Unite Keynote includes 4.2 goodies.

News & General Discussion
1

Here is the Unite keynote from yesterday, we will also be releasing more videos of the different talks soon.

The keynote includes a few features that will be available in 4.2.

2

Awesome. Have stuff to watch during work! Keep them coming lol.

3

Text based serialization in Unity Free, and export to iOS and Android. Very nice!

4

thanks for sharing @aurore

5

Okay so short of watching a 45 minute video, does anyone have a simple list of the new features of 4.2?

6

Added some list here (hopefully someone checks that I didnt hear something wrong…: )

some of them:

  • Windows Store Apps
  • Mecanim Avatar Creation Api
  • Antialiased Render Textures (better quality on oculus rift for example)
  • Stencil Buffer Access
  • Shadow Batching (reduces drawcalls on shadow heavy scenes)
  • Shadows. Now also nice on Mac.
  • Headless Linux Player
  • GC and Audio are now friends (smoother audio playback)
  • Shuriken Collider Events (void OnParticleCollision())
  • Cancel button on compiling/asset importing/switching platforms
  • Presets (for example inside particle colors/gradient editor/curves. With api access)
  • Profiler: “Take Sample”-button (shows what object referenced it)
  • Texture importer [×] Alpha is transparency (fixes white borders on transparent textures)

New stuff for Unity Indie Free users:

  • Text Based Serialization
  • SHADOWS FROM DIRECTIONAL LIGHTS!!11
  • ios (basic), android (basic), blackberry10, windows store apps
7

They made it for REAL!!!:smile:

8

The first 21 minutes is David talking about some analytics and Unity’s situation at a high level, very useful information actually. Nice to see them share the high points of their stats, he talks about Unity’s environment and future and collaborations with other platforms and how it applies to developers.

Lucas talks about low level details and discusses:
Windows store apps
Macanim Avatar Creation API - You can use a single set of animations of course, but then let a player stretch a character’s limbs or size and at runtime retarget the skeleton.
Anti Alias Render Textures - Great for the Rift, since you use RTT to render the screen for the player, now you can AA it.
Stencil Buffer Access
Shadow Batching - 50% improvement on speed (in Shadow Heavy scenes)
Nice shadows on Mac (were broken before?)
Linux stuff i didnt care about
GC and Audio are now friends - better loadsharing

Lucas has someone Demo at 28:00, rigidbody and physics, build settings cool stuff, detailed view in profiler @ each asset, alpha texture white fringe automatic fixer and a checkerboard preview background.

34:00 Lucas returns, mentions hundreds of small improvements that arent mentioned. Bug reporting has been extremely helpful.

David returns at 38:00, talks more about Unity in general, Text based serialization, Realtime shadows from directional lights into Free, iOS exports free, Android exports free, etc…

9

Ah,you did it before me! :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue:
I presume all of the above are pro only features? and only the below threes are for free? :face_with_spiral_eyes:

10

When is the 4.2 release?

11

And still no GUI.
Gigi.

12

Thank you so much for the anti-aliased render textures! As a Rift dev this has been high on my list! Unity Technologies rocks! Thank you for taking VR development so seriously!

13

Pro only :

  • Antialiased Render Textures (better quality on oculus rift for example)
  • Stencil Buffer Access
  • Shadow Batching (reduces drawcalls on shadow heavy scenes) ?!!! or not
  • Shadows. Now also nice on Mac.
  • Profiler: “Take Sample”-button (shows what object referenced it)

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/2730-Stencil-buffer?p=19507&viewfull=1#post19507

:wink:

14

I can’t believe they actually got around to giving us stencil buffer access. Been wanting that for a while now…

15

Would personally rather have render textures than stencil buffers, far more useful.

16

I am currently watching it - and I noticed @6:48 he showed a screenshot of all the editor extensions for visual scripting - ironically, BRAIN BUILDER is no longer in the Asset Store due to unpopularity (I am guessing almost nobody bought it) while a hugely popular Antares Universe (VIZIO) (one of the very first Unity extension) which is still in Asset Store was omitted. It doesn’t make Asset Store look like a success if people can’t even find the extension featured in this broadcast.

17

I guess you wanted to say realtime shadows instead of stencil buffers :slight_smile:

18

We’ve had render textures for ages; stencil buffers are new.

–Eric

19

Shadow from directional in free (briliant compromise between basic and pro) and basic mobile license free? Yeeea! xD but… no new gui ? ; (

Last but not least i cant wait for new version definitely :wink:

Good work

Edit
Oh i forgot… who can tell me some words about text serialization ? i understand it…

20

The Memory profiler change is awesome. It is not the Take Sample feature (that is part of 4.1 already).

It is the object Reference By part that was added which will allow you to track down why / what is the cause of this object existing / using memory.

That part was missing in 4.1. Although you could see objects taking memory, tracking them down and the cause of their existence could be somewhat tricky.

This is a very nice addition :slight_smile: