Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Unity Labs available for download.

Discussion in 'Community Learning & Teaching' started by drcharlesunity, Apr 2, 2015.

  1. TobiUll

    TobiUll

    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2015
    Posts:
    73
    @AdamBuckner
    The website is http://www.neoaxis.com/
    He is a workalcoholic as the Unity people are.
    I think he would be a great "extension" to Unity.

    ps: Wow, it feels so nice to be heard by a big company. :) Please don't ever become like Microsoft. :)
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2015
  2. TobiUll

    TobiUll

    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2015
    Posts:
    73
    @gurayg
    I think I read somewhere that Unity currently recommends using other people's skin and hair shaders until they have worked out their own.
     
    gurayg likes this.
  3. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

    Joined:
    Apr 11, 2010
    Posts:
    29,723
    I just wanted to chime in that we never actually see will goldstone and dr c at the same time. I consider this incredibly suspicious.

    In other (on topic) news - I'm glad this project has a lot of interesting corner cases which will help improve the engine! more demos like this, please Unity!
     
    smelchers and hopeful like this.
  4. smelchers

    smelchers

    Joined:
    Feb 22, 2015
    Posts:
    22
    Yes, more demos for motivated beginners, please! Anything that makes their entry easier. And which also show possible flaws of Unity. Personally speaking, I am more than happy to see that my choice of using the "Pre-Integrated Skin Shader" (an asset on the Asset Store) is not a bad thing.
     
  5. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    Can you please report this using the in-editor bug reporter, and then make sure I get the bug report number?

    Please include as much detail as possible and try to give any clues you can that will help us reproduce this issue.
     
  6. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    We'll try not to!

    The way things work will mean that Unity will continue to grow as it becomes more robust and more powerful, be we hope never to lost our core feelings and ethics!

    Keep up the suggestions.
     
  7. makeshiftwings

    makeshiftwings

    Joined:
    May 28, 2011
    Posts:
    3,350
    My submission of it is bug 680013_hfk0rcdq156p1i9s. I don't think it would be possible to submit through Unity at the time of the crash because once all the windows are open the editor is usually blocked by its own blank modal window and can't be used until the process is killed and Unity is reopened.

    But like I said I'm almost positive this is some kind of issue with trying to get the window focus back and pop up the "choose what to import" window when Unity does not have the focus. There is probably some kind of uninitialized HWND pointer that is getting set to modal which causes every single active HWND handle in the OS to pop open and try to set itself to modal.
     
  8. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

    Joined:
    Oct 10, 2009
    Posts:
    2,788
    upload_2015-4-14_19-21-4.png
    Despite the lack of good aliasing and SSR i still love this demo :D
     
  9. ranjan_rishi

    ranjan_rishi

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2014
    Posts:
    9
    In GDC 2015, Google and Nvidia kept on claiming that with OpenGLES 3.1 and AEP, we will get close to console gaming capability on mobile devices.

    Then I saw Unity labs demo. Since then I wanted to try it out to see how it performs with OpenGLES 3.1 + AEP.

    I understand that Unity does not support OpenGLES 3.1 and AEP for now.

    I collected some profiling data on Nexus 9 which supports OpenGLES 3.1 + AEP. I am attaching the profiling data. With this demo, FPS is 0 or 1. Also GPU is always 100% occupied.

    I am looking at how to run Unity 5 features on Android device which has OpenGLES 3.1 + AEP.


    Earlier I had started with Viking Village but after Unity labs demo was released, I switched to Unity labs demo.

    Thanks,
    Rishi
     

    Attached Files:

  10. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    And just to be sure and clear: This is in an updated Unity 5? eg: 5.0f or 5.0.1?
     
  11. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    Interesting information! Now, I'm far far from being a core dev. I feel sure that they are beavering away at keeping the engine up-to-date, but I'll see if I can pass this on and get some attention.
     
  12. makeshiftwings

    makeshiftwings

    Joined:
    May 28, 2011
    Posts:
    3,350
    Yes I just had it happen the other day in 5.0.0f4.

    Best way to get it to repro is to go download a large asset from the asset store on a slowish computer, click import, and then switch to another window like a browser before it pops up the "Choose what to import" window. If you are (un)lucky, after a while when it comes time to pop up the "Choose what to import" window, it will instead open a million other windows.
     
  13. goat

    goat

    Joined:
    Aug 24, 2009
    Posts:
    5,182
    That's a video driver crash causing multiple running programs to crash which then causes Windows to re-launch them when the video driver is restarted. It is not Unity launching those.

