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Unity 2017.2 is now available
Unity 2017.2 introduces new 2D world-building tools, support for new XR platforms, and thanks to an exclusive collaboration between Unity and Autodesk, faster importing and exporting between Maya/3DS Max and Unity. Unity 2017.2 includes updates to the robust storytelling tools Timeline and Cinemachine, as well as support for ARCore, ARKit, Vuforia, and Windows Mixed Reality immersive headsets. Unity 2017.2 is now available for download. This blog post gives you an overview of some of the highlights followed by more detailed information about new features and improvements.
2018.1 is now available
Unity 2018.1 marks the start of a new cycle that introduces a major upgrade to our core technology, which gives artists, developers and engineers the power to express their talents and collaborate more efficiently to make their AAA dreams a reality. Let’s start with a few of the highlights, and then you can dig into the details of all the features. The first two highlights described below, the Scriptable Render Pipeline and the C# Job System, represent the first versions of two major features, which will continue to evolve to help you unlock beautiful graphics and increase the runtime performance of Unity. While you go through the list of new features, you can download Unity 2018.1 here. Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) Available in Preview with Unity 2018.1, the new Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) places the power of modern hardware and GPUs directly into the hands of developers and technical artists, without having to digest millions of lines of C++ engine code. SRP makes it easy to customize the rendering pipeline via C# code and material shaders, giving you maximum control without all the complexity and challenges of writing or modifying a complete C++ rendering pipeline. We are also introducing two out-of-the-box render pipelines to fit your needs. The High-Definition Render Pipeline (HD RP) is for developers with AAA aspirations, and the Lightweight Render Pipeline (LW RP) is for those looking for a combination of beauty and speed, and it also optimizes the battery life for mobile devices and similar platforms. The C# Job System & Entity Component System (ECS) Combined with a new programming model (Entity Component System), the new runtime system enables you to take full advantage of multicore processors without the programming headache. You can use that extra horsepower, for example, to add more effects and complexity to your games or to add AI that makes your creations richer and more immersive. Level design and shaders Unity 2017.x introduced new features that help teams of artists, designers and developers build experiences together. We added powerful visual tools like Timeline, Cinemachine and a new FBX Exporter, which enables smooth round-tripping with Digital Content Creation tools like 3ds Max and Maya. With Unity 2018.1, we are continuing our efforts to help artists, designers and developers collaborate more efficiently by making it possible to create levels, cinematic content, and gameplay sequences without coding. For example, new tools like ProBuilder/Polybrush and the new visual Shader Graph offer intuitive ways to design levels and create shaders without programming skills. Packages Unity 2017.2 introduced the Package Manager, an underlying core modular system and API that enables dynamic loading and updating of new Unity features in your projects. Unity 2018.1 builds on that with the newly released Package Manager User Interface, the Hub and Project Templates, all of which help you get new projects started faster and more efficiently. Several of the features are available in packages. The idea is to make Unity more modular so that it’s easier for us to release features on an ongoing basis. We use the "Preview" label for these new features to indicate that they are not recommended for production nor fully supported just yet. Previews offer you an opportunity to update, modify and experiment with features at an early stage as a separate modularized package, which you may want to use at a later time in productions.
Introducing Unity 2017
We’re excited to announce that Unity 2017.1 has been released and is now available for download. We want to thank the Unity community for their valuable contributions during the beta phase. This release marks the debut of the new Unity 2017 cycle, evolving the world’s most popular game engine into an ever-expanding creation engine for gaming and real-time entertainment, with a strong focus on helping teams work better and enabling success. We want to equip artists, designers and developers with powerful new visual tools that let the whole team contribute more and collaborate efficiently. We also want to help you to produce amazing AAA experiences by improving graphics quality and runtime performance. Regarding performance, we want to help you stay ahead of the curve on the latest and emerging platforms (desktop, console, mobile, VR, AR, TVs) and to take advantage of the latest GPU and native Graphics APIs. With this in mind, we are building on Unity’s strong multiplatform “build once, deploy anywhere” foundation. We work closely with our technology partners so you can reach users everywhere and maximize your chances of success. Success includes revenue, and built-in solutions (Ads, IAP) and Live-Ops Analytics in Unity 2017 contribute in this area. They bring more opportunities to optimize the performance of your live games in real-time, without redeployment, helping to maximize revenue using the power of data. Unity 2017.1 is available to all users with an active subscription plan (Personal, Plus and Pro). If you have Unity 5 perpetual license(s), Unity 5.6 the last update in the 5.x cycle. To continue receiving all updates, go to the Unity Store and choose the plan that fits your needs. We are really excited about the amazing content our community will create with Unity 2017! Check out the roadmap, and keep reading to get all the info on Unity 2017.1, our first release in this new cycle.
