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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. broepstorff

    broepstorff

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    Ability to adjust the editor camera move speed! It's hard to work at different scales because of this. And an orbit cam. Even better, move the editor camera movement to open-source plugin script so we can customize it all we want.

    Re-evaluate the visual usability of the animation windows in High-DPI mode, especially the spline window. The splines are too thin and hard to see against the medium-gray background. Also, make it easier to resize and scroll the spline window (especially when using a touchpad instead of a mouse)

    As far as using multiple engine versions at the same time, this is very common, and currently we have to change the install directory and executable name manually when installing (the windows installer lets you install to a custom directory, but not the mac installer). Would be very nice if by default it just installed as <my application folder>\Unity5.5.2p1\Unity5.5.2p1.exe

    And the usuals: visual scripting, block-based shader editor, cross-scene references, nested prefabs, revamped terrain and vegetation, basic geometry editing
     
    AlanMattano, Xaon, Nevin and 2 others like this.
  2. Pharan

    Pharan

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    Oct 28, 2013
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    102
    Lock Transform
    Allow temporarily locking a Transform so it's not movable/scalable/rotatable. And gray out the fields on the inspector. And optionally don't make it selectable in Scene View.

    I know you can disable this stuff on a per-layer basis, but that gets kind of annoying and prone to making the artist accidentally set the wrong layers on things.

    Edit deeper prefabs in the Project View
    We know a fuller prefab editor and nested prefabs is kind of a large endeavor. But it would be nice to be able to edit prefabs with slightly deeper hierarchies without having to drag it into scene view first.
    Maybe I'm not looking for editing of prefabs with arbitrarily deep Transform hierarchies, but only being able to see 2 levels of hierarchy is a bit restrictive.

    Group Transforms/GameObjects in Hierarchy View
    Give us nice options to group items in Hierarchy View so it's more visually readable, like "folders/groups" or colors or icons. Organizing it gets messy too fast.

    Simple 2D Whiteboxing
    We also know that the SmartSprite/TileMap keep getting pushed back.
    A simpler 2D white-boxing solution would be really nice for the time being. Just let us draw 2D/flat polygons and include colliders on them. They just need to be plain polygons.
    I guess it's not something that makes sense to make separately since this would become redundant once Smart Sprite is done. I hope Smart Sprite will allow really-fast-to-set-up whiteboxing though.
     
    Xaon, runelink and Nevin like this.
  3. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    Sep 19, 2005
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    Agreed on both. Still amazed that neither one is currently a standard in Unity. One will have to rely on the Asset Store for any of that. With that said, I have used many Visual Scripting tools and contrary to the public opinion out there I find "GameFlow" to be superior and the best choice (over Playmaker and others).

    Anyhow, not to derail the main topic but thought I'd chime in on that.
     
    derf, Nevin and hippocoder like this.
  4. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Jan 14, 2011
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    Macs don't have a task bar. And right-clicking the icon in the dock does not (of course) provide any way to open it again — apps aren't supposed to open multiple times, they're supposed to open once and support multiple documents. So, yes, it does require command-line magic, and even then it is a poor work-around.

    Sure, but you do what you can. Even just nullifying any references that weren't also copied would be better than nothing.
     
    Nevin and quixotic like this.
  5. 313b

    313b

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    A switch to toggle between remembering changes made in edit mode or not would be great.
     
    Nevin, TeagansDad and JoeStrout like this.
  6. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
    Nevin likes this.
  7. quixotic

    quixotic

    Administrator

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    Definitely not an experience you want to have. Multiple editor version support will be coming. In the future, the launcher will be able to manage multiple versions of Unity (we also want to solve people accidentally opening projects in wrong version of Unity).
     
    Xaon, Stormy102, Nevin and 4 others like this.
  8. FredrikS

    FredrikS

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    Sep 28, 2015
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    It's small thing, but if you tear off a window I'd love to have a switch that makes it stay on top even if you click a window underneath it.
    When showing children in prefabs, please show ALL of the children, not just the first one.
    Undo in terrain editing!
     
    Nevin likes this.
  9. Dreamcube017

    Dreamcube017

    Joined:
    Dec 20, 2009
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    As an artist, I have to totally agree that visual scripting is a thing that MUST be integrated into Unity. Right now, you NEED something like PlayMaker to really do ANYTHING.

    Now here's my big complaint.

    ANIMATION EVENTS AND PREVIEWS

    As a noncoding sound designer, let me go through the steps I must currently take to add sounds to an animation.

    1. Find the animaiton clip in the project files.
    2. Go to th clip and add the animation event

    BUT WAIT, Detour!
    I need some kind of written script to play a sound... I can't just add a "sound event". There is no such thing. I have to write one.

    So then, after pulling the programmer away from important things like AI, I have my sound event. Let's continue.

    3. Place the sounds I want to play in the string field of the event.

    Great, now let's see how it works!... oh wait, it's on an enimy so ...

    4. Go to the Animator for said character, click on the block that I believe has the clip I just added the events to.
    5. Look in the inspector to see what flag or variable causes the animation to play.
    6.Play the game.
    7. Go to the Animator and enter in that number or variable. (after scrolling down to find it of course.
    -- Wait, I have to play it again,
    8. reset the value
    9. Put the value back.
    --oh hm that's not right. Gotta move the event.
    10. Go back to the animation clip and move the events.
    11. See step 6.
    12. Do this for about 200 more animations.

    As you can see, it is quite a task to do something as simple as placing sounds to animations. And the same has to be done for particle effects too. ... or really any type of event.

    I wish I could just have an animation timeline where I can easily add sounds, particles, or whatever else I wanted and play it right there, even scrubbing though the aniation with the events working. I know I can scrub animations, but it just feels disjointed because I can't even see it how it would run in the game without a ton of workarounds.

