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Official Unity wants your feedback on usability and artist workflows!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Nevin, Apr 25, 2017.

  1. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 6, 2012
    Posts:
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    Dear Unity Community,

    Calling all artists and designers! We are starting a user research study on how we can improve the editor usability and artist workflows. Our goal is to have you, the users, help us identify where we are not solving your problems or meeting your expectations.

    So if you have that burning issue that’s been bugging you forever, that workflow you just wish was simpler, or that laundry list of things you wish Unity supported, now is your chance to air these to the team!

    We look forward to hearing from you and will be quite active in this thread to involve each of you in the feedback loop.

    Thank you,
    The UX Team

    EDIT: Having so many of you active on this thread and giving us tons of feedback is really great! We are working hard to collect and organize all of them. Now we wish to take a step further and directly talk to some of you about all the things that make your life in Unity harder.

    If you want to guide us through your feedback in more details, or if you feel like there are more things you would like to talk about, you can speak directly to us. Just complete the short survey here and we will get in touch with you for a chat on Skype or in person if you are somewhere around us. A session will likely last between 45 minutes to 1 hour and is conducted in English.

    We look forward to meeting you!
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2017
  2. theazz

    theazz

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    Oct 20, 2013
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    60
    Be able to set default states for import properties, like "Import Materials"
     
    Aaron2348, protopop, kB11 and 13 others like this.
  3. TechDeveloper

    TechDeveloper

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    Sep 5, 2016
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    75
  4. rotor-games

    rotor-games

    Joined:
    May 8, 2015
    Posts:
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    have the terrain component remember the last selected tool, and last selected paint object/tree and brush size. same for texture painting, last selected texture, brush and brush size.
     
    twda, John3D, Alverik and 1 other person like this.
  5. Cynicat

    Cynicat

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    Jun 12, 2013
    Posts:
    290
    One minor thing that drives me insane, is unitys lack of support for grayscale textures. if you export a texture from substance designer and its a grayscale image. it won't import into unity, you then have to add a gradient map node to convert it to a color image so that unity will import it.
     
  6. st33d

    st33d

    Joined:
    Jan 22, 2014
    Posts:
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    How about - when I drag a bunch of things from the Project panel to the Inspector panel and drop it into an array or list, they stay in the order they were listed in the Project panel.

    What happens right now is that they get shuffled into some bizzaro order. The solution is to drag items one by one from the Project panel into the Inspector panel.

    I have spent 100s of hours doing this.

    I have to do this on every project. Every time I need an array of pictures or a list of files I spend HOURS dragging each item carefully from the Project panel to the Inspector panel.

    Sometimes the Inspector panel doesn't accept the drag. Sometimes it drops into a prior slot. So I have to drag them SLOWLY.

    This is the biggest bottleneck on every Unity project I have worked on. You guys have had 5.6 versions to unscrew this insanity. If it carries on I might be a liability at the next Unity event. I'm ready to go postal over this.
     
  7. graspee

    graspee

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    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  8. michiel_wouters

    michiel_wouters

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    Nov 4, 2016
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    Animation blending could use some work. Right now upperbody and fullbody animations in Unity don't blend very well, resulting in a lot of manual work. I would love it if you guys could figure out a better/easier solution.

    Overall Unity is one of the most fun engines I've ever worked with. It's very userfriendly, which is great.
     
    theANMATOR2b, Alverik and Nevin like this.
  9. AFrisby

    AFrisby

    Joined:
    Apr 14, 2010
    Posts:
    223
    The ability to untick 'Include Script Dependencies' when exporting unitypackages would be great.
     
    Kellyrayj, Kiwasi, runelink and 4 others like this.
  10. PolarTron

    PolarTron

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    Jun 21, 2013
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    Adding a script to Script Execution Order should have the same dialogue window as Add Component. Right now it's one huge uncollapsed list.
     
  11. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2014
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    1,148
    Things that are missing so bad for better in editor work and level design are:

    MOST IMPORTANT:
    1. New and modern terrain (Landscape + Vegetation) system - the current one does not even support UNDO when changing properties, random rotations for trees, holes in terrain or pushing patches under sea level -> it is mandatory adding new terrain system ! Painting on objects using the vegetation system should be possible as well !

