Official Unity wants your feedback on usability and artist workflows!

Shader node editor
There are some assets on the Asset Store offering this, which is quite useful, but it would be nice to have this included into Unity, because:
- When using those assets, developers become dependent on future updates of those assets, which may or may not appear.
- If UT was to develop a node editor, it could be made sure to run on all platforms, hopefully including some platform specific optimizations like the Standard Shader does.

UI floating point issues
This is a bug, which has been reported quite a while ago, but it's really time consuming to work with. So fixing this would be a major improvement towards a fluid workflow. So far, I had to use a workaround on literally hundreds of UI elements. It's just time that I could use focusing on actually developing the games.
What I am talking about is the way duplication works for UI elements. If you duplicate a UI element, it's likely to include floating point imprecisions. This is bad. For example:
A UI image set to 50, 50, 50, 50 (distance from borders), then duplicated, it may show 49.99998, 49.99998, 49.99998, 49.99998. This even happens with scale values. So if you're unlucky, you have to change a lot of values manually on each UI object. It's a nightmare if you're working on complrex UI.
This issue has already been dismissed by the developers, but I encourage you to take another look at it.
Also, for reference, take a look at those topics:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/d...produces-slightly-different-transform.272908/
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/why-are-these-bugs-not-fixed-yet-angry-face.456474/ ( issue 1 )

Gizmos lines too thin
The issue is described here, including images:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/collider-lines-are-way-too-thin-5-3-5-4-on-mac.418873/

Dark UI in Unity Personal
This has more than 10000 votes on the feedback page.
It has been requested since 2011. It's 2017 now.
Just for reference:
https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/editor-dark-skin-theme-in-free-

Besides a node based solution for shaders, I do agree. But mostly because learning to actually write code isn't that much more difficult than learning how to use a visual scripting solution efficiently. To me, it just seems like a waste of UT's resources to develop and maintain such a feature.
When it comes to shaders, I do think a visual solution could be nice, because then developers don't have to update custom shaders anymore. If there are changes in new Unity versions that need to be addressed in shaders, UT can deliver those changes along with an update to the shader node editor.

 

if unity bring dark theme into Free version noone will use Pro

 

This may impact sales, but when it comes to the vision of "democratizing game development", such a feature shouldn't be cut from the Personal version of Unity. They do have a limit for using Unity Personal. If you make too much money, you have to get Unity Plus or Unity Pro. I do understand this. But I do not understand why they would not include something that isn't anything "Pro" from Personal. It's just a "feature" that makes working in Unity easy on the eyes, preventing damaging your eyes when working in a dark environment.

 

Dark UI is only reason that peoples buy unity plus.
But i love always white UI and one of the important reasons that i love the unity is its white UI.
Finding items in white mode is more easier than black. Even on maya white UI (my screen brightness is in lowest )

 

People buy Unity Plus because their income requires it and they may need the additional services. I doubt anyone has actually spent money on Unity for the Dark Theme in any significant number.

 

Income is for specific peoples but dark ui is for all peoples

 

Barely anyone cares about the dark theme as much as you think they do.

 

Hello everyone, I just want to say this:

• Unity it's not like an image editor or video composer, so, layers are only reference to be draw by the engine, but, it will helps in some way that the object with a particular layer set could be visible without selecting it on the hierarchy.
• A better way to "assembly" the materials inside the project, imagine that you have more than 100 textures to be set (they could be more) and this is a pain in the as... just thinking about it, this is more relative to how the artist named the textures he generates (name_albedo, name_metallic, name_specular and so on) and deliver this batch to the level designer who has to do all the hard work, I say this because I have to do something like this some time ago between Substance Painter and Unity (I paint all the models and then have to set all the materials).
• An modeler do not care if he can modify his models inside Unity (there's a lot of programs to do that), all he cares it's how to distribute a lot of "copies" to generate an environment without to have to drag & drop every time he need a prefab in the scene (there's something called painting prefabs).
• The mecanim system has its own work flow, lets say this: visual scripting = bunch of nodes, lines and variables, animator = bunch of nodes, lines and properties, you use nodes to assembly a series of behaviors inside it, some times you can group them (Blend Trees in the case of Animator) and this lead to navigate from the root to the must deep settled node, with visual scripting is the same (speaking about FlowCanvas using nested nodes).
• Speaking about the prefab viewer and the visualization tree inside the project tab, it's true that modifying a prefab without seen all it elements without to have to drag & drop it into the hierarchy it uncomfortable (thinking about modifying only 50 prefabs, ouch!!), may be you cloud say this: but if you modify the one settled in the hierarchy and pressing the apply that do the job, right, but wrong, if you are just starting your level assembly and need to set it at the beginning; the previewer it's fine just like it's, but, showing some info about the model could be great (thinking about poly count or vertex count).
• About the terrain, with the implementation of substance inside Unity there must be a way to use it with, Unreal can do this and believe me they look really nice.
• And the way like the materials make the objects looks, using a prefab 50 time and there's is no way to make it see it different from the others 100 (without speaking about rotation and size) without have to make 80 or 120 different materials to do that, what about vertex paint color to influence the blend between textures like the terrain do but using models instead, something like Unreal model paint thing.