    You can do this stuff in the new TimeLine function, but you can't do it for something as simple as a jump animation. (or maybe I'm wrong and you can? I'd love to be wrong in this case.

    Going back to the node based coding stuff, that would make it easy to create some events without having to bother the coder.

    Preview Camera

    Okay, I know there are apparently supposed to be post effects working in the scene view, but it's very bare bones. Why can we not just have a scene camera that we can copy all of our effects to that works just like the game camera. Essentially a game view with all the scene editor gizmos so we can see exactly how something looks in the end. I shouldn't have to play the game to make sure the bloom on my flash light looks good.

    I am sorry if this comes off as sounding angry, but these are things that do literally frustrate me and I'm sure other artists feel the same way.

    Here is a good rule of thumb.

    If a user has to open Visual Studio to make something work, then it is most likely not artist-friendly.

    Thank you for your consideration.
     
    Xaon, Nevin and Lex4art like this.
  10. Dreamcube017

    Dreamcube017

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    THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

    I am currently using 3 different versions of Unity right now and might have to add a fourth. As of now, I have to go into Program Files to find th right exe to open the proper project. A launcher that let's you select the version to use would be beautifyul!!
     
    Nevin and quixotic like this.
  11. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

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    Thank you for the feedback! Just to be clear - you are referring to the way you can set Import References in Modo?
     
  12. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

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    Can you elaborate a bit more on this? Any particular features of this Asset Store package that you really like or that you find really helpful in your daily work?
     
  13. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

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    I totally understand your pain! Thank you for sharing them! We are aware of the issues with the preview camera and animation events/preview that you are describing, but I am a bit curious: What is your experience with node-based scripting? Do you use PlayMaker or have you used other types of node-based systems?
     
  14. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

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    Thank you for the feedback - Can you elaborate a bit more? Are you referring to the "Edit Mode" in Audio Mixer, or is this for the any changes made in the editor?
     
  15. Sebioff

    Sebioff

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    Dec 22, 2013
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    Back/Forward navigation buttons for the Project explorer
    This is a feature I miss every single day...for example when you click a texture on a material to quickly check some import settings and then need to navigate alllll the way back through the project hierarchy to where the material was.
    Our Assets folder has ~550 subfolders so that's not fun.

    Back/Forward navigation should also include search results, just like it works in the Windows Explorer for example.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
    Xaon, Zaelot, Nevin and 5 others like this.
  16. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

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    Thank YOU for the long feedback, it is really appreciated! A bit curious though: What is your experience with visual scripting? Any particular 3rd party plugins you use?
     
  17. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

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    Hi katoun! Can you give us more information about this request? How and where would you like to use this multiselection?
     
  18. neoshaman

    neoshaman

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    Feb 11, 2011
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    - better camera control, on par with 3d apps like blender, more specifically the ability to isolate a region with a box max that exclude anything outside it. The ability to set teh scene view near/far plane would be great, sometimes I want to inspect something and it clip furiously!
    - better grid snapping, I'm fighting with this everyday, I spend more time fiddling the transform number than intuitively placing stuff, having a inspector for grid stuff would be cool to change the snapping on the fly.
    - viewer for prefab object, ie the open in their own self contain temporary scene for modification, allow better focus on small adjustment, right now I use a mixed of opening into a new project (to avoid the clutter of all addon, asset store and plain asset) or having a temp scene to fiddle stuff.

    But what unity really need to do is to make game demo, not just tech demo, actual game made entirely with unity (not just importing third party software like with current demo) as a proof of production, running on a variety of machine and console with good performance (see bomberman R on switch, laggy control and subpar performance). It should look like AAA quality.

    The huge catch you don't need to make a good game (we don't care if the level design isn't on par) and you don't need scope (at least not always, scope can be something to test pipeline and workflow), and cloning existing games is heavily encourage to have elements of comparison, which would lessen by a x100 the production hazard of real game dev from the demo team.

    Right now any suggestions would be shooting in the dark because it would be devoid of actual experienced context and susceptible to misinterpretation of the suggestion.

    There is two thing I wrestle a lot with unity is razor sharp controls and baseline performance, both seems to be because the engine is made by people who haven't made enough game to see what default is correct and critical (at a UI and UX level, apparently a lot of default for neutralizing control are behind a lot of indirection, on top of questionable choices with the core engine). I say that because it's problem I don't necessarily have with other engine.
     
    frosted, Nevin, PhilSA and 1 other person like this.
  19. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    It's a bit off-topic, but I can't agree enough with this. Especially a fast-paced online game (not an MMO, as I'm sure many delusional people would ask for) to make sure UNET is dependable.

    Also it would have to be made with a publicly-available version of Unity. Not an in-house version.

    This discussion has come up many times in the networking forums. Seems like the entire Unity community is baffled by Unity's obsession with not making a game. It's been requested over and over, but it never happened. It doesn't matter if it takes time and resources off of engine development, because it's the absolute most important thing that Unity could do
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  20. Rodolfo-Rubens

    Rodolfo-Rubens

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    Nov 17, 2012
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    1,197
    A proper window to edit prefabs (including UI prefabs), right now, if you need to change stuff that aren't nested in the root of the prefab, you need to instantiate the prefab in the current scene, edit it and apply the changes, opening the prefab in his own window and changing anything from there without needing to put it in the scene would be a much more elegant solution!
    Also, we can't preview UI prefabs at all, we need o instantiate it inside a canvas to preview it.

