I recently wanted to use the model of the Standard Assets and noticed it’s just a variation of Robot Kyle.
Whoever decided to use that is wrong. Just plain wrong. We can discuss this, but you’ll lose the discussion. This robot looks ugly and not representative for the engine.
This is how the new Kyle looks in Unity, eg in flight mode:
I am pretty sure you’ve misunderstood what the purpose of that asset is (or of StandardAssets in general). Your provocative statements are starting from wrong assumptions, and so you’re arguing against the wrong thing.
What I think you want: “Unity publishes art assets that make it easy for anyone to make visually attractive games without paying any money”
What I believe Unity wanted: “Don’t make assets that are free and visually attractive because that competes directly with the existing AssetStore publishers (which will annoy them) and requires Unity to do lots of maintenance (which Unity won’t do) and it’s not something Unity desires to do anyway. But do make assets that are ‘barely good enough’ to use when prototyping internally for game-studios making proof-of-concept game-demos – to test new scripts, algorithms, game-ideas”
(based on how Standard Assets were described from the day they launched, their feature sets, how they were marketed, etc).
Having worked in large studios: the Kyle models are perfect. They convey exactly what I would expect: “this is a prototype, it’s not using real art, don’t confuse it with a real piece of game code”.
What you want - high-quality demo assets to show-off the engine - is already trivially solved by you buying decent assets off the store or on TurboSquid/wherever. I don’t see how what you want aligns with any problem Unity believes they have (although sure - maybe they do have a problem there - they just aren’t concerned about it these days).
This is a serious concern. I’m not being trite. It happens all the time.
“Oh is this final art?” and then you go round and around and even though you explain that it isn’t final everybody keeps saying they’re concerned about the art. With Kyle, no such problem.
Why do you think Unity is “promoting itself” with that model? What have you seen that makes you believe that? Unity’s own promotional materials have - for many years - said the opposite of what you’re saying. These were never created to promote Unity as a gaming platform, that’s not their purpose, those of us using this model do not want what you’re asking for.
(And if/when we do want it … we go elsewhere for the models. We don’t go to Standard Assets for them!)
The standard assets were bad before the Asset Store even existed, so that is simply an excuse and a way to retroactively paint the bad job they did on them as intentional.
Or are you suggesting no expense was spared in order to intentionally make sure the standard assets are on the cusp of usable?
Also, if they use the same excuse for features, we are in deep trouble (“We could give you good animation tools, but we don’t want to compete with asset store assets!”).
But I do like your suggestion for their general ethos and mantra. “Unity: Barely Good Enough”, they should make it the next “democratise game development”.
Yeah, that’s fake. Unity support put that there. I have zero control over it. I’ve already complained - it’s very annoying. Literally nothing I can do about it.
This has nothing to do with the current topic, though.
In an absolute sense, as “examples of writing good game code”, they were OK, then they were bad, then they were really bad, now they’re pretty good.
In a pragmatic sense, as “things you can drop into a project and rapidly prototype with, assuming you have enough knowledge/skill to throw bits away / replace whatever you want as you go”, they have generally been great, with a few sad periods where they were incompatible with the current Unity build. Partly because other Unity teams make code-breaking changes when releasing new versions, partly because Standard Assets authors wrote their code pretty weak to start with.
…but even then: if you use Unity seriously, it’s generally much quicker to load up SA, spot the ‘out of the box’ build errors, quickly fix those bugs, and move on … than it is to write your own.
In the early days of SA, when there were no official Unity Tutorials, and the SA were the only example from Unity on ‘doing things the right way’ it was pretty bad that they were being used as an example of well-structured code/projects (I used to complain about that, lots of new Unity users starting off badly because of this). But that changed, and the SA improved.
I think Unity should have mandatory 3 characters, each for particular purpose.
All of the with the similar bones structure and size, animations must be shared. (obviously some bones might be missing for some characters ex. fingers)
Normal human proportions, in metric system.
Character 1 - Something like crash test dummy, clear separation of limbs addition of markers on a body.
Character 2 - Realistic high poly human. (no clothes)
Character 3 - Unity avatar, something that can be used for showcases that will emphasizes the fact that it was made with unity.
All the rest like robot Kyle or other stylized characters might be an addition but is not needed.
The Unity Forums. Where every great developer goes to argue pointless topics. IT’S JUST A MODEL. Who cares if the model looks good or not. It’s there for prototyping. Why does it need to look good. That’s why you make your own or get one from the Asset Store.
Why are you picking on someones signature? That’s not a valid argument.
Why does Unity have to promote itself as a good gaming platform with a model?
That is YOUR opinion, many demos use forests to convey peace and quiet. That is MY opinion, not the same as yours. Why do you say it like that was the intrnded look of the image?
Actually I do and probably most of the unity users.
Even if it is for prototyping it is just better to work with good looking assets.
I would say that creation of a product is more pleasant.
There are many reasons.
One of them is that it allows to compare some unity assets that are going to use it for showcase. I’m talking about things like lighting shaders etc.
Nobody wants to use ugly model to market their work.
You use it for setting up the essentials for your project, THEN you can switch it out and make it look good for the demo then use your new character and materials for then on.
Saying someone misunderstood you is not how you win arguments. Kyle was never intended to be seen by end users and a developer shouldn’t care that their prototyping assets look bad. You might chase away a handful of people who think it means the engine sucks but few of those people will ever release a game.
More importantly it’s a FREE model. There are many of them on the store you can choose from. You don’t have to choose this one. In fact I had forgotten that Kyle existed at all because whenever I think of a prototyping asset by Unity it’s only Unity-chan that I think of.
No. I said that a developer shouldn’t care about the quality of a prototyping asset. You’re making the assumption that I was referring to the asset as bad but I wasn’t. In fact I think the asset would be just fine for a mobile game which is what it would have been targeting when it came out.
No. I said if someone isn’t happy with Kyle there are alternatives available like Unity-chan. You’re not forced to use this asset if you don’t like it and Unity themselves don’t go out of their way to advertise it.
To summarize.
People at Epic must be out of their minds to provide good looking assets.
They should learn how to do things the right way from Unity team.
