Unity 1.6 review
DownloadUnity is the only Mac-based high-end game development tool sporting a stylish pro-app GUI, no-friction workflow and top-of-the-line technical features such as extensible graphics, great particle effects, highly optimized scripting, the Ageia physX Engine, skinned character animation and ragdolls, and making standalone games for Mac and Windows (and Dashboard Widgets and web-plugins).
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Unity is the only Mac-based high-end game development tool sporting a stylish pro-app GUI, no-friction workflow and top-of-the-line technical features such as extensible graphics, great particle effects, highly optimized scripting, the Ageia physX Engine, skinned character animation and ragdolls, and making standalone games for Mac and Windows (and Dashboard Widgets and web-plugins).
Unity is a 3D game editor which happens to contain one of the most advanced game engines out there. Packed with power it is built to meet the demands of next-generation game developers.
Create dazzling, different, captivating games with state of the art technology such as the Ageia physX™ Physics Engine, the most modern graphical effects, and highly optimized JavaScript.
Automatic asset importing, prefabs, and ultra fast edit-play-modify turnaround while you assemble and test your game helps maintain the creative flow. Asset production was never this fast before. The editor ties together all the powerful features of the engine in an intuitive way.
Here are some key features of "Unity":
Integrated Editor
Keyframe animation system with an easy to use interface that allows you to animate almost all game object parameters.
Drag'n'drop to set values and hook up everythign from game logic to graphical effects.
Play button for instantly trying out your work, and pause and step-frame to try out the game as you go.
High performance automated asset pipeline. Never think about importing