    We can't see UI animations through the animator (it wants a model to preview the transition and animation)

    "Lock" and "View" objects in the hierarchy, but in a way that doesn't affect gameplay, like for example, hiding the object in the scene through this will not disable the gameobject in the hierarchy, achieving this through layers force you to edit the objects layer and that's a bad thing because you need the object in the layer that you need for your game to work.


    Lock current editor layout so we don't accidentally drag windows' panes around.


    Tabs! Tabs that contains entire editor layouts in it, this would also help if you have a script editor, visual shader editor, etc, and wants to use the entire screen but don't have a dual screen setup.


    Selection ONLY tool, right now the only way to select stuff in the scene view in using the move, rotate or scale tool, when selecting multiple tiles around you're prone to accidentally move, rotate or scale these tiles when selecting them, a tool only for selecting would fix this (Maya has a tool only for selection)


    UI editing toggle, hides or show all the screenspace overlay canvases and when clicking it and it is suppose to go to show state -> go to 2d mode and auto focus the first canvas found in the hierarchy!
    Right now, to edit the UIs we need to:
    - Go to 2D mode
    - Find canvas in the hierarchy and selecting it
    - Hitting F
    - Approximate a little because unity "focus" function frames the object too far away.
    Toggling this UI editing mode will only require a mouse button click
    This toggle could sit right next the 2D mode


    What window will maximize if I press space? Highlight the current pane


    Group objects in the hierarchy view without the need of an extra object to serve as a container, these objects would work as if they were in the root.
    Option to show main component type icon of a gameobject in the hierarchy window


    Option to show absolute values in the color picker

    edit, I have one more:
    Save last scene view camera position, right now if you switch scenes the camera will stay in the exactly same position, thus if you are editing a big scene and switch to a small scene you will be in the middle of nowhere, each scene having its own last camera position would help a lot!
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
    Xaon, mh114, Stormy102 and 5 others like this.
  21. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Jan 27, 2013
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    13,553
    Not much of an "artist", but...

    Editor feedback:

    1. The editor has a horrible habit of spawning an object at random coordinates (roughly at the middle of the view), when you drag something into a hierarchy view at top level. Extremely annoying. I think the object must spawn at zero coordinates.
    2. Animator window doesn't seem to have quaternion support, and only offers euler angles. This makes creating certain types of animation difficult in unity.
    3. Animator controler editor needs zoom. Badly.
    4. Animator controller editor needs ability to have "and" and "or" condition for transitions.
    5. Speaking of animation, an equivalent of Unreal's Montages would be great.
    6. There should be a way to quickly set local transform to identity. (Zero rotation/location, and set scale to ones)
    7. UI editor needs a separate view instead of UI sitting in the world space. One annoying thing is that UI panel can block selection of worldspace objects.
    8. Editor needs more hotkeys. I'd expect blender style movement - with numeric input, with ability to restrict movement to axis (X/Y/Z restricts movement to that axis, repeatedly pressing same key toggles between global/local/view axis, and pressint Shift +X/Y/Z restrict movement to PLANE defined by that axis. Typing number on keyboard after starting movement, moves object by that amount). Those kind of hotkeys make movement very quick.
    9. I believe some apsects of sprite editor use floating point coordinates (0.0,,1.0) range instead of using pixels. This causes plenty of issue, especially when it is not possible to snap sprite pivots to pixels.
    10. If you edit a name of an asset or a script in project view when editor decides to rebuild script, the text cursor is moved at the end of the name. It happens very frequently, and is extremely annoying.
    11. Would be nice to have an ability to import model as a scene, meaning that upon import it would've been broken into prefabs. Unity already tracks situation when multiple objects use the same mesh, so the mesh is not duplicated, but it would be greate that said objects were treated as instances of a prefab. This is probably a tall request, though.
    12. Would be nice to have better handling of import from blender. Currently upon importing a model from blender it has extra "helper" transform inserted at its root, which normally rotates model around X axis and scales it by some factor (either 0.01 or 100 - I don't remember which). It is unclear whether this is done by blender exporter or by unity importer, but this helper transform causes a lot of trouble, because it creates difficulties, if you, say, decide to import cloak from blender and use it as a cloth. The cloak will be incorrectly scaled.
    13. Better snapping and grids would be great.
    14. Built in support for bsp/brush modeling would be great too. SabreCSG went OpenSource and could be probably incorporated into unity.
    That's all I can think of at the moment.
     
    derf, AlanMattano, kB11 and 6 others like this.
  22. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

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    I have used all visual scripting packages including competing products and a few things stand out feature wise.

    But of them all, what emerges is that there is no one clear winner. You need to attack the problem in stages. You have the lowest-level winner: blueprint. In UE4, this is basically your code replacement and does well. It's problem is that it's swatting flies with nukes for a lot of jobs and tasks you want to do, so you would ideally match it with a component logic system similar to GameFlow as a higher level than the blueprint approach.

    The issue is that blueprint style is all-powerful but also quite time consuming so having in addition a higher level approach like gameflow is quite cool.

    However, once you do get something like blueprint, it's possible for artist and designers to make all sorts of endless stuff in Unity including futher UI modification of the editor and of course, scripting animation. You would probably be best served replacing Animator with it in the long term since it does not make sense to split "code" and "animation". Right now, animator functions poorly because it tried to be code-free, and that is it's point of failure.

    Instead of being code free, it should be node-coded :) Your competitors have this down exactly right. But they lack higher level gameflow style coding for those who want to just click some form of game together using Unity's most artistic friendly interface: components.

    The advantage of being able to more accurately express what you want "animate like this if character is holding a cup of tea" is far more powerful and results in a much cleaner User Experience because you're not shoving every possibility at the artist or animator, allowing a much more streamlined interface.

