred instead of forward I would. Unless you work with lower end systems why would you not? Would be great to be able to have more than a couple lights in my scenes. God knows we cannot resort to the lightmapping(not sure what we will get in 5.0 but will probably be severely limited).

Thank you very much for mentioning that. Was scared for a minute.


What problems would keeping the old deferred available cause? Would it slow Unity down drastically to have another lighting option? Not trying to make a point. I am really wondering.

 

It would be yet another feature they would need to support. Essentially longer time spent between releases.

 

@up exactly

According to update - oh well last time when i checked this i missed update. However aras said reason is simply noone have time to remove huge part of unity (remember this doesnt mean only implementation but documentation and other things too) 20% bids for keeping and old gen consoles is small additional reason.

But still i havent hope for move deferred to free due to this poll - if unity would consider moving deferred to free then would never make this poll... as i think at least^^ i might be wrong and unity could suprise us as well though

 

They did surprise us with stencil access in Unity 4.6! And shadows all the way back when we had good 'ol 4.2...

 

Beast in Unity free never has supported GI.

 

He was just saying they are getting rid of Beast and maybe the new system will have more features in Unity free.

 

It's just he's assuming there will be GI baking in free. Where would he have got that idea if not mistakenly believing that beast in free performed GI?

 

If you need no limitations in graphics for desktop game for affordable indie price, Unity Free is not the solution.
(Unity free limitations can be more severe for your game like no culling, no LOD and many others).
I just think that is coming a new pricing change and also a new monthly subscription system to compete with challengers, specially for indie teams ( for example Crysis with 10$ * 5 people ; to get started is always more affordable than 1500$ * 5).

I know what i can do and why i stay with Unity Free, and i don't expect any revolution on split features.
You will always find real limitations making the difference between Free and Pro.
Or if differences was not so big all Pro users would simply use Unity Free

 

The pricing is far too high for what comes with Unity. I am sorry. Nearly everything needed to make a decent game is not in the engine but on the Asset Store. The Asset Store is awesome but it gets ridiculous when there are no decent built-in features. For this reason I will never spend $1500 for Unity pro. Hopefully there will be a new price option, price change, and/or improved built in features.

Of course if I were to create a game with Unity and make a few hundred thousand dollars I would feel like giving more than $1500.

I think the best thing to do is if you have a good project work on it in Unity free and when it is nearly ready put it on early access on Steam. If it is a good project it will sell. Make some money and when you are ready, upgrade to Unity pro. Setup all the pro features and there you go.

Unity is limited compared to most engines but it is so freaking easy to work in and you do not need a $1500 computer to use it. That is why I am in love. With Unity that is.