An artist, a real artist does not going to make plain code, he does not have the time to learn all the programming language (just the basics to understand how to make his game fun) or modify his work inside Unity (if he can do that with a dedicated program and more easily), trying to have all inside it only leads to confusion and conflicts (all that was modified inside Unity without exporting it can't be modified outside and risk to lose all that was done).

These is more about how the do less tedious things and more funny things, cheers and keep up the good work.

 

I found my shortcuts script:
Lots of unity editor features are expandable

Spoiler: Script

Code (CSharp):

1. [InitializeOnLoad]
2. public static class EditorHotkeysTracker
3. {
4.     static EditorHotkeysTracker()
5.     {
6.         SceneView.onSceneGUIDelegate += view =>
7.         {
8.             var e = Event.current;
9.             if (e != null && e.keyCode != KeyCode.None)
10.             {
11.                 if(e.keyCode == KeyCode.B  &&  e.shift)
12.                 {
13.                     if (!Lightmapping.isRunning)
14.                         Lightmapping.BakeAsync ();
15.                 }
16.                 if(e.keyCode == KeyCode.E  &&  e.shift)
17.                 {
18.                     if (Lightmapping.isRunning)
19.                         Lightmapping.Cancel ();
20.                 }
21.                 if(e.keyCode == KeyCode.C  &&  e.shift)
22.                 {
23.                     Lightmapping.Clear ();
24.                 }
25.  
26.                 if(e.keyCode == KeyCode.H  &&  e.shift)
27.                 {
28.                     EditorPrefs.SetInt("FirstTime",0);
29.                 }
30.                 if(e.keyCode == KeyCode.F  &&  e.alt && e.control)
31.                 {
32.                     EditorApplication.ExecuteMenuItem ("GameObject/Move To View");
33.                 }
34.             }
35.         };
36.     }
37. }

 

I just started trying to sort out an issue with the vertex shader I use.
Its made by a helpful community member.
After 6 hours I'm fairly sure the Metallic texture slot completely ignores the alpha channel.
and the R channel somehow is altering the way light bounces off the normal map.

So I had to turn it off, which is a bit of a problem when light colors get blown out because I actually want highlights coming off my normal map.

 

Make Unity Ads available on PC, Mac Os, Linux etc

 

Seperate the products between desktop/console and mobile and end the misery.

 

Last second insight: gameobjects LAYERS for EDITOR. Navigating a densly populated scene can be strainous, being able to mobe object around into layer help edition 100x. I mea, having static, interactiable, sound, scene tags, etc ... on different layer would halp make sense of what's going on.

Instead of using gaùeobject as folder you desactivate and forgot, then get hit on performance

 

I'd kill for this right now. I have a level constructed from about 250 gameobjects and, for various reasons stemming from the nature of my prototype, I can't collapse them into a single gameobject without breaking everything.

 

Err, no.

 

mesh and terrain blending are becoming a standard now, would be great if unity have built in tool for this
https://80.lv/articles/realistic-environments-in-cryengine/

 

• Easy facial animation and lipsync support?
• https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/flat-facial-animation-on-3d-character.72011/
• General texture-swapping ease?
• Floating point issues on HUGE worlds fix
• World streaming support.

 

Tools for dealing with large worlds would be a welcome addition as well.