    TLDR you kinda need both blueprint and gameflow, and you need to replace Animator with whatever visual scripting you eventually make (this is a natural progression though).
     
    rubble1, Xaon, Reanimate_L and 3 others like this.
  23. Tzan

    Tzan

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    Apr 5, 2009
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    733
    -Unity made Standard Shader that supports Vertex Colors.

    Every new version you release breaks whatever fix some guy made to get vertex colors to work.
    Then the new user fix sometimes doesn't work perfectly.
    Sometimes we need to wait months for a fix from a user.
     
    HerrDarko, Nevin and hippocoder like this.
  24. samnarain

    samnarain

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    Jul 6, 2015
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    Dear Nevin,

    I love you. I really do. Not only because you don't have an eyepatch on your avatar, but just because you are so amazing. And you work at Unity. I love Unity. I actually have this unhealthy obsession by watching your offices using Google Maps. I have a fear of crowds; otherwise I would've disguised myself as the mailman and ... nevermind.

    But today, my heart blew up with joy; you asked me, a mortal, to provide you feedback about workflow things that could be better. Or invented. Or asked again. Or taken from the roadmap of 2015. But still, I looked at it as a letter sent from the Heavens. So here are my prayers…

    Can I please, please have a $#%%$##$%#$%$#%%#$ (sorry, my invisible cat) fixed headers in the inspector? Because my prefabs have a bunch of components and scrolling up to press apply is really breaking the magic. I am happy with the ordering of components in 5.6 though. A bit late, but less angry now. Have that option, and Jack will no longer be a dull boy.

    Speaking of apply, what would apply to this situation, the ability to be able to access apply with a shortcut. But don’t get me wrong, I still want the $#%%$##$%#$%$#%%#$ (damn cat again) fixed header. Apply is used in a lot of windows. Like models, prefabs and some other abominations fancy tools. Like Alt-A. But when I think about it, wouldn’t that conflict with other shortcut keys? Oh dear… the light… the warmth… (Eureka moment, hang on).

    WHAT ABOUT USER DEFINED SHORTCUT KEYS. Oh my God. Oh my God. Sorry, I found a mirror and I just had to stare for a moment. User defined shortcut keys would be so incredible, so nice. You know, user personalisation. Like you’d do in Blender, in Maya, in <add any professional tool that cares about customers here - even the bad tools>. Imagine if I could make a shortcut key to trigger globalthermalnuclearwars or better... crashing the galactic economy. Mwuhahahahahaha!

    Imagine if I could switch layouts with a shortcut key. Like switching between the one where I do abominations animations and the other where I can debug its physics. That - would be so cool. I’d feel like Marty McFly. And while we are there - maybe a button to rename or duplicate the current layout instead of doing that weird thing now (save it as a different layout name; but in order to rename it, to save it again with another name and to delete the one you want to get rid off feels like working on an application made for Windows 2000). Like, almost intuitive usability. Woa.

    Special folder options. For people like me, who are special. Like throwing a bunch of things in there, you know they won’t be added to the build. Sometimes, you just need mockups. Like those fooglie monobehaviours that start with the famous IF UNITY_EDITOR define. Sometimes you need an empty folder. Sometimes a 3D plugin needs an empty folder. Sometimes Git - my invisible cat - needs an empty folder. Stupid cat. Doesn't eat empty folders. Horrible.

    Speaking of special needs, for special people (who am I kidding, just for me, I don't care about anyone else): a special addition to the context menu in Hierarchy. HideFlags. I often build up a very robust model that I place in the scene, that serves as a mega mockup. Very handy when working with chunks and additives. Now I must use a simple script attached like leech to another game object, just to get that gameobject in the scene, in order to change its HideFlags. That is because I don’t want to $#%%#%#$%#%$# (ughhh never take an invisible cat) accidently click and select a model that is nothing more than a visual aid. I could of course abuse the Gizmo’s DrawWireMesh, but I shouldn’t feed it after midnight. The amount of vertices and the current memory leak (that will most likely be patched next week/month/never) forces me to make fire out of wood and sticks. A lighter would be nice. Yes. Fire. Mhmmmm.

    If this all would be present in Unity, you have no idea how much you would help other people! I’d never leave the house. Ever. Of course I want all the things the other kids want too. Not so much that I need them (not a millennial, but still equally spoiled).

    Last but not least. Something that would be utterly useless to have is a setting that enables little notifications and achievements you can set and edit. You know, so the hard work and endless sorting lists that you drop on a list element makes you feel good and not go ragequit. A notification, with a rounded image showing a lovely image of Richard Fine. Maybe playing a cool audible clip, saying “In a world made entirely of MonoBehaviours”. Yes. Yes.

    Even though this will all never happen in this year of the Rooster, I love you. I love Unity. And I wish you my best of luck.

    <3 (it's a heart... )

    Sam (TheLegend27)
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2017
  25. Nintenjo

    Nintenjo

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2012
    Posts:
    8
    Things for me, some of which are Unity functions extensions some are Store assets built in / improved. I'll no doubt think of more later ;)

    Project Explorer

    A way to view all the assets in a project and what's using them, how many times it's being used and by what. A find and replace asset would be great too.. fir tracking down unused assets when trying to tidy projects up.

    Exposing Sprite Atlasses

    Exposing the sprite Atlasses once they are built so you can simply build a SD / HD set of assets bundle and swap them on the fly. Sprite atlases seem to be this black box that artists cannot edit once packed!

    Project wide import rules

    A way of defining the default rules for how assets are imported by default across an entire project. E.G. Images as Sprites, Meshes without animations, UI buttons without Ratcast Targets. All stuff that's easy to change but you can't change how they are defined by default.