    I have a Intel Graphic HD GPU and it can't quite do Direct X 11 but by default Direct X 11 is enabled in various platform build settings. My project however say '<DirectX 11 on a DirectX 9 GPU>' and always enables 'OpenGL 2.0 Emulation'. My GPU is actually DirectX 10.1.

    I can cause Unity to crash by selecting some shaders (or materials using the offending shaders) in my project. Example, changing from Basic Water to Water4 will crash Unity and if that change was saved it will crash each time I start Unity. I have to do something 'unsupported' like use the Windows filemanager to rename the prefab using the offending shader to get Unity to start again without crashing.
     
  14. makeshiftwings

    makeshiftwings

    Joined:
    May 28, 2011
    Posts:
    3,350
    It's definitely not a video driver; I am almost certain that it's exactly what I said - Unity has faulty code trying to pop up the import window if the editor doesn't currently have focus. I've seen reports of this bug from lots of people with different video cards; it happens to me quite a lot and always when it's trying to open the import window, which should have nothing to do with the state of my video card. I've also had my card crash and restart the driver when running particularly punishing games and it simply restarts the Nvidia driver like it's supposed to; it doesn't open a window for every running process.
     
  15. goat

    goat

    Joined:
    Aug 24, 2009
    Posts:
    5,182
    But I am too lazy and humble to reinvent the wheel. Look, I've created pretty scene but it's not logical repeatable based on my experience with life. Only if I remember these special technical shaders and other things to do that will be tossed in Unity 6 anyway in favour of the new Java, the new Enlighten, the latest scrum. TMI. Years of schooling in science, math, and language thrown out the door to use high level physics concepts that obfusticate what the game dev wants to do. That don't want to assign a standard shader with degrees of metalness that makes it look like character is going to a disco. They want to assign a silk shader.

    Day / Night cycle comes in handy but only become easily useful if character brain can be told that.. A character needs a brain and Unity to put messages in character brain what time of day it is so character(s) can adjust behavior accordingly. Likewise, terrain system needs to be integrated with character brain so that they know they are near cliff, in river, at airport and so on. And the character brain needs integrated with mecanim so proper sensible animations can be triggered or chosen. Have you never walked through dark streets or dark woods or very bright beaches or seen or felt heat radiating off hot cars or asphalt. You are barefoot on hot asphalt or hot beach and your characters can have message to hop back and forth on hot feet. Instead we have 1 million variations of shooting a rifle. Boring!

    Which gives me a new ideal, I talk next paragraph about cartographic & zoning extensions of Unity but what about assigning ambient air temperature and humidity? Assign surface temperature to polygonal game objects? And a list of properties that describe the gameObject other than the visual aspect? Plants and animals and such? These properties can then be communicated to character brain when picked up or in range or however is appropriate. My character can eat these foods based on list in brain. They weigh this much based on average density and volume (see UMA). They can lift this much weight based on muscle strength coefficient.

    Creating a Unity scene should be based on something similar to cartographic layers on maps, government land-use zoning laws, natural geologic, botany, and zoology distributions and heat maps. And Unity communicates that information to character(s) BT brains according to sensible rules. Game programmer should be interacting with the Unity editor as if they mostly were using much simplified simulated and real real-world data to define their scenes.

    I have anti-alias problems too in my UI elements but figured Unity still were working on that because it was too jaggy to think you hadn't noticed.

    Also can get Unity to crash by choosing water4 as shader on Intel Graphics HD on Windows 8.1 but I mentioned that in other post.
     
  16. goat

    goat

    Joined:
    Aug 24, 2009
    Posts:
    5,182
    You fail to recognize importing an new asset, particularly a polygonal model with various materials, textures, and such assigned is very video card intensive. Particularly high count polygons of dubious quality.

    Crashing my video card driver will restart Windows Mail and Firefox and other programs about 50% of the time.
     
  17. makeshiftwings

    makeshiftwings

    Joined:
    May 28, 2011
    Posts:
    3,350
    Actually I don't think importing a model uses the video card at all; it's just reading a file and converting it into Unity's format, not actually displaying it on screen. And this crash happens before you actually choose to import a model anyway; it's during the decompression of the package, before the "Choose what to import" window pops up.
     
  18. goat

    goat

    Joined:
    Aug 24, 2009
    Posts:
    5,182
    Well, Unity has a report. Decompression should be robust enough not to crash a program if it runs out of available RAM.
     
  19. goat

    goat

    Joined:
    Aug 24, 2009
    Posts:
    5,182
    I forgot to review the actual Charles Francis game.