Introducing Unity 2018.3
Unity 2018.3 introduces improved Prefab workflows, including nesting, as well as enhancements to our Scriptable Render Pipeline, Terrain system and scripting runtime, and a preview of the Visual Effect Graph. Over the years, one of the features we’ve heard you requesting most often has been the ability to nest Prefabs. After conducting numerous interviews, usability tests and research at game jams, however, we found out that a lot of you also needed several other changes to the Prefab workflows. Therefore, we have been improving the whole system with a focus on reusability, control and user-friendliness. The new Prefab workflows allow you to split up scenes and Prefabs on a granular level. They give you greater flexibility, increase your productivity and enable you to work confidently without worrying about making time-consuming errors. Continuing our focus on workflow improvements, Unity 2018.3 now has unified Settings windows for Project Settings and Preferences. The new windows are dockable and searchable, which makes it much more convenient to quickly find and change settings. The default scripting runtime is now .NET 4.x. The old .NET 3.5 runtime has been deprecated and support for it will soon be dropped. Projects that target the .NET 4.x scripting runtime will be able to use the open-source Roslyn compiler. In this release, we also added a PhysX 3.4 upgrade that comes with improvements to stability and performance as well as support for multiple worlds and C# Job queries. The world-building 2D Tilemap tool now enables you to build isometric Tilemaps, which makes it easier to create 2D projects such as strategy, tycoons and simulation games. Unity 2018.3 also ships with an update to the Terrain system, which marks the beginning of a larger overhaul. In this update, our focus has been not only to set the foundation for further improvements with a few tweaks to the UI and tools but also to improve performance. We also added High-Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP) support. Unity 2018.3 includes a number of improvements to the HDRP (preview). This version adds preliminary support for VR and multisample anti-aliasing and improves support for PC, Mac, XBox One and PS4. The UI of various Inspectors of HDRP elements is now updated: Camera, Lights, Reflections Probe, and Material. Finally, we added a new lighting model, so you can author more complex materials. We are also introducing the GPU Progressive Lightmapper in Preview for Windows and several improvements to lighting. Our new Visual Effect Graph, which ships in Preview as a package, enables you to create beautiful effects using a node-based system that is both easy to use and flexible. Inspired by leading VFX software tools for films, it empowers artists to create stand-out visual effects for games and other projects with millions of particles running on the GPU. Unity 2018.3 also includes several new features for the existing Particle System. For example, there are Particle Meshes that can now be flipped just like with billboards, Particle Lights that now support Real-time Global Illumination, and the new Ringbuffer Mode, which makes it easier to create persistent effects like footprints or bullet holes by keeping particles visible after their lifetime expires and until they are replaced. Mobile improvements include Dynamic Resolution Scaling support for Vulkan and Metal, Android AppBundle generation support and faster APK package build times on Android with APKzlib. For XR, we added Native Support for Daydream Controllers, Haptics APIs for VR controllers, and updates to the AR Foundation as well as XR Performance Testing. And in our Developer services, we added several improvements to Collaborate and Cloud Build. Performance Reporting, renamed Cloud Diagnostics, now also tracks user-submitted reports. Finally, 2018.3 comes with a number of smaller changes and bug fixes. You can begin downloading the full release from our update page or through your Unity Hub before digging into all the details. Download Unity 2018.3
Unity 2017.3 is here
2017.3 completes the 2017 cycle introducing several new features and improvements across the board for both artists and developers. We’re excited to share all the great new and improved features available today with Unity 2017.3. Before drilling down into the details, though, we wanted to look back at Unity 2017. (If you can’t wait, just jump straight to the What’s new section below.) With the new Unity 2017 cycle, we doubled down on our effort to help artists, designers and developers create and collaborate more efficiently. Powerful visual tools like Timeline, Cinemachine and Unity FBX Exporter free artists to do more. We continued to improve graphics quality and runtime performance to help you stay ahead of the curve on the latest emerging platforms (desktop, console, mobile, VR, AR, smart TVs) and to take advantage of the latest GPU and native Graphics APIs. A great example of this is the award-winning Adam demo-film series. Other features, like the updated 2D tools and Unity Teams, help you get better results, faster. Finally, we’ve given you new ways to use powerful data (in the Ads, IAP and Live-Ops Analytics solutions) to optimize game performance in real-time and maximize your revenue. Unity 2017.1, 2017.2 and 2017.3 delivered many key features supporting these goals. Here’s a summarized recap:
Introducing Unity 2019.1
The first TECH Stream release of the year – Unity 2019.1 – is now available. It includes many new production-ready features such as the Burst Compiler, the Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP), and Shader Graph. Also, there are numerous innovations for animators, mobile developers, and graphics experts, and multiple updates that streamline project workflows and simplify Editor tasks. In the next few weeks we will also release the 2018.4 Long-Term Support (LTS) version of Unity for those of you with projects about to ship and thus who wish to lock-in their production on a rock-solid foundation for an extended period. Unity 2019.1 is packed with more than 283 new features and improvements. At the beginning of this post you will find a summary, followed by a detailed walk-through, of the major new features. If you’re eager to install and begin using Unity 2019.1, consider starting the download (click the button below or access via the Unity Hub) while you read this post. DOWNLOAD 2019.1
2018.2 is now available
Unity 2018.1 marked the start of a new cycle with two major innovations at the core. Together, the Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) and Shader Graph give artists and developers more power, while the C# Job System, Burst Compiler and ECS make it possible to take advantage of multi-core processors without the programming headache. Unity 2018.2 builds on these innovations and adds several new features. This post provides an overview of the most important updates in 2018.2. While you go through the list of new features, you can download Unity 2018.2 here or via the Unity Hub. One of the goals for Unity 2018.2 has been to build on the Scriptable Render Pipelines (SRPs) in order to enable next-level rendering. Another focus area has been to develop a range of features and improvements that will help you succeed in mobile. Let’s take a brief look at what we’ve done in these two areas before going into more detail on the entire release. Unity 2018.2 optimizes the performance of the Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP) and enhances the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) to help you achieve high-end visual quality, including multiple improvements to the Shader Graph, which now supports both pipelines (please note that both the LWRP and HDRP are currently in preview.) We also added support for managed code debugging on iOS and Android, Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, UWP and PS4 for IL2CPP, and we started adding some mobile optimizations to the Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP). For Android projects, 64-bit (ARM64) support gets its final release, and we now let you add Java code to your Unity plugins folder without needing to create libraries in advance. Finally, several new 2D features are available as Preview packages, including the Vector Graphics importer and Pixel Perfect. The Vector Graphics importer makes it easier for you to work with SVG graphics, and Pixel Perfect makes it easier for you to achieve a perfect retro look across different resolutions on a wide range of devices. To get an overview of all the improvements in this release, read on.
Unity 2019.3 is now available
This release features a brand-new Editor interface, new Input System, faster in-Editor iteration time and lots of other improvements. The High Definition Render Pipeline and many 2D packages are now verified for 2019.3. Regardless if you work in games, entertainment, automotive, architecture, or any other industry, the Unity 2019.3 TECH stream release has something for you. Read this post for the highlights and then visit the 2019.3 webpage for details on each feature area. The website collects the related technical talks from Unite Copenhagen, the latest tutorials, documentation on how to get started, and much more. If you are in pre-production or simply want to get your hands on all the latest features now, you can begin downloading the full release from our update page. For those of you who have projects in production or want to update live projects, we highly recommend waiting for the 2019.4 Long-Term Support (LTS) release. Unity 2019.4 LTS will ship this spring. It will have the same feature set as Unity 2019.3. The difference is that while the TECH stream offers you the latest features and improvements, in the LTS releases we focus entirely on stability and quality. We only add fixes that address crashes, regressions, and issues that affect the wider community. That means Integrated Success Services customer issues, console SDK/XDK issues, or any major changes that would prevent many of you from shipping your game. The LTS release is supported for two years, with biweekly updates providing further fixes, and is intended for projects beyond pre-production.