    2. Better way of re-grouping and managing objects in hierarchy - there is no simple way to move up and down in the hierarchy window if you want to drag some object into some group... using the mouse scroller to scroll up and down is the simplest thing you can add. Much better would be to improve the hierarchy window - refer to CryEngine and 3ds Max's layer systems - to easy hide, lock/unlock rename etc. groups... Will be good if we can add objects into hierarchy layer instead of an empty game object in order to be able to collapse the group. This is a "must have" feature. Here is an example: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28577

    3. Node based shader tool is a must have tool as well.

    4. Adding default vertex paint tool and shaders to blend multiple materials and textures

    5. Ocean system

    6. Flock system

    7. Roads and rivers tool - probably could be part of a new terrain system

    8. Spline tool - to be able to extrude objects along splines or instantiate objects along it as well (e.g. creating fences, walls, roads, or sequence of objects)

    9. Add "Copy object's real path location" to the right mouse button menu in the Project window. For example, this way we can very fast open an image in image editor or fbx file in 3D package instead of having to navigate and search for the file.

    10. Make animation clips in FBX import settings reorderable - this is useful when you add more animations to a 3D model but want to reorder them by type

    The asset store has most of these packages - but adding more and more tools into a project makes it heavier and difficult to browse !!!

    Hope adding these features is possible and they will come at some point...!!!
    Thanks !
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
  12. vertxxyz

    vertxxyz

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    Oct 29, 2014
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    108
    I'm not sure if all of my needs are what you're asking for, and I have so many - but I'll list them if I think they might be related.

    I've always been frustrated with navigating menus to toggle settings, and often losing focus to those windows (partially my fault for not locking them) and having to navigate the menus again. Moving them to a top-right dropdown menu would save so much time. Maybe making them a new Inspector tab when you open them would also go a long way to solving this issue.

    I'd also like to jump on the: providing default import settings to modify (in GUI). If you can think of a way to consolidate materials that are exactly the same but are separately generated this could be a helpful tool related to import issues.

    A better Console. The improvements to be made in this area are vast, and can be partially found in multiple asset-store purchases. Making it more obvious when errors are toggled/collapsed would be an important part of this!

    An in-engine whiteboxing tool. Almost very person working with Unity finds out very quickly that working with cubes/planes/etc is almost useless, and there's little to no options apart from learning 3D modelling. An inbuilt CSG tool would do so much for level design pipelines and a whole load of filler modelling convenience.

    Better grids and grid-snapping. There's only one axis of grids, at one height, and you can't snap to them, only intervals. They don't really have much of a point other than to give the Scene View some perspective.

    It'd also be nice to have a pie menu of some kind to transition between top-left-front-perspective-etc to skip having to click and axis and the perspective/orthog toggle. Having some memory of what perspective you came from would be crucial to making this toggle work fluidly. Perhaps a bookmarking system for the Scene View could be implemented.

    Collapse the UnityEvent GUI down to a minimum when the list is empty. I need myself some more screen real-estate!

    A way to easily create an empty zeroed GameObject parent to group other GameObjects (CTRL-G may be unused, could even use CTRL-SHIFT-N when multi-selected?)

    Multi-axis scaling in the Scale tool. Currently using the rect-transform tool as a workaround.

    In relation to the suggestion of fixing the animation search, it'd also be handy to fix the issue more globally.
    It'd be nice to additionally include MainAssets containing SubAssets of type in a search (only showing the MainAsset and relevant SubAssets), plus showing the MainAsset related to the SubAssets returned by a search.
    This way you'd fix searching for Meshes with silly names (eg. polycube5) by searching for the Model (MainAsset) instead, and also filtering the many similarly named SubAssets returned by a search by being able to see their associated MainAsset.
    (Bit of a tautology but hopefully it explains my reasoning)

    I may edit more into this post later if I remember.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2017
  13. Devil_Inside

    Devil_Inside

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    A quick native way to reset Position, Rotation and Scale to 0. Something like what this script does.
    Unity_2017-04-25_14-52-52.png

    Edit: I'm aware of these options in the transform component context menu, but they're too slow to use
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  14. vertxxyz

    vertxxyz

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    The right-click menu has all of these if you were not aware. Not as quick as buttons but not too bad.
    It'd be handy to be able to reset them by right-clicking on the variable titles instead of finding them in the component-level dropdown.
     
    Nevin and cirocontinisio like this.
  15. TheAlmightyPixel

    TheAlmightyPixel

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    Jun 21, 2014
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    Incremental moving, rotation and scaling of objects with custom increments would help a ton when working on a custom grid. Also, I echo the need for a better snapping system.

