Will Unity ever have a “Semi” Pro version? A unity between the free one and the pro? (i know that the now free one was going for $200) …because i could use shadows, and i would be happy to pay an extra $200 or $300 just for shadows.
I just can’t afford $1500 right now…thanks.
Going by what was mentioned in the past, no definitely not.
Either you use 70-80% for free (as the majority of unity is in the free one too) or you pay for the full 100%
Also keep in mind that the unity you get for free right now used to cost $200 (called Unity Indie back then in unity 2.x days)
Agreed, what you get for free is already “semi pro” for all intents and purposes and more than enough to make great games.
Unity Pro have lots of advantages over the free version. Low level graphic API access, RT, Shadows, Source Versioning, native plugins, Higher bakes quality, PVT (Umbra) and the list goes on.
sdsmith64 isn’t crazy, there’s a lots of free users interested in RT-Shadows only, for some extra bucks, they dont care about the rest.
Isn’t a bad idea, specially for students or hobbyist willing to get access to some pro extra features.
Not sure if the forums is the best place to ask a question like that, I’d advise contacting Unity at support@unity3d.com or sales@unity3d.com regarding this matter.
I don’t see Unity adding extra versions. You now get the choice of everything you need to make a game, or every weapon in the Unity game-making arsenal.
The Asset Store now allows the possibility of Unity adding all the Pro features individually so that everyone can mix-and-match to their needs. Although that may create feature fragmentation for individual users that makes bug testing more difficult for UT. So for that, and other reasons, I see Unity sticking with their current model for now.
That is a neat idea. allow us to slowly purchase “upgrade” packages until over time we have the full unity pro… It works as a concept but like you said that may cause all kinds of other issues.
It also has to do with the way they disabled it. Its part of the pipeline that was easy for them to remove. Shadows and post processing effects all use render to texture, so they just removed that feature. To add just shadows, it seems like it would inadvertently add post processing effects etc… back into the mix just because of the way they have currently implemented it to disable the pro features.
The asset store wont do any difference between Unity free and pro. You wont get core engine features as rt-shadow mapping, umbra, versioning, high quality beast, debuggin etc with the Asset Store plugins. The asset store is good for extra editor extension/tools and other (non-core) assets. 
I think he meant that the asset store gives UT the option of selling Unity Pro features as individual components themselves (not added as plugins by other people) if they really wanted to, but as he goes on to say, they probably never would because it would create a logistical nightmare for them.
If they wanted to yes.
But they don’t want to.
There is already enough fragmentation with free, pro, addons for free (1, soon 2), addons for pro (3 + 4)
The only hope you can have as $0 dreamer is that UT considers features as non-important / non-special enough to make them available in free.
At the time, what all the shadow hopers blatantly ignore, although posted like 60 times, is that it won’t help you. even if made available to you guys, you would get shadows from a single directional light only, point thats it. This is by the vast majority of users considered as basically “useless” for any practical usage as its limited to usage as a single sun per scene.
Cause for shadows from point light, spot light or more than 1 directional light, you need deferred rendering which is and likely for a long time will remain a pro only feature.
Also, as the good old logic goes: If you can’t afford $1500 onetime fee, you don’t need the features. If you would have needed them on a do or die base, you would find a way to finance it.
Its not like you would code the next 2 years on your own half to fulltime to reach the state Unity 2.6 had, so even if you worked at 1 cent an hour unity pro would still end cheaper and 3 years faster
They used to have it, it was Unity Indie and cost $200, but there was no free version. Now there is a free version and people still find cause for complaining.
they always will.
Back then with Unity Indie being $199 they requested a $500 version that gives them shadows, now they even want it at $200 although they got U3 non-pro for free.
The solution to approach this is making the delta larger artificially again by removing editor scriptability, removing the option to buy android / iOS addons without unity pro and cut webplayer deployment so the gap gets large and more impacting for them to realize that they used to get 70-80% at $0 while the pro users pay $1500 to get the other 20% professional features.
Its especially “funny” because the fact that beast normally is $80k per title and umbra is $30k per title stand in no relation to the fact that $1500 one time <<<<< $110’000 per title is trivial and understandable for everyone (if not, then he shouldn’t do game dev anyway as that is a lack on the maths end thats fundamental enough to make even point counting impossible - haven’t met any such case in about 2 decades so I doubt it exists :))
Are you guys deaf or what?