    Per Folder Asset Overrides

    Defining how all assets in a folder are treated when imported into. I.e. All audio in folder X is Mono 64kbps. All textures in folder Y are sprites with a max size of 256px tagged with 'sprite page X' etc. Optimising assets and builds would be far easier if we could create rules that impose restrictions on assets and per folder seems sensible starting place.

    Animation GUI

    Copy and paste key frames. Whether it be with a shortcut or. Shift-drag there is no simple way to copy keyframes in Unity animation.

    Don't restrict animation data to be linked by game object name. It should be simpler to apply a set of animation keyframes from one object to another without being concerned with its game object name.

    Object Locking

    A way to lock a gameobject or component in unity so it cannot be edited with unlocking it. This would prevent a lot of accidental edits happening to prefabs, scenes etc when working with a non-exclusive check out source control like GIT. An extra step would be to allow locking in the project as well to prevent objects being moved without confirming steps etc. (Optionally as an editor setting)

    Nested Prefabs

    Yes I know it will never happen but a way of putting a prefab in a prefab and not having it break them all no matter what level you apply it at. We have ended up avoiding prefabs because they are so damn flakey and restrictive and easy to break (especially when using GIT) but they could of been used extensively if they were better.

    An idea for example I may want to add something to a prefab that is ignored when I apply it. Or I may want to revert a component in a prefab I modified in a scene without reverting the whole thing.

    Prefabs need to know where they have been used in the entire project so you can easily track there usage and updates.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
    Nevin likes this.
  26. Stardog

    Stardog

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    Jun 28, 2010
    Posts:
    1,910
    • Rotate snapping shouldn't create numbers like 90.00001
    • Expose mipMapBias in the texture window. It's the only way to get sharper textures if you're making an RTS or something. Currently, zooming out makes your game look like it's made using DirectX 7.
    • GUI CSS styling (or part of global style system, not just for UI)
      • Each component (or even every field, such as Color/Text Size) should optionally take a "Style", created the same way the new image effect profile is.
      • Styles would be things like "Main Title Text", "Paragraph Text", etc. When you modify them, they change everywhere that uses them.
      • Global styles would be better - you could use them for any UI variable, such as Color (or even font size), replacing swatches. Your colors would become a project asset. If you don't make a global system, then trying to use the color of your "Main Title Text" elsewhere would be annoying.
      • For now, I had to make my own CSS system with editor scripts.
    Capture.PNG
    • Project presets. Every time I create a new project, I shouldn't have to do this:
      • Switch sceneview icons to 2D
      • Project Settings > Graphics > Uncheck default, change all to Deferred.
      • Project Settings > Player > Other > Linear
      • Project Settings > Quality > Delete all apart from Fantastic, disable AA, set anisotropic to Per Texture
    • Auto normal/ao/heightmap generator.
    • Basic Specular material
      • I'm a simple man, and I just want to plug in flat diffuse/specular/etc textures and it should just work. No messing about with alpha channels. I know about the specular shader, but even that wants the alpha of the albeldo or specular. It's like, NO, just take the top layer of the damn image I've plugged in and make the white parts shiny god damnit.
    • Set default asset import folder. I don't want random assets in my project root.
    • Visual Scripting like VIZIO (1:1 with Unity API) with built-in FSM and behaviour tree, not like Playmaker/Kismet.
    • NClass-like code planner/generator.
    • 3D prototyping
      • Buy UModeler. Integrate. Make bug free.
      • Basically, just make Sketchup inside Unity. Understand the differences between Sketchup/BSP brush-style.
    • Script Icons
      • Why does it have to recompile?
      • Why can't we apply to all selected scripts?
    • WebGL - scene view should be rendering 2.0 by default. And it resets on restart.
    • Force asset store creators to use naming conventions for all of their assets.
      • Textures/models/etc should be prefixed with the publisher's name or something. Or maybe Unity can come up with some other system so we can filter it all out.
    Alt-left-click-drag currently orbits, but they need to make the origin the depth at the cursor position.

    You can do this with regular GameObjects. The problem with folders would be that it would need an API so you can code parenting/creating folders at runtime...

    Capture.PNG
    Don't you get that by creating multiple transitions to the same place?
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
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  27. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    Creating transform hierarchies as folders is a bad practice, because it has a performance cost. Which is why we need folders instead
     
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  28. Socrates

    Socrates

    Joined:
    Mar 29, 2011
    Posts:
    787
    I am not an artist, but some changes I think would help many people improve their Unity experience:

    • Let me change the font sizes so I can see what I am doing. The more different pieces I can adjust, the better.
    • Make the Inspector lock size adjustable, because even with a 40" television as a monitor, I still have to squint at it.
    • Let me pull up a list of keyboard shortcuts.
    • Let me change those shortcuts.
    • Maybe even put in some undefined shortcuts we can define if we want. (I'd love a shortcut for "Lock the inspector.")

    Yes, these kind of numbers drive me absolutely nuts. Anytime Unity drops in some weirdo number off by .00001 one way or the other in an angle, a vector, a scale, I have to go fix it in order to sleep at night.
     
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  29. methos5k

    methos5k

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    Aug 3, 2015
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    Being able to create property drawers and windows with UI system objects. Maybe even a template for drawers that can be added to as an 'object' so to speak, rather than coding it.

    The other day, I noticed that on my Mac, when I detached a window, and minimized Unity, the window stayed visible; it would be cool if that could happen on the PC, too. The detached window will minimize on the PC.
     