    A system for automatically packing separate Metallic and Roughness maps into a single Metallic/Smoothness texture would be nice. I find myself often having to fiddle with external software to pack my textures for Unity importing. It'd also be nice to have a version of the Standard shader that doesn't use these packed maps, and instead would let us specify a roughness map and a metallic map separately.

    Also a vertex painting tool is pretty essential.
     
  16. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    The biggest things for me would be:

    - a node-based material editor (that still allows us to edit/write shader code)
    - a dedicated window for editing prefabs instead of having to put them in a scene
    - a dedicated window for editing particle systems
    - automatic convex decomposition
    - editor-only "folders" and "tags" for the scene hierarchy, allowing us to better organize our gameObjects. Doing this via Transform hierarchies is costly for no good reason. And it would have to come with a proper API too, so that when I spawn a bullet in play mode, I can put it directly under the "Bullets" folder

    For the two "dedicated window" points, it'd be great if you could save presets for lighting setups and skyboxes. Maybe even just drag and drop scenes in a list, and those scenes will act as your presets and be loaded when you edit your prefab
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  17. EarMaster

    EarMaster

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    A really useful feature wood be a quicker way to edit the Settings. I think of a special Inspector Panel (like Services) that can be part of the UI the whole time.

    Also the Splash Screen settings are somewhat confusing. Some things happen magically, but aren't documented (like automatic resizing), some things are just trial and error (VR Splash).
     
    pauloaguiar and Nevin like this.
  18. methos5k

    methos5k

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    I don't know if repeating things already said is something the Unity staff is looking for.. I've seen some pretty cool suggestions before my post here.
    I won't relist them all..

    For me, the ability to change the colour of the Editor would be a huge help. I realize this is a Pro feature.
    Honestly, I haven't paid a cent to Unity, but I have tried (recently) to give back in terms of assisting people as best I can.
    On a personal note, I play around with Unity for fun. Changing the colour of the editor is such a simple, but very "helpful?" thing.. boggles my mind. :)

    I agree and hope for some in-engine art tools: Be it terrain, or 3d modelling (anything beyond what's avail. now), and node shaders, as several others have suggested.

    On and 1 note (for coders, designer, whatever): An option to choose for a Screen Canvas, that something stays on the screen, no matter if the window changes size or not.. Not sure if this falls into the wish list of what's being asked, but I think people could appreciate that.
    I wanted to elaborate on this: I meant this about a UI when you're running a game. It's certainly not at all common to have UI elements disappear from the screen, in any app, or game I've ever played.. :)


    Unity is awesome. Look forward to seeing what comes of this 'research' =)
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2017
    kskjadav007 and Nevin like this.
  19. vertxxyz

    vertxxyz

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    This part of your request exists under Edit>Snap Settings and used by holding CTRL.

    Reminds me... Multi-Axis scaling in the Scale tool. Not having to use the rect-transform tool as some kind of hacky workaround!
     
    Nevin and lorenzodom like this.
  20. eskovas

    eskovas

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    While i agree that it's very time consuming and a very boring task to add multiple things to an array in the inspector, you could extend the inspector, so you can give just one file and it would grab all files in the same folder and put them into the array.
    I don't know any specifics about the hierarchy you're working with, but it's just a suggestion to a very repetitive task.

    Me for example, i have a lot of animations, and sometimes i need to change things, or add new ones or remove old ones. So i just update all the animations in the animation component through script. No need to do it manually.
    You could do it the same way with the textures maybe. If you know what and where, then you can do it with a simple script.

    It would be nice if Unity did something to ease the repetitive task of adding multiple things to an array without extending inspectors.
     
    Stormy102, Nevin and Socrates like this.
  21. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

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    When click the small dot next to a texture slot in material for adding one, a window is opened where all of the available textures are displayed. This makes it so hard to search for a texture... Just add a project hierarchy in the same window, where you can click on a folder or sub-folder and being able to see only textures in that folder. Will be good to remember last clicked folder as well instead of starting every time at the root...
     
  22. Martin_Charriere

    Martin_Charriere

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    Dec 27, 2013
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    Extensible tangents in animation window and beziers path in the scene editor are heavily needed features
     
    Xaon, QFSW, flashframe and 1 other person like this.
  23. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

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    The option for generating texture alpha from grayscale is really great feature. It is not always the result you want, so if possible adding a feature to alter alpha channel of a texture in import settings will be great - for generated and imported alphas... Some simple operations like editing brightness and levels will be really helpful...
     