I would recommend Unity Tech look at Valve's Phoneme / Viseme tools for the HL2 SDK. Here is a video of it in action.

 

I'm probably an unusual Unity apprentice, my unique goal being to create videos and VFX for events usage, and not games.

I arrived at Unity after testing some other traditional DCC and realtime tools such as Cinema4D, Ventuz, SMODE, iClone. Interested into particles, smoke, flames, liquids, titles, object disintegration etc, and secondary character animation and landscape, with the ability to generate image sequence with alpha channel.

My goal is to have a more interactive learning (immediate response and not waiting ages for a rendering), leverage multithreading on most stressed CPU bound simulations, work on a low end machine focusing on GPU as main stressed component, cut down rendering time to the realtime FPS, cut costs down to assets and plugins and not just the engine in a double digit range, maintain an high quality visual output, not being bound to a single hardware vendor.

Started with huge enthusiasm and purchased some assets such as SEGI, Helios, Particle Playground, Skele, testing also PopcornFX, TC Particles, TerrainComposer2, SLATE, UMA, MCS + some free 3d assets.

The main problem I'm finding is IMHO Unity both major strength and weakness: external extension as great they are (and they are really grate) and incredibly dynamic in adding new features, did generate often bugs, did have inconsistent training material, UX and support. You also often just need them, since the feature is not native Unity.

As a beginner and "artist" and not technical artist I did find extremely disturbing being stopped from the lack of an up to date tutorial or manual, from dead forum thread, from bugs coming in the interaction btw just two extensions and every time something new is tested, from learning by trial and error always different way to introduce the asset in the workflow, from the need to gather sparse information from Unity forum threads, addon creator website, youtube, etc.

To be honest I started in these days looking back at Unreal and Houdini. In my even shorter experience they are more difficult to start with, but enjoy much more features being part of the core product, tons of organized tutorials and documentation, no errors of any kind. They also are moving fast into attract also beginners and small budget users as me, and focusing on what I'm interested on.

My suggestion is to carefully but fast defining a more extended perimeter about what need to be inside a core Unity, and start integrating / develop these features into a consistent, error free experience.

 

This is my first post and i wrote here because I am more of an artist, these were somethings that i always looked as the missing things to handle more artist based projects. When i say artist based projects VR storytelling, Film, Walk through, Level design, Effects and Particle based projects. Today I am a technical artist but it took a lot of effort getting here I need more of my artist to jump into this bandwagon. I am just ideating as I type but guess I can provide a lot of insight on this subject. Sorry if somethings are wrong or repeated or not even understandable.

Better grids and grid-snapping.

Better animation manger , right clips the clips just list things and to identify from one animation to another is always a hassle & animation editor, seamless connectivity to editing features like premeire pro

Camera handling and importing camera animations from Maya/Max?blender etc

Better shader pipeline from Art tools like Maya/max/substance

Simpler Graphic togglers, right now when i work with VR i need to know each and every setting and go individual and set them to meet requirements, rather Cant you just say Graphics mode: VR | Film | Mobile Game | AAA Game | etc

Better reflection probe placement guides or something to mark a big square and subdivide it to achieve the number of reflection Probes, very useful especially when working with large areas

Better and simpler sound sequencer

Navigation and item creation, unity should have the habit of creating items where we want not spawn it randomly and we figuring out how to move it back to position

A reference system using which the artist and select and edit the resource seperately, especially helpful for 3D teams without level designers

tagging art assets is mangeable feature so a good asset importer where you can set the defaults and import a bunch of assets with the selected settings

better compression in unity, most of the times I compress the texture outside unity and override your defaults

click on hierarchy and press Cntrl+h to hide objects, very useful for artist hiding and unhiding at speed of shortcuts

editing pivot size, love to see in when arranging a level

Lighting improvemnts - automated volumetric lighting and conversion of it to render planes

A story editor and supporting sequencer maybe with dialogue editor

Ability to cleanup unused materials and textures

Basic agent/crowd generators for populating assets, people and animals etc with animation behaviors

One click solution for adding evironment effects like rain, smoke, dirt, fog, etc

One click decal/impact system is also welcomed like in the quake days it just asks what texture on hit

Select Area for lightmap baking instead of the whole area.