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  30. mgear

    mgear

    Joined:
    Aug 3, 2010
    Posts:
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    if not mentioned yet.. only 1 thing needs to be fixed : )... the F key!
    frame selected has never worked properly.. (usually zooms way too far)

    suggestions
    - frame selected should do what it says, properly frames into current window (instead of too far)
    - if someone wants(does anyone?) to frame camera with clipping planes/light radius/huge particle system, etc.. completely, maybe pressing F again would do between frame-selected-tight and frame-selected-whole-gizmos-and-all thing
    - also allow changing/overriding F key, so could make your own frame selected editor script (currently cannot override F key)
     
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  31. TeagansDad

    TeagansDad

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    I would like a way to quickly find a state or sub-state machine in the Animator window. It's easy to accidentally drop a state inside a sub-state machine, and states can easily get positioned behind others - especially if creating animator states via script.
     
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  32. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

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    What do you guys think about this one !?

    Adding name or tag to components.

    This is just an example:
    If we have a game object to which two or more components of the same type are attached there is no easy way to get the one you want from code nor to guess which one is responsible for what...

    So my suggestion is to add "name" field to "Component" and being able to double click on it and change it !

    Benefits of this are:

    1. It is much more clear if we have a game object like in the picture with three BoxColliders attached -> you know which is the one you are looking for when you look at the name. Otherwise you have to change some parameters of the component to see which one in the scene gets changed.

    2. Make GetComponent<...>() variant which gets a component by type with using an additional "name" parameter to get the component you want ( this way you do not have to keep component order in a way that you have to remember which component is at which index if you get them into array )

    3. Removing component by name will be great as well

    Image.png
     
    Last edited: Apr 29, 2017
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  33. Kiupe

    Kiupe

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    Feb 1, 2013
    Posts:
    528
    One little thing that would be great is to be able to set the zoom value in the project window per folder. I'd like to set it to the minimum value for folders containing script files, but I like to make the zoom value to the max for folder containing sprites etc. So it is very annoying to constantly set the zoom value according of what the new folder I'm selecting contains.
     
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  34. Lex4art

    Lex4art

    Joined:
    Nov 17, 2012
    Posts:
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    My suggestions to UI:
    1)Larger texture previews are needed. I'm working with 2-4K textures and can't see ANY details on thumbnails way too often, this thumbnails size limitation was set in Unity 3.x and still there (.
    Larger-texture-previews.jpg
    2)"Show wireframe" on Light probes should be disabled by default I guess (anybody have any help from that wireframe lines at all?). Not only they obscure everything but then there is a lot of probes Editor viewport fps drops to unusable values.
    Light-probe-group---wireframe-must-be-disabled-by-default.jpg
    3)High DPI support!
    4)Make possible to use temporal AA in "Scene" view (from Post-Processing Stack). Smooth edges/alphatest textures then editing - mmm, nice ).
     
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  35. mr_zog

    mr_zog

    Joined:
    Jan 21, 2014
    Posts:
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    Some very good suggestions in here already!

    These are the first two plugins I always import and I believe artists would find them helpful aswell, if they knew of them:
    1. QHierarchy: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28577 -- setting GOs visible from the hiearchy view, OMG!
    2. Find Reference 2: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/59092 -- clearly see what asset uses what other assets!

    Third, when doing UI, I often use our "anchors to corners" script, which sets UI anchors to the corners of the element and vice versa. Huge timesaver!
     
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  36. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

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    A Pop-Up window with all components of a type attached to a game object to choose from when drag'n drop into script field will be just awesome.

    DragNDrop.png
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 26, 2017
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  37. katoun

    katoun

    Joined:
    Dec 26, 2012
    Posts:
    89
    Sorry, I think I have been a bit vague in the explanation.
    When you select multiple game objects in the Hierarchy panel, you have the multiselection properties in the Inspector.
    Currently I know that a simple math expression like '2*10 + 10' in the x value of the position of the Transform component get evaluated to 30 on pressing enter.
    An example of what I want:
    I have 10 boxes in the scene. I select all of them and put '10*i' on x position, press enter and now all of them are aligned on the x axis on positions 0, 10, 20, 30, .., 90.
    Regards.
     
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  38. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

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    +1 for this. It is available in 3ds max, Maya and Blender !!!
    Transforming object by entering simple formula in the field !
     
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  39. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

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    Sorry guys i am having a lot of requests but having a long background in 3D packages makes me feel with hands tied without having some powerful tools. The next tool that is missing in my opinion in an "Array" tool - refer to the one in 3ds max...

    If you want to position a group of objects in a specific way using such tool will speed up level design like a lot!
    Just implement something like this !

     
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  40. vertxxyz

    vertxxyz

    Joined:
    Oct 29, 2014
    Posts:
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    In addition to this it's important to remember the Mouse4 and Mouse5 shortcuts for these!

    It may be worth having embedded tabs in the project view in addition to this. It's not intuitive or easy to manage new tabs by right-clicking headers>Add Tab>Find tab type. New tabs created in this way have reset zoom levels, and start at Assets, not great really.
     
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  41. BigBite

    BigBite

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2013
    Posts:
    108
    Hello all.

    I see a lot comments for visual scripting. I wanna try to come from a different angle on this subject, mostly from the artist and designer side of things. I'm also going to touch on some other things. Let me know what you guys think.

    So let me start out by saying that I work alone and have probably spent way too much money on the Asset Store. Now, I don't mind doing that for I am a Unity3d Free user (had a pro sub last year). I don't want to spend time learning the inner workings of the Editor API and serialization and blah-blah-blah. I just wanna make stuff. Tools enable me to do just that. I have this silly idea that more options is better when it comes to tools, cause I've never seen one tool that can do everything well (as much as I would like them to).