The question that sdsmith64 posed is legit.
If someone has use only for a particular feature he is at least entitled to ask without getting over the top replies like the ones i read from dreamora, JRavey and Werewraith.
Noone of you has the right to say to anyone that their approach is wrong by default. You never know how someone else project is going to be developed, the goals and tradeoffs. The last post by dreamora was more insighful about the reason behind his statements (and i agree to that btw) but still too much.
Even when you give a suggestion, you should cut the arrogance and give at least one useful direct answer in the beginning.
I only posted twice here, but i lurked a lot before, as i did in other forums. The general trend is that when people starts to get like this the community either starts policing people in bad ways or becomes way too closed and niche… and either way this is gonna hurt the community itself in the long run.
The middle way is just better: just police yourself, and if you’re right (and this could be very well one of those cases), maybe try to be a little polite in saying it.
I’m obviously biased, quite openly at that, but I like the idea of a larger feature delta. If you look at the Shiva PLE, it’s almost useless. The free version of Torque was just a demo, but if you knew Torquescript well, you could get away with quite a bit. Then they had a version which was not free, then the full version. I don’t know the prices on Torque since the recent changes. UDK does a great job of this, but people still kvetch about the royalties without regard to how much they are getting for so little.
For every special version of Unity forked off to meet a tiny portion of the market, UT has to maintain that, which is a real hassle. When it comes to upgrades, people will dramatically explain why their tier deserves great discounts. Some of these features are built on each other, so slicing off one particular feature may require removing others features which are dependent on it. Inversely, adding one feature, such as shadows may require other features to be added which are intended for Pro. Keeping those features in Pro helps justify the cost. There was a long thread going into the technical reasons, but I cannot find it now. Dreamora might have been one of the people explaining it.
Really, Unity Free is a great deal. It’s a bargain at twice the price. People are getting great software for free, if they want to use Pro features then buy Unity Pro. It’s only $1500. Make a game with free and sell it, get a job at the mall; $1500 is not a princely sum. As has been stated before, if people really wanted Unity Pro, they could probably make it happen.
I don’t say its wrong to ask things jaist
But its wrong to expect or hope.
After all you got 70-80% at $0, so where does someone that seems to be hoping to ever become a developer take the nerv from to hope to get the other 30% for free too after he is using ten thousands of man hours of work to go anywhere at all and save himself time.
Also as mentioned, the topic wasn’t here the first time nor will it be here the last time and the answer always was the same and should by now even be findable even if you lack knowledge on what to search in detail.
Thats at least the intend behind my posting, although partially not formulated like this but more “anti freerider style” I guess. Toned down above postings therefor so they are no longer taken as offensive hopefully
And asked eleventygazillion times with the nearly same set of answers. If we were deaf we could still read the redundancy. We just couldn’t hear ourselves scream:)
HTH
BTH
Well said.
This has been beaten to death. If you really would like such features, I would suspect using the feedback forums would be the best way. Or if you think this forum would know the answer, search around for it. If they would have this should have come up many times. A matter of fact, I would count this as a spin off thought of Unity Student Pro which was just discussed.
Here is the user feature request system if you want to create a new topic on a more customizable upgrade system. If it gets enough votes, I am sure Unity will look at it seriously. Until then, I think they have made their decision for now.
http://feedback.unity3d.com/forums/15792-unity
I do not mean to be rude, but this is one of those topics like ‘Make MMORPG’ that people should search more before posting again.
Its all psychological! The name (unity free), the free/pro compare charts, the fact you can see the disabled features inside the software, all that contributes to make you feel unity free is missing stuff, but the truth its pretty awesome, and it’s a fully functional, complete, fun to use software… if it was called SuperFunGameMaker 1.0, there were no compare charts or disabled features, it had a design of its own and was hosted in another website, all people could say is that it’s awesome, and wouldn’t focus on the features it could have! … (but then it would serve no purpose in advertising unity pro).
You want to have enough good features of Pro that it’s worth it to pay the extra $1500. I know a lot of people are going to hate me, but I think it’s well balanced with the features Pro already has. I’m paying the $1500 for several good features that I want, rather than “is it worth buying it for just that one feature?”.