Unity should enforce quality standards

As a motivated customer I fighting with publishers again and again about their quality standards.

1)
In my opinion, all models should be scaled according to Unity's real-world-scale.
Else lighting and physics weirdness occurs when the models have to be rescaled manually.
It is simply not ok when a house is 1 kilometre high.

2)
Animations should include root motion. If publishers want to release no-root-motion animations as well, they can do so, but they should not be able to use the statement "Root-motion is not a standard" as an excuse for simply ignoring such an important feature. Root motion is in most cases not perfectly linear, and unless a customer is an animator himself, he will have a hard time editing the animation to have root motion.

3)
Texture publishers should be forced to state whether their textures have special light / color information baked into their textures. Else, customers are in risk of getting textures that only work in a certainly colored environment. For example, there is one publisher who released a scary, greenish scene with models, and the greenish color was baked into the textures which makes the asset unusable in scenes that are not that green.

Perhaps this could simply be solved by showing the publisher a check-list where they have to state that certain requirements have been acknowledged.

I don't want to fight with publishers anymore about these things. It really takes away the joy of using the Asset Store. In fact it has stopped me from purchasing as much as I did in the past because now I spend hours with just asking the publisher, arguing with them, reading forum statements, etc.

 

As a buyer, i can attest to this. The quality in most Asset Store items is abysmal with little or no documentation, help from the developer or support (Ship Game Starter Kit, TCG Maker Kit, etc, etc). Neglected or low quality projects should not be allowed in the Asset Store as it is turning it into a dump site for half-baked residue assets some developers hope to sell, with no intention of follow-up, improvements or support.

 

Agree - this should be a standard submission guideline, especially with animated characters. A static house can be scaled relatively easily but a modular building set should adhere to the Unity standard unit scale of meters.

Disagree - Root motion can be generated from the animation file itself in Unity so this is addressed and shouldn't be required. From my own experience most programmer/designers still prefer to control root motion in code. I really don't know why this is, maybe to reduce iteration time needed to get animation timing and motion locked down, but more designers I've worked with ask for animations without root motion instead of animations with root motion included.
This information (includes root motion or not) would be helpful if it was included in the asset description on the asset page. Maybe including that information in the description could be a requirement for animation assets.

Agree - seems this should be a standard submission check. It'd be nice if the preview window on the asset page was a little bigger to see the quality of the individual asset files a little better.
Maybe this was an older asset pack? Hopefully going forward with the uptake in PBR becoming the standard most assets should be upgraded by the publishers - or risk becoming obsolete.

I believe this is due process for anybody spending money on anything. It took me several weeks to make the decision to purchase one particular important asset I wanted. Without performing adequate R&D on any purchase we all run the risk of purchasing a product that doesn't address our need or desire.
Suggest looking at the forum information on the asset and publisher and getting a good measure of how active publishers are within the community - to glean how much support you will receive if needed.

I think an important part of this community and using the asset store is writing proper reviews on the asset page in the store. Giving props to publishers when an asset is top quality as well as stating the facts when we are not receiving the expected support or the quality is below the standard desired.
These reviews are imo very helpful and informative as to the quality of the asset and the support.

 

This is just incorrect.
Image a limping zombie. Such root motion can not automatically be created by Unity.
I guess you are referring to something else.

 

Super idea!!

 

Yes hermie I was referring to something else - https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/unity-5/root-motion-authoring
Root motion can be created for in-place animated objects/characters, but I was mistaken about the workflow as it is not automatic. Keys/curves are needed for this process, and the example given is the most basic example imaginable. A limping zombie would require x/y/z keys/curves to properly generate accurate root motion.

But as a customer I can understand the point of expecting the asset to be setup a certain way and being unpleasantly surprised when the asset is not as expected.
It would be helpful for the customer if all animation assets included in the description if the asset contained root motion or not, so we can know what to expect before purchase.