    What I would propose is to allow editor extensions to be 1st class citizens within the Unity Editor
    .
    A couple of things come to mind when I think about this:

    (1) I don't want to import extensions, I simply want to enable them
    Ex
    : You would just go to Tools->Extensions and a window pops up where you can enable/disable extensions. Then it just... appears, no compiling... it's just there-- ready to rock.

    (2) Extensions should be stored "precompiled" with everything they need within Unity folder


    This stems from frustration. There are countless times that I click on the texture picker on the material and that little window comes up only to get spammed with hundreds of editor icons, or I try to use the search box and same deal (less so with search). The other benefit would be project size. These tools don't need to live in my assets folder and get uploaded to my repo. As an artist, I don't want to have to deal with them, I just want to use them(I'm rarely going to be modifying them).

    I want to address the visual scripting topic. What a lot of these Asset Store extensions actually offer is not visual scripting editors per se, but visual logic editors (if that makes sense). And that's cool, there are already a bunch of good/great extensions out there, why not make it easier for them to be even more integrated with the editor?

    If Unity were to tackle a visual scripting editor, it should really just be a glorified text generator. You script like you normally would in C#, but with nodes (check out https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/59656). It should just generate a C# file with clean readable code. This would essentially keep things the same as they are now; where you have to dive into C# if you need to add something to your tool, but now it's friendlier for artists and designers(?). Take PlayMaker for example: all of there actions are just Monobehaviors. Adding your own action with visual scripting should be possible. Another possibility would be parsing a C# file and converting that into a node network.

    A couple of reasons for this; this would allow artists and designers that don't want to deal with syntax a more comfortable(?) way to extend their Asset Store purchases if they needed. Possibly also learn programming by proxy.

    I would rather have the higher level tool chain handled by the Asset Store. They outpace Unity with sometimes better tools that I didn't know were possible or that I even needed/wanted, and can have fast update cadences. I can ask for a feature and be confident that I will get a response from the author about whether it can be done or not and time frame. Where as right now, you have to wait for Unity. Unless they host it on GitHub or something, in which case see point number one. Unity says they want to work on the hard problems for us, that low level stuffs. I say keep it low level then. I'm not denying the benefits such a system could have though, I just think that Unity should lay a strong foundation for these tools that already exist and some that are yet to come. Make it easier for them to provide the experience we want, everything from better ways to draw to the viewport (gizmos) to data handling. Now that's low level.

    I know that you end up having to spend more money (asset store), and if you have Pro you feel that the editor is lacking. Unity could possibly offer permanent discounts to popular asset store plugins to Pro users?
    That's my 2 cents on visual scripting/logic editors.

    Switching gears now, the Inspector:

    Gawd I hate this thing sometimes. I feel like I might be the only one. It's the inspector for just about everything in your project. I see the lock inspector button as a non solution. We need a couple more inspectors. Someone already mentioned a Prefab Inspector window, that would be at the top of my list (good suggestion on the preset lighting). And I do mean an actual separate window, I still want to see the scene I'm working on. Possibly allow us to specify camera settings (or just use main camera settings) to view the prefab, we should be able to select different shading modes shaded, wireframe, among other options. This prefab window could also serve as a mesh inspector. Maybe you can isolate components and inspect them in greater detail, within the same window; imagine a prefab editor something like this:

    upload_2017-4-26_6-11-40.png

    you could isolate components like colliders/animators/particles and view them independently, with some stat info and there respective inspectors.

    I might have more, but can't think of anything right now.

    Edit: Sorry about the image, didn't realize it would be so small. Btw, those would not be separate windows, it's the same window just displaying different "Inspectors" depending on what component you have "isolated" (isolated may not be the right word).

    Also, I don't know how to turn this into an action plan, but I want to do more while in the viewport in general. I don't know what that statement can/should encompass. An example would be: the ability to see the numerical value of whatever slider I'm tweaking to be displayed right beside the object I'm looking at.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
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  42. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    Jul 7, 2014
    Posts:
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    I second a lot of this.
    • Assembling modular parts in the editor is a royal pain, and often you end up suddenly finding light shining though spaces that shouldn't exist.
    • Mass selection is slow and cumbersome.
    • To get to some of the views you have to rotate through several other views - you should be able to snap immediately to any view with a hotkey.
    • Selection is sometimes very inaccurate especially in orthographic view - you can click on the exact object you want over and over and it iterates through a multitide of other objects before it gets there.
     
  43. Dreamcube017

    Dreamcube017

    Joined:
    Dec 20, 2009
    Posts:
    253
    I have used uScript from the Asset store a bit, but I mostly use PlayMaker because it is very quick to get things set up and tested.

    I understand that PlayMaker is pretty high level stuff. Maybe a visual scripting tool that has some presets and node groups that do certain things similar to (sorry to do comparisons) UE4's BluePrint where you can get very deep if you want, but there are a lot of things to get you started. Hope that helps.

    Oh, and for node based shaders I use Shader Forge. I also used Strumpy's Shader Editor a while back.
     
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  44. MD_Reptile

    MD_Reptile

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    Jan 19, 2012
    Posts:
    2,664
    One little thing that would improve the 2d art asset importing workflow is if the sprite slicing tools would remember previous settings, like for instance the grid and offset, and padding when auto slicing a spritesheet. This would be nice because when going to an external program, creating new sprites in an existing sheet, you wouldn't have to then manually type and select those settings again every time you add more sprites to the sheet.

    Not a big deal, but I'm not a big artist, so it's all that comes to mind.
     
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  45. xeleh

    xeleh

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2016
    Posts:
    302
    I think that is included in XT Utilities (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/51884) (Free).
     
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  46. Vagabond_

    Vagabond_

    Joined:
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    Posts:
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    Please Unity read this one ...!