    JPBA1984 and Nevin like this.
  24. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

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    I am really missing this feature:
    -> having a new top toolbar where user can add or remove some tools for better accessibility like in 3ds max and Cryengine. User may want to add button for fast opening the snap settings or the quality settings or player settings or lightning window etc. instead of clicking on these menus all the time... Just giving as a new toolbar and a list of options to add and remove like buttons will be great.
     
  25. UnityLighting

    UnityLighting

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    Mar 31, 2015
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    Material editor is a necessary tool for all artists and is available in all engines. Unity surface shader is much easy but is not for artists
    I have tested Shader forge before, but it's not used unity standard shader pbr lighting. I love Standard shader lighting model that's compatible with all unity lighting workflow and good performance for all platforms
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  26. pixpusher2

    pixpusher2

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    Oct 30, 2013
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    The window where you select a motion for your Animator/Mecanim state has been bugging me for quite some time now. I have a lot of different models sharing the same motion name, and as you can see from the screenshot, it's a real pain going through each one to find the right source to link to.

    Showing the file name next to the motion, instead of just the selected one below the window, will definitely help out a lot. Thanks!
    selectanim.png
     
    derf, frosted, chelnok and 26 others like this.
  27. br0kenp0ly

    br0kenp0ly

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    Great initiative!

    I would love to see a proper model viewer with plenty of stats and options ( like the one in UE4).
     
    pauloaguiar, Alverik and Nevin like this.
  28. Andy-Touch

    Andy-Touch

    A Moon Shaped Bool Unity Legend

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    Just tried this workflow in 5.6 and didn't get 'bizarro' ordering of assets in an array.
    Gif Below.
     

    Attached Files:

  29. MiFrilke

    MiFrilke

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    Dec 14, 2016
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    We have lots of animations for a single animator. When trying to use the Animation window (e.g. to set animation events), selecting the animation via the dropdown in the top left is extremely inconvenient. A simple search field or the normal asset picker would do the trick here.
    select_animation.png

    This selection popup in general is very unwieldy when it has lots of entries to handle, since no mouse wheel or direct keyboard input (only first letter) is accepted. Scrolling through multiple screens of entries via arrow keys is very time consuming.
     
  30. TonyLi

    TonyLi

    Joined:
    Apr 10, 2012
    Posts:
    12,657
    Acquire uTomate for its automation and Spotlight Inspector for its Inspector hierarchy navigation. These tools make working in Unity so much easier.
     
  31. Kiupe

    Kiupe

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    Feb 1, 2013
    Posts:
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    Two things I would find very useful: from the scene hierarchy be able to
    - Show/Hide a GameObject without having to disable it.
    - Lock/Unlock a GameObject to prevent it to be selectable with the mouse
     
  32. UnityLighting

    UnityLighting

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    Yes it's fixed in 5.6 and helps alot
     
    Nevin likes this.
  33. eskovas

    eskovas

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    Wait, you can do that? since when? :eek:
     
    Stormy102 and Nevin like this.
  34. KristianDoyle

    KristianDoyle

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    Feb 3, 2009
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    To be able to set some default animation import settings (or be able to do it programmatically) would save me a lot of time, doing a lot of animation importing. Also it would be wonderful to be able to re-connect transitions to other nodes in an animator without deleting and re-creating the transition. Also, might sound silly but probably the most common thing I waste time on is actually saving a project. I do it religiously - but unsure at all times if what's on my drive, is what's the current project state. So I do it way too much, I'm sure.
     
    Xaon, Ben-BearFish and Nevin like this.
  35. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    If you're on a Mac, at least, you get a proper dirty indicator in the title bar (a little dot in the red close button when the scene is unsaved). I've no idea whether other platforms have a similar standard.
     
    chelnok, JPBA1984 and Nevin like this.
  36. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Jan 14, 2011
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    OK, how about opening more than one project at a time?

    Apps having more than one document window open at a time has been a thing since, let's see, 1984 or so. :) But not in Unity, which despite having a sensible all-in-one (apart from floating windows) project representation, only lets you open one project. Which makes it impossible to copy & paste most things (and certainly bits of your hierarchy) from one project to another.

    Yes, if you're clever with the command line you can launch a second instance of the Unity app, but this still doesn't allow you to copy/paste between them because each instance has a private clipboard.

    It's such an obvious deficit that I can only assume the reasons for it are deep and hard to fix... but logically, there is no good reason for it at all. I'd love to see it fixed. And hey, you asked! :D
     
  37. katoun

    katoun

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    Dec 26, 2012
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    What I would want is for a multiselection an expression like 'i*10 + 100' to be valid in numeric input properties, where i is in the range from 0 to the number of the selected objects.
     