    Oh my 5 year old PC with 4GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics, Intel i5 470UM, Windows 8.1 and Unity Free it runs at 0.5 - 4.0 FPS as is, 2.0 - 16.0 FPS if BuddyBot and Particles are disabled.

    I like the scene though, it 'feels' to be the most realistic I've seen yet in a game engine. Although the character looks a bit Barbie-ish; I think that's to the scene's advantage. Can't say I like organizing by gameObject type as done in the example, I prefer organizing by location as it reveals possible relationships that can add interest to a game, but that's personal preferences for you.

    This autumn I will be able to run it at 30 FPS or higher I hope. At least that's my understanding of the Intel Iris Graphics GPUs.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2015
  20. MaikenRoskilde

    MaikenRoskilde

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2015
    Posts:
    22
    Can we expect the core engine to be optimized so that the same project will run at a much higher framerate in the future, or should we concentrate on finding bottlenecks / fine tuning because nothing fundamental will be changed?
     
  21. Zander101

    Zander101

    Joined:
    Apr 14, 2015
    Posts:
    6
    hi all, Is there a write up of what the skinshader included with this package does? I'm looking at the specular and AO map does and its confusing. It looks like it puts four different values on R,G,B, and A. But, I have no idea what maps go into those channels. I think that SSS is alpha and maybe AO is B. But who knows. Anyone else try this?
     
  22. peteorstrike

    peteorstrike

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2013
    Posts:
    116
    Hi @Zander101!

    Apologies for the lack of a write-up on how this works - as it's still very much a work-in-progress, we're reviewing both the UI and how the maps are packed to make it easier for people to use.

    That said, the channels for that particular map are:

    R - Specular, although this is not actually used in the shader! All of the specular is actually computed by the shader itself (so it requires the included Beckmann and BRDF maps) and is modified by the various specular controls (Intensity, Fresnel, etc)
    G - Roughness (gloss), modified further with the Specular Roughness slider
    B - AO
    A - SSS, modified further by the Subsurface sliders

    Once we have something more final, it'd probably a good candidate for a blog post to explain in more detail how it works.
     
  23. MaikenRoskilde

    MaikenRoskilde

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2015
    Posts:
    22
    Can't you hire the guy from Pre-Integrated Skin Shader? He did a very good job job already for Unity.
    Unity needs a really good skin shader, and I think it is the best currently available.
     
  24. MaikenRoskilde

    MaikenRoskilde

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2015
    Posts:
    22
    Also, what about my question about the optimization of the core engine?
    Currently I really feel left alone, but perhaps that is only because the Unity guys are just improving bugs.
     
  25. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    Well, that's a really broad question. You could argue that Moore's Law says: "Yes! Of course! In the future, it will be faster, cheaper and better!" Moreover: "Yes! Our dev's are working day and night to update, upgrade and optimise the core engine". That's what they are paid to do, and that's what the company does for a living. Now, for practical purposes: Will Unity run this project at blazingly fast 90fps on a 10yo machine by next week? No. We all know that's ridiculous. Shipping a complete and satisfying game is always a balance between factors, and the engine version and its evolution is one of those factors. You will need to get your game working as you need it to by your ship date. If there is something that's acting as a roadblock, you'll need to solve it. This could easily be that the next point upgrade or patch release will solve your issue, or it may mean you need to write your own code or shader optimised for your game and target platform, or it might mean you need to simplify your game for your target devices. One thing about software engineering and game development is pushing boundaries. Don't expect this project to work on all devices without some tweaking, at least not today. This is all about gamedev, and finding this balance is part of it.
     
  26. MaikenRoskilde

    MaikenRoskilde

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2015
    Posts:
    22
    Yes, that was basically my question: Will Unity make it so that it will no longer be a balance act, and also within the next 3 weeks? ;-)

    Personally, I would so much like a roadmap to see what will not be solved in the near future and where I have to find smart solutions myself.

    I really love how one can sometimes pick up important information from the Unity blogs. For example, in one Blog, Unity said more or less clearly that the Standard Shader is not really ready for Skin yet and that is it likely that other companies will release a PBR-ready Skin Shader before Unity does.
    Such pieces of information are really helpful for me to see where to spend time and / or money to find alternative solutions.

    For example, I am currently fighting so much with terrain quality / speed settings, and I just can not find any information about when the terrain core engine will be updated and if my efforts are worth the time at all.
     
  27. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    Yes.

    I agree.