Here’s what’s in the brand-new Unity 2019.2
We have over 1000 developers dedicated to extending and improving Unity for you. In this release, you get more than 170 new features and enhancements for artists, designers, and programmers. We’ve updated ProBuilder, Shader Graph, 2D Animation, Burst Compiler, UI Elements, and many more. Read on for the highlights.
Awesome Realtime GI on desktops and consoles
We've teamed up with Alex Lovett again and built The Courtyard, a demo that puts the Precomputed Realtime GI features in Unity 5 to good use. He previously built the Shrine Arch-viz demo. This time, however, the goal was to build a demo aimed at game developers requiring realtime frame rates. Check out this video:
Teleporter demo
We'd like to share with you a project that was built during the R&D period of the Physically Based Shader and Reflection probes. This benchmark project is one among several which helped us identify what improvements of functionality were necessary from an artist’s production perspective. We compared offline to realtime rendering methods and output with the aim to achieve both an increase of visual quality, and a better streamlined, smoother production workflow for artists, which will open playful possibilities for graphics to be extended beyond realism to stylism. The demo uses the Standard PBR shader and displays a range of shiny and rough metallic, plastic and ceramic materials, which naturally use the new native cubemap reflections (or HDR reflection probes). The material output in the movie is at a prototype stage and the shader is still evolving. The textures consistently changed throughout the process as the shader evolved. In total, it is composed of 30 texture sets or so, both manually authored and procedurally generated textures. At this point, scanned textures were not used whatsoever. Typically, a texture set consists of albedo, specular, gloss, occlusion and a normal map and the sizes range between 256px to 4k. Background surfaces demanded less surface detail and amount of textures. In some cases, we casually created materials by pushing sliders to adjust color and float values until it matched the references. The secondary (detail-map) slots give a layer of dust, cracks, and crevices on the surfaces, which can be spotted on the close-up camera shots. The heated up revolving core is achieved by simply animating emissive values and combining the results with HDR bloom to give a glowing hot impression. The cave is a large scaled environment and the 100 meter tall machine itself was used intentionally to challenge performance and to serve as a lighting benchmark. This asked for a variety of convoluted HDR reflection probes/cubemaps to be placed along its body that could adapt during the changes of light that gradually diminishes towards the bottom of the cave and when the heated core lights up. Certain elements use real-time reflections while many are kept to static reflections. The application of the HDR reflection probes remains true to Unity’s ideology of keeping workflows simplified and are nearly effortless to apply and use. The background scene uses directional lightmaps, while the machine is composed of partly skinned- and dynamic meshes that are hooked up to light probes and use Image-Based Lighting and a variety of light sources. To be able to see the output of the shader during production, it is crucial to have HDR rendering represented in the sceneview. We are most excited to share this short film with you and are impatient to see what our talented community can produce with the new set of tools which is coming. We are looking forward to seeing artists amaze us with their limitless creativity.
How dialog-driven video layering shapes the surreal world of ENA: Dream BBQ
The team behind the super-trippy ENA: Dream BBQ video game describe a few of the unusual techniques they used to bring the game's surreal world to life, including dialog-driven video layers, non-Euclidean space, and unusual ways of building standard game elements like inventories.
Announcing the 2025 Unity for Humanity Grant Winners!
We are thrilled to introduce the 2025 Unity for Humanity Grant winners! This year, we recognize 10 winners and three honorable mentions, with recipients spanning nine countries. The projects address complex global challenges aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We received a record number of applications, demonstrating the growing global demand for support in using real-time 3D to drive positive change. To meet this increased demand, Unity’s Social Impact Team added an additional $100,000 to the prize pool from the Unity Charitable Fund, bringing the total to $600,000 USD. Funding can be allocated towards the development of the project, building a working prototype, or marketing and distribution. Creators are changemakers and Unity is the platform for bringing their vision for a better world to life. Projects were judged based on vision, impact, inclusion, and viability. Winners will receive the funding, along with technical and marketing support from Unity to help bring their projects to life. This year, we introduced the first ever Student Award category, recognizing two exceptional student-led projects. Additionally, Small Talk ASL by Jubilee Studios received the most votes in our final round and earned the Employees' Choice Award.
Why this college is teaching real-time 3D to the next generation of automotive designers
The College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit, Michigan has been at the forefront of innovation for over 110 years. We’ve partnered with this leading art and design college to create a series of hands-on courses to better equip post-secondary students with real-time skills for the automotive industry.