Built in Ocean/lake/pond simulators with wakes/foam/rubble/trail generators

Cloth and Hair systems for pre-render and realtime simulation

Better particle effects editor / generator like after effects or UFX2

Simple event based anmation trigegrs, (i like mechanim) but for simple animation its too complex to work with

Spline/Curve based motion tool for cars/roller coaster and others

Suggestive optimisation workflows like Apply LOD, Occulusion cullion,etc it took a lot of time for me figure out and trasition to a level designer from artist

Record and export video from gameplay or scripted camera for testing, preview and look development

Assited look development requeesting artisit to attach HDRi images, turn on post effects, etc

Negative lights would it kill the engine to support negative lights artist would love this for cool color grading

Better terrain creation, stiching, managment, hell we could even add a procedural terrain generator with ability to create area of effect damage on a specific spot

Play from here/ Spawn here/ Walk here kinda level designer aid for scale/gameplay and other helpful features

Support for parametric artitic friendly model generator, I can create a 3d object give it a function and see the 3d model inside unity

More physics support for ropes, roller and chains

3D native ad integration, just block an area with a specific texture and unity ads can be shown inside the game like a Virtual billboard useful for VR

Emulate a variety of camera and camera shots, would be lovely to choose a shot in cinematic camera for good story delivery

How about procedural sky boxes generators (https://wwwtyro.github.io/space-3d/) it a big headache for artist

Hope these will help decide what you would want to do

 

This may be a weird request but... have you ever considered implementing XAML support for the UI?
It's used by Microsoft to develop .NET interfaces for years since WPF and now is powering UWP and mobile apps through Xamarin.
Seems like a good idea, because;

• Written in a legible format
• Versioning suppport
• No need to create prefabs and instantiating
• You can define styles for the whole interface
• MVVM pattern

It's the advantages I can thing right now.

 

I just had to manually apply changes to about 30 prefabs one by one, so please allow applying changes to multiple prefabs at once. I am doing that very often actually. It would save a lot of time !

 

Hi guys, another one regarding the Lightmapping !

I tried to bake an object which has 3 sub meshes. The problem is that they are packed on top of each other and do not have separate portion of a light map texture. Will be good to give at least an option in the mesh renderer to choose how we want the object to be packed.
In general you may prefer using the whole uv space (from 0 to 1) per sub mesh like in the image instead of making them share a single uv space. You can see the issue on the image below !

 

It'd be really nice if there was a way to see the direction an empty gameobject is facing.

 

Select in and make sure you're working in local rather than global space (button to the left of the play button). Then the gizmos will be relative to the object, so the z-axis will be what direction the empty object is facing.

 

I'm aware of that, but that requires constant switching between transform and rotation, with rotation being the one time you probably want to be able to see the rotation.

 

+1

 

I am currently trying to create a racing game for Android platform and there is a pretty good chance to replace Unity with another developer platform ( which i really do not want to do ) at least for building games for Android because i am constantly experience issues...

I would want to ask what are the plans for Improving the Android platform because as i am reading most of the developers are experiencing a lot of issues as well...
NOTE that almost 100 % of the things i will point out are not happening on iOS - actually the iOS platform is pretty solid. Almost no problems with anything when building to iPad Mini 2 which is pretty old device.

Android test device.
1. Lenovo A6010
2. Samsung J5
3. ACER Iconia One 10 tablet
No shadows, Quality preset at lowest quality. No reflection probes, only cheap shaders as mobile diffuse and diffuse only. No procedural sky boxes and almost nothing...

I am trying a whole day to understand why a super simple scene takes 2 minutes to start. Tested on the devices mentioned above. It turns out that the problem comes when trying to load a scriptable object instance using Resources.Load

Some of the issues i am experiencing with the Android platform...

1. Loading Scriptable Objects with Resources.Load takes currently 2 minutes to start the game

2. The UI system ruins the FPS if you have some deeper hierarchy of elements ( and if you have two canvases is even worse )
- on Android even a single canvas could ruin the FPS (Disable all the canvases makes the fps jump a lot)
- on iPad Mini 2 i did not have any issue with the UI

3. The FPS is nonstop jumping up and down and it does not feel smooth even on 40 fps
- On Android runs like 20-40 fps jumping up and down at 1280 x 720 on A6010 and Acer tablet... with super simple scene
- The same game on iPad Mini 2 runs at stable 60 fps and the resolution is 2048 x 1536.