    I think we really do want to publish our roadmap, but I'm unclear what exactly is the reason we have not done that yet in a coherent form (other than blog posts, tweets, etc.)

    I will pass this on as more information and evidence that we should.
     
  28. MaikenRoskilde

    MaikenRoskilde

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2015
    Posts:
    22
    Thank you!
     
  29. TwiiK

    TwiiK

    Joined:
    Oct 23, 2007
    Posts:
    1,729
    Can we expect an update to this project? At the moment it's a bit hard to tell if this project show Unity best practices or if it's just someone at Unity experimenting with a lot of different Unity 5 features.

    There's all the bugs already mentioned in this thread, but the main character setup is also extremely advanced yet he doesn't move good at all to be brutally honest. It's hard to tell what these thousands of lines of code actually give you compared to a much more simple setup like the one in the Stealth tutorial or the standard assets third person controller for example.

    And there's (a lot of) code for foot planting in there, but it's clearly not meant to be enabled in its current state. Foot planting is really interesting. It would be cool if this project actually showed how to do it rather than just a way that may work. I'm unable to tell if this is almost working or if it's completely broken because it's all much more advanced than the code I usually write in Unity.

    I also want to create a small tech demo based on the Unity Labs project and it would be nice to know if it's a work in progress or if this is it.


    You don't say. :p
     
    smelchers likes this.
  30. peteorstrike

    peteorstrike

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2013
    Posts:
    116
    Hi @TwiiK

    Updates will be happening! For some reason I thought we'd already stated this on the forums but apparently we hadn't - sorry about that!

    We've got a rework of all Dr. C's animations coming fairly soon, with brand new mocap specially captured for him, so that should help make him feel better running around Labs. Many of the current features are early works-in-progress too - the hair, skin, IK feet and more, are all early betas that we wanted to get into users hands early. At least this way you have things that can be extended upon by yourself rather than not having any hair or skin shaders at all.

    There are plans for a lot more features in labs, so you can expect ongoing, if not super frequent, updates to this asset throughout the year.
     
  31. OfficialHermie

    OfficialHermie

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2012
    Posts:
    585
  32. HakJak

    HakJak

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2014
    Posts:
    192
    I just installed Unity 5 on my Mac and tried to import this project. There are 2 major problems:
    1.) NO SCENE in the project! (Only one titled "BuildOnly")
    2.) I got a bunch of errors. I was able to clear some of them by importing the Standard Assets from the asset store, but the rest are script errors.

    Can anyone help me resolve? I would love to check out this demo.
     

    Attached Files:

  33. peteorstrike

    peteorstrike

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2013
    Posts:
    116
    The programmer who worked on the Unity Labs Skin shader is away at the moment but if memory serves our version also uses a Pre-integrated SSS method, so under the hood they're probably pretty similar already. We actually looked at some more advanced approaches to SSS but typically these severely limited the options you'd have for platforms and possible supported hardware.

    That said, the Labs Skin shader is still a work-in-progress, so we need to look at UI and making it easier to input the right texture maps but functionally I'd expect you should be able to pull off similar results to other Pre-integrated SSS shaders when everything's setup correctly.

    Adding it into the Standard Shader itself might be overkill considering how few objects in typical applications need full SSS support but there might be merit in having options for simpler translucency effects, etc, at some point in the future.
     
  34. peteorstrike

    peteorstrike

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2013
    Posts:
    116
    You should also see a UnityLabs01 scene file? Like so:


    I get the feeling that maybe the package corrupted or didn't import correctly - what version of Unity are you currently running? For now, you could try creating a new empty project, opening up the asset store and importing the Unity Labs again into a clean environment, to see if it's the package itself that's broken or just an import error.
     
  35. HakJak

    HakJak

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2014
    Posts:
    192
    Terribly sorry about the mixup. You were correct peteorstrike--the package was just corrupted. I re-downloaded and everything worked perfectly!
     
  36. HakJak

    HakJak

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2014
    Posts:
    192
    Now to post something constructive to this discussion, I just want to say I am very impressed with Unity 5 so far!! I held off until now on converting my project over from 4, since it is very physics-based, but now I'm convinced it will be worth the effort.

    For those who are complaining of very poor performance, try ensuring that all of the batching/baking (lower-right corner of the screen) is finished before trying to run the game in Play Mode. I made that newbie mistake when trying the Viking demo and it was terribly slow at first. This demo takes a considerable amount of time to bake, but performs much better when you let it do its thing first.

    That said, however, there are definitely some optimization issues. I'll look one direction and get FPS as high as 400, then turn in another direction and it will drop as low as 24!! I can't figure out why, but then again I'm brand new to Unity 5 and pretty dang new to Unity altogether.