    Nevin likes this.
  38. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    Another thing:
    A Unity launcher that lets you choose the Unity version
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
    derf, SolutionStudios, Xaon and 14 others like this.
  39. Diabi

    Diabi

    Unity Technologies

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    Mar 19, 2015
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    Hi TechDeveloper,
    thank you for your feedback!

    Can you tell me what do you think are the main shortcomings with the current system?
    Where do you find yourself using A+ the most and which features are the most useful to you?
     
    Nevin likes this.
  40. Diabi

    Diabi

    Unity Technologies

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    Mar 19, 2015
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    Hi PhilSA,

    do you find yourself switching often between different Unity versions? Is it because you work on several different projects or there are other reasons?
     
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  41. Diabi

    Diabi

    Unity Technologies

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    Mar 19, 2015
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    Hey br0kenp0ly,
    thanks for your input!

    What would you use a model viewer mostly for? What kind of stats would be particularly useful for you and your projects?
     
    Nevin likes this.
  42. gekidoslayer

    gekidoslayer

    Unity Technologies

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    Sep 27, 2016
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    you don't need to do any command-line magic to open more than one unity editor at a time - just right click the icon in the task bar and open it again - you can have any number of copies of unity open at once (same version, different versions) without issues.

    Copy-pasting between - 100% agree though, this needs to happen somehow (but gets very complicated when pasting an asset with references - do we past the models, textures, scripts etc? where are they added in the hierarchy? etc)
     
    Nevin likes this.
  43. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    How about ditching Mecanim alltogether and give us artists and programmers alike something we can use without cursing every other minute? For the past weeks my programmer and I have been trying to figure out Mecanim and we have both come to the conclusion that the whole process is a convoluted mess. You need a Animator here, a Avatar there some script as well, etc.... That is anything but artist friendly. Mecanim has been a pain in the rear end for many (that I know of). I think it's time to really either do a refactoring or come up with something more sensible.

    People say rigging is complicated. Well, at this point the hurdle isn't Maya/Max or whatever package you're using to do your character/animation. The problem is getting it into Unity and make it work. Mecanim does little to nothing to make it easy. It's currently a big hurdle for many. Which brings me to another topic....

    The FBX import options. Why is Unity still not able to import "constraints" in the year 2017? Bit of a riddle to me quite honestly. Anyhow, these are just some thoughts of mine....

    Thomas Pasieka
     
  44. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

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    Hiya,

    1. Visual Scripting
    2. ASE style node based shader editor

    Get those and Unity will be fine, forever and you can just take really long coffee breaks because the moment you let artists and designers free with visual scripting, is the moment you fix any and all Unity issues for this group.

    Unity needs to stop beating about the bush and face the reality of what artists and designers need to actually function. Right now, artists and designers HAVE to hit asset store hard. Unity doesn't have what they need, and I wouldn't recommend it to artists and designers in any serious fashion without telling them they need third party stuff.

    Most of this thread is populated by programmer/mixed dev feedback. Because artists aren't really struggling with UX, they're struggling with lack of actual tools.

    Artists and designers in Unity where Unity is not propped up by 3rd party assets essentially can't really do much other than prepare materials and use Animator inefficiently (it really needs code to be used well).

    Why does Visual Scripting fix existing Unity UX problems? An example...

    The problem with Animator isn't an artist problem though, to be fair. The problem with animator is that in a real game with complex animation, you need visual scripting or code otherwise you will be chaining endless spaghetti to achieve similar results just a few lines of code can do much, much better.

    Even passing data to Animator is a problem for artists. They can't generate those numbers without some form of code.

    But Unity knows this, I'm just not sure there is value doing little bits of polish over bringing some serious engineering forward for visual scripting and shader editing.

    Once Visual Scripting and shader editing is nailed, it will create a space where workflows can be improved. Right now, it's difficult to suggest workflow improvements because these improvements would be needed everywhere and they won't stop, because really they're patching the LACK of visual scripting.

    A lot of jobs do need decision making even the best UI's can't solve. I mean if you took a random generic engine and asked "how can we add functionality we don't know about", you'd get a bunch of replies about using LUA or extending it. Well, Visual Scripting can be seen LUA for artists.

    Originally, the Unity Editor was a bit of a threadbare creature. It still is. The idea is that we use code to push the basic editor toward the need of the game you're developing... It's a fantastic idea and probably the best way forward if you empower artists and designers to actually modify it, and they can once you solve the whole visual scripting thing.