4. Car body which has a mesh collider with Convex option turned on is much slower and when instantiating an object which uses this kind of collider it takes a few seconds to spawn it !

5. I am getting awful Z-Fighting issues only with Android platform
- on Android devices there is so bad z fighting even with camera clip planes set at (0.3 and 150)
- on iPad Mini 2, Editor and StandAlone builds there is no Z-Fighting at all

6. Terrain just ruins FPS on some devices (with the lowest settings) but works ok on other

I am feeling i am wasting too much time trying to create a small game for Android...
Is this just me or you guys are also having difficulties creating games for Android platform...

Here is a forum thread pointing a lot of issues:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/v...oid-after-upgrading-to-unity-5.306572/page-14

 

1)ProGrids and Probuilder like features
2)Recompilation of scripts in seperated thread to prevent it blocking the Unity.

 

Yes! Compiling is way too slow.

 

Unity should also feature quick level design tools like a quick point and place system. Select a prefab hold a key and where ever you click the prefab gets placed.
Additionally, Unity could also feature a new kind of level design tool. Define a snap point for a prefab in a custom editor and enable the auto snap feature. Now, place one of those prefabs in scene and all the succeeding prefabs get attached to the defined snap point automatically.

 

Unity 2017.1 editor startup should be at least as fast as 4.7 but instead it's rougly 100x slower, it seems Unity is calling home on pretty much every operation so load project and display editor take way too long. This may seem unimportant as the editor itself is fast enough but during prototyping phase it's common to create many projects to test the parts of a game, and switching between those small proto projects is very frustrating with the current project display and load time.

 

I did send a very long list of very basic functionality to someone at the UX research at Unity 3-4 years ago...

Didn't manage to find it back, so I'll try to remember it all. Might update this post as I remember more.

• A way to copy/paste values in the inspector (even object structure or complex value like a Vector3)
• A value should be copiable by drag'n'drop too
  
• A way to revert/apply values separately in the inspector
• A way to reset a value (Vector3, Quaternion, etc)
  
• A way to teleport an object to the first collision or visual surface under your cursor
• A way to go back and forth in the selection history without undoing actions (Copy, back, paste, forward, copy, etc.)
• Support for composition pattern; a way to create polymorphic sub-objects in the inspector
• A way to "watch/pin" a value from the inspector
  
• A collection in the inspector should be re-orderable by default
• A way to "pick" an object for the inspector by clicking on it in the scene view
• A way to save modification at runtime
• Nested prefabs (seriously, damn it)
• A menu option to clear PlayerPrefs (honestly, why isn't there one?)
• A system to do shortcut rebinding, it's very annoying when two asset has colliding shortcuts
• Folders in a scene
• A proper way to create and keep track of all AssetBundle and their content
  
• A better way to create files or object in a scene. Digging in sub-menu is slow
• A way to track up and down references between objects
• A way to lock objects from being changed or moved
• A way to isolate an object in a scene
• Edition layers that are not related to physic layers (could be done with folders)
  
• A way to flag GameObject in a scene as "favorite" to be easier to track
• A build report system that would list what was added in the build and how much space it takes, what referenced it
• A way so that every prefab with a SkinnedMeshRenderer wouldn't get broken everytime we reimport the 3D object with a small difference in the rig, also known as a skeleton file
  
• A localization system or interface
• A way to have "weak-references" so that not everything is loaded at all time
• A way to flag which ScriptableObject in a file is the "main" one
• A way to make certain objects type ignored from selection in the scene view (currently can be hard to select what you need... and no, I don't want to select the dumb particles over and over!)
• A way to add buttons and tools in the Unity top "toolbar"
• A way to add buttons and tools in an object inspector "toolbar"
• A way to replace a prefab in a scene by another prefab
• Everything should support multi-selection editing, honestly!
• A way to snap or round up position and rotation, both world and local
• A way to align an object to another, with a selection of axis and orientation
• A way to see mesh collider overlapping the visual, so it's easy to find spot where both don't match, without having to select one object at a time and not just in wireframes
  
• A way to add editor notes in the scene that would be striped once compiled
• A way to strip all names and tags as an optimization
• Negative lights, quite useful when you want to tweak the mood of an horror game

We support most of those internally with our own tools, but honestly, we would prefer if it was "native" and done right.