    My computer specs are below, if that helps any with the discussion:
     
  37. OfficialHermie

    OfficialHermie

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2012
    Posts:
    585
    Can I vote for a new demo here?

    I am looking so much for a demo project from Unity where animals are wandering around and interact (in most of the cases: flee) from the player.

    The animals should use root-motion animations and have some logic.

    I think many people would need such an example because just everone is fighting with mecanim+rootmotion+physics.
    I have seen different forum threads that deal with it (each with some hacks and pitfalls).
    I would love to see Unity's "statement" about this.

    Thank you.

    Edit: I just visited these forums again, and I see that there is are really many hacks and work-arounds just to get things going. Now I am more desperate and more in hope Unity will present a solution to the problems.

    http://mecwarriors.com/2014/12/09/navmesh-and-mecanim/

    This includes so many hacks and tweaks that any beginner will go crazy.
    While I appreciate people who can take days and weeks tweaking things, I am the kind of developer who wants some ready-made solutions. I hope I don't stand stupid because I am the only one who thinks like this. I rather want to concentrate on my game logic and creativity.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2015
  38. OfficialHermie

    OfficialHermie

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2012
    Posts:
    585
    Dear Unity developers,

    can you have a look at this post?

    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/pr...ments-and-feedback.172008/page-8#post-2126474

    I don't understand why you can not simply integrate this pre-integrated skin shader for everybody into Unity. I guess it will not cost the world to you, and it would be such an amazing feature for all users.

    Skin is something that everybody needs, and it should be done by somebody who is absolutely crazy about it.
     
  39. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    This Is not the thread to suggest feedback on demos.

    This is a thread of the Unity Labs demo.

    If you are stuck on a particular issue, please make a public post on the forum or answers, one post per issue, and the community will do their best to help you out.
     
  40. ZTORION

    ZTORION

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2014
    Posts:
    13
    Is there any benchmark list for the demo for different systems?
     
  41. OfficialHermie

    OfficialHermie

    Joined:
    Oct 12, 2012
    Posts:
    585
    I am not happy with the lights in the Unity Lab yet.
    When will we get a great lighting system as UE4 has?
    Is it on the roadmap?

    Or perhaps we already have it, and I am just not smart enough to use it.
    At least I hear soooo often: "Unity is great, but UE4 has a better lighting system".

    I am totally missing volumetric lights, for example.

    I can immediately tell if a scene was done in Unity or in UE4 just because of the lighting.

    The author of this great asset (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/37986) told me that the lighting system of Unity seems (to his knowledge) not good enough to prepare a demo like this (the demo was done in UE4):



    Is he right?
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2015
    EyeOnYou, MaikenRoskilde and Jerome-P like this.
  42. Gerschill

    Gerschill

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2015
    Posts:
    30
    Can we get this rectangle emitter light in Unity?
    If so, please include it in the demo so that everybody can learn something from it.
     
  43. HakJak

    HakJak

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2014
    Posts:
    192
    A scene like that in Unity seems totally doable to me.
     
  44. Gerschill

    Gerschill

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2015
    Posts:
    30
    @HakJak And how would you do the rectangle light emitter then?
     
  45. HakJak

    HakJak

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2014
    Posts:
    192
  46. Gerschill

    Gerschill

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2015
    Posts:
    30
  47. Gerschill

    Gerschill

    Joined:
    Jun 12, 2015
    Posts:
    30
    At the authors:
    Do you think you can improve

    1) Hair shader
    2) Skin shader
    3) Lights
    4) Performance
    5) AA
    ?

    These are the 5 pitfalls that I see after having spent like 14 days with this great demo.
     
  48. HakJak

    HakJak

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2014
    Posts:
    192
    Hi Gerschill, sorry for the late reply... it's been a hectic week! As far as stuff in the asset store, just read reviews and contact the creators/reviewers. I do my homework before buying most assets, and have rarely been disappointed as long as I do my research first.

    Remember Unity's primary focus is on extensibility; dang near everything is customizable/extendible, meaning there is generally a way to achieve almost anything you need.
     
  49. Adam-Buckner

    Adam-Buckner

    Joined:
    Jun 27, 2007
    Posts:
    5,664
    SimoneDunzendorfer and Gerschill like this.
  50. SimoneDunzendorfer

    SimoneDunzendorfer

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2015
    Posts:
    35
    I wish the scientist had long hair so that I could see how the Unity devs deal with this.