    Sorry for long post.

    But well, you asked :)
     
    derf, frosted, rubble1 and 15 others like this.
  45. mikael_juhala

    mikael_juhala

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    247
    Here are some:
    1. Ability to show deeper prefab hierarchies. Either show all children or none, showing only one layer is not helpful and gives an incorrect impression that those are the only child objects in the prefab.
    2. Ability to lock prefabs in scenes, so that any changes made to them cannot be applied to the actual asset.
    3. Some indication in hierarchy whether a prefab has changes (preferably optional).
    4. Prevent the whole editor from freezing when someone has accidentally caused an infinite loop.
    5. Mecanim is not user-friendly. Lots of boxes and lines going all around the screen, each of them possibly having several behaviours, events (that are not always called) and dependencies to parameters. And then we need a script that manages all that. Trying to explain any implementation with this system to others is rather difficult.
    6. An indicator whether the project needs to be saved.
    7. Ability to prevent closing editor windows when Unity loses focus. Currently clicking anywhere outside Unity hides all undocked windows (and sometimes they are completely closed, forcing me to re-open them one by one).
    8. Change the inspector lock icon! It's really hard to see whether it is locked or not.
     
  46. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    Okay, I will start by saying that this should be pretty low on the list of priorities, because we can definitely live without it. But I do change versions pretty often. At work, we have all kinds of projects for different clients, and some of us end up having 4-5 different versions of Unity installed at all times. It would help if clicking on a project from the launcher opened the associated Unity version, rather than the other way around. And to upgrade a project, we could right-click it and select "Upgrade to Unity X.X". The ability to uninstall Unity versions from the launcher would also be great, just so we can easily cleanup the obsolete installations.

    I'm realizing now that this will not be so pertinent the majority of people, though.

    For me personally, this would be so that we can edit prefabs without having to drop them in scenes and potentially forget to apply or remove them. This would be very important to me.

    Also, I dont think anyone has mentioned this yet, but I'm pretty sure we would all want Nested Prefabs. It's just that it's become such an inside joke that people forget to ask about it

    I strongly agree with this. Ideally, the best would be to have an entirely new animation system built on top of Playables API, so that it can be entirely "scriptable" if we have to. The biggest problem I have with Mecanim is the way it's a big black-box that uses "blackboard-style" variables instead of direct scripting access to animation states.

    If you do start working on a new anim system eventually, you should also find a way for us to add custom animation behaviors such as generic IK and bone drivers to certain states, or certain sub-statemachines. Maybe study UE4's animation blueprints for reference. Something UE4 does that I really really love is the ability to create your own subclass of their "Animator" equivalent, add custom logic in animation updates, and access everything directly through code and/or visual scripting.

    And I just want to insist that this system would need to allow us to add any type of custom logic. Not just pre-made IKs and stuff like that.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
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  47. DominoM

    DominoM

    Joined:
    Nov 24, 2016
    Posts:
    460
    I tend to install each asset store package into a new project of latest Unity for tests and reference. When I want to go and check something in an older purchase I don't particularly want to upgrade the project and am unlikely to remember what version it was created with until I see it in the launcher, which I then have to close and start again with correct Unity version. It'd be far easier if the launcher used the projects Unity version by default and starting an upgrade was less likely to happen by accident.
     
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  48. eskovas

    eskovas

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2009
    Posts:
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    What you're saying about artists and designers having to hit the asset store hard really is something troubling.

    I guess one way for unity to appeal to devs is to see what assets are most popular on the asset store, because, well, if they are selling very well, it means it's something that Unity doesn't have that many devs need, or it's something that Unity has but it's not doing it well.

    Shader editors, Terrain tools/shading, visual scripting are some of the most popular on the asset store.
     
  49. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

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    They already know this and do frequently purchase the assets for further integration/hire the author. Latest are Cinemachine and Textmesh. The terrain question is a much harder one because asset store can't really provide what may need engine modification to sufficiently improve, and this is wandering far from UX, lets be respectful to OP please :)

    (Sorry for thread drift, will bow out now).
     
  50. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    I'd also add that it would be in Unity's best interest to do this, even if it means less revenue coming from asset store royalties.

    Give artists world-class tools, and you'll suddenly see all kinds of awe-inspiring demos pop up, just like it is the case for UE4. Then Unity will finally lose its reputation of "well... it's good for prototyping...."