Will add more as I remember them...

 

Some quick notes,

Assign material to multiple objects

Select by material

 

A way to only render specific layers in the Scene View.

Currently dealing with this right now, I want to edit my UI in 2D mode. But all my 3d objects appear over the top, I have to keep turning them off, edit, turn on, play, turn off, edit, turn on, play...

A simple drop-down menu for selecting rendered layers in the SceneView would be nice.

 

I will comment that I am using Linux Mint 18.1 that has been upgraded with the Linux kernel 4.8.0. I have also installed amdgpu-pro drivers 17.10 that are running an RX 460. This is installed in a workstation T5500 with the bios upgrade to enable the use of the L5645 6 core cpu. I have x2 of those installed. It is using 24GB ram.

With that said, I am having problems with Unity3d. I can not add a texture to the terrain because it will crash. Also I see a problem in the rendering when looking at the animation preview for an imported model. These problems only happen with the amdgpu-pro drivers installed.

Other than those two problems Unity3d for linux is running well. For the terrain I can switch into windows and add the textures needed for painting, then switch it back to Linux and edit the scene further. I am also able to omit the terrain and use a sculpted model from blender. It is nice having the terrain because of the texture painting. It doesn't work out as easy painting a terrain when it's a model. It is not easy sculpting a huge terrain with blender.

Blender however allows me to come up with shapes and formations that are not possible with a terrain. The problem is the texture painting.

 

Second dropdown on the top right of the whole Unity window is exactly this.

 

I've been using Unity for 6 years and never noticed that dropdown.

Maybe slide that bad boy over to the scene view tab...

 

For the lightmapper provide 2 ambient source/color for games/programs which include seamless passage to interiors from exteriors.
This is a must when you dont want to load additional scenes.

 

Ooh, native negative lights would be great

Someone mentioned this in the starter kits thread already, but it would be pretty cool if unity had a built-in Object pool/spawner. That way they could optimize the hell out of it internally. I think that would help framerates a bit.

 

multi select
drag material to renderer/materials array

 

We actually wrote our own negative lights. Works awesome, but again... Would be better if it was supported.

 

I'm a bit torn on this suggestion because it requires doing something that goes against common design principles, buuuuuut...

There should be an option to place cameras based on the position and rotation of the scene camera.

I'm dealing with setting up a lot of cameras for things like cutscenes, rendertextures, and other things, and it's always a pain to deal with that tiny little camera preview window when placing the camera. I even ended up coding my own solution for placing based on the scene view to get around this. It'd be nice if there was a built-in way to place cameras like this automatically because, unlike a good deal of the other things you can right-click to place, you almost always have to orient a camera.

 

That option already exists: GameObject > Align with View and GameObject > Align Selected with View

 

That only orients it, but the placement is still based on the camera pivot, which is a terrible way to place cameras.

 

... what? Align With View both position and orient the selected GameObject to the current view. Not sure what else you mean.

 

Whoops, I was thinking of the wrong option. You're right, but I still contend that there should be a way to do this in one click, not one and a keyboard shortcut. Basically, for cameras, this should be an optional default behaviour. There should also be options to make cameras that are just camera components without any of the audio listeners or other components.

I'm dealing with a scene that involves, at the moment, 9 separate cameras and it was easier for me to code around all this stuff than do it by hand, which presents itself as a pretty clear usability issue.

 

Might be an issue with your camera pipeline at this point. We work by having 1 camera (with all the post-process) and we give it "contexts" for how to behave (position, orientation, etc). When we do cinematics, we simply place empty GameObjects or splines, or planes, or whatever spatial information is need to make it move the way we want, and pass the right context to the camera. Which means, we never have a "camera" in a scene, we only have a context that is applied to the runtime instance of a camera prefab we are using at this point.

By the way, you can make cameras without any other components. However, in most cases, that's not really useful.

 

I would appreciate new monetization platforms for the integrated service of Unity Ads, such as Facebook Gameroom or Windows.