    +1 for selection improvement

    Viewport selection is like totally broken still in 2017.1 b1. It was broken like forever, especially when you have terrain or some planes in the back and you try to select objects from some distance... Sometimes canvases get selected even if they are far behind you. I did report a bug in 5.4 and it was "fixed"... but actually it wasn't.

    Please guys pay attention to selection - it is just broken. We can reports bugs forever but after last one the things are just a bit better and not fixed.... It is interesting how this is still not improved !

    A request regarding "selection"

    * add a selection mode and a shortcut to enable/disable it plus indicator for displaying if you are in selection mode...
    Currently if you have a few objects close to each other, as soon as you select one of the objects, the transform gizmo appears (well that's normal) but it is blocking the selection of the other objects because it is bigger then they are. You have to go much closer to objects in order to have smaller sized gizmo...

    Another issue with selection. If you have a prefab which includes many objects and another group of objects which are not part of the prefab, and as soon as you try to window select them, the whole prefab gets selected as soon as you click to make the window selection...

    In other words making selections is a HUGE PAIN...

    P.S. video to show selection issues. Trying to select the three building in the middle

     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
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  47. Baste

    Baste

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    Obligatory "not artist" here. This might be stereotyping, but our programmers goes on forums. Our artists go on Twitter. If you want artist feedback, tweet this question.

    Thought I'd but in here.

    If you're a console developer, each console has it's own Unity version. So since we're targeting the big three and PC, that's a minimum of four versions of the project.

    EDIT: Unity announced that they're working on visual scripting at (last, I think) Unite. It's under "research" on the roadmap. I seem to remember (this might be false, though) that somebody during a Q&A on an earlier Unite said that visual scripting had been attempted at several times, but it never worked out well.

    EDITEDIT:

    Okay, now try doing this with an imported .fbx model. Each step will require 2 minutes of waiting for the model to reimport.

    Working with animation events are the worst. My animators refuse to touch them due to all the waiting, so we end up just doing it all in script. The iteration time for having the animator standing over my shoulder and going "okay, try a bit later" is much faster than having the animator move the animation event around in the animation event timeline.

    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    This got fixed. I had a chat with a Unity dev at one point and whined about this, and lo and behold in the next major version the cursor stays where it should be. No idea if the whining and fix were related :p. I think the fix landed in 5.5?
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
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  48. PhilSA

    PhilSA

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    Jul 11, 2013
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    Here's a suggestion for a general "Animation Workflow" that I think would work well. Actually, there are plenty of inconsistencies in it (maybe things should be different for "models" and for "prefabs", something feels wrong to me about some of the animation things I'm suggesting, etc....), but at least it's a starting point for a discussion:

    Double-clicking on a prefab in the Project view opens the "Prefab Window", which is a window where you can...
    1. See the prefab in a "LookDev" view
    2. edit/apply prefab changes
    3. Change stuff in the prefab's hierarchy
    4. Access the inspector to change values in Monobehaviours on the prefab
    5. Access the "Model/Rig/Animation" tabs to see all animations
    6. Have a Play/Pause/Stop button for animation in order to test AnimationEvents
    7. Tweak values in animator controllers to see the animation played in real time

    Now something we have to figure out is how to plug visual scripting into this workflow, and how to improve AnimatorControllers to make them scriptable.

    The more I think about it, the more it seems like Unity should just copy what UE4 does when it comes to animation.... I think the main takeaways would be:
    • Everything needs to be scriptable (priority given to code, and then see about visual scripting). Don't try to provide us with pre-made solutions to everything. Just give us the power to do everything we want instead. Playables API, new NavMesh API, NetworkTransport, etc.... are great examples of Unity going in the right direction
    • AnimatorControllers need to be more than just a state machine. We need to be able to add custom logic to them. Ideally, I would have to be able to create a new AnimationNode through script, and then have artists use them in the Animation Graph. For me, this would be the ideal form of "visual scripting". Just leave everything to the programmers and let them make custom nodes for their project. Don't try to promote visual scripting as a way to make entire games; it'll just divide dev time, divide the community's knowledge base, and it'll incite beginners to make a bad decision (choosing nodes over code even if code will always be faster, easier, more versatile, more maintainable, more scalable, more performant, and generally better at everything). Take a look at UE4's forums and you'll see tons of people complaining about how they're sick of blueprints/C++ and just want C# instead. Unity already has the perfect scripting solution. Look no further
    • Need dedicated windows for editing objects instead of dropping them in scenes
    ______________________________________________________

    Also, I'd like if AnimationEvents were less "Magical" in the way they work in code. Something just seems off about the way they are called out of nowhere with a method that has their name on the same gameObject as the Animator at the moment. Maybe Animator having a list of delegate-style callbacks would be a better idea (not UnityEvents, because they are insanely costly for CPU and GC alloc compared to standard delegates and I don't understand why they are even an option. Nothing in the Unity API should generate garbage at a constant rate when used the way they are meant to be used. It should be a requirement for any and all things that are added to the engine)
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
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  49. TextusGames

    TextusGames

    Joined:
    Dec 8, 2016
    Posts:
    429
    NESTED PREFABS(with inheretanse please).
    There is so many people who ask for this,we are just tired of saying.
    You guys already know about it, and keep avoiding it. Almost ten years has passed and still no progress no information no feedback.
    Please give us at least some feedback!?
     
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  50. Nevin

    Nevin

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jul 6, 2012
    Posts:
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    Hi TextusGames!

    Nested prefabs is in the works! Check out our development roadmap here: https://unity3d.com/unity/roadmap
    Do you have any specific wishes for this feature? We would love to hear more about how nested prefabs could help your workflows in the editor. Please share some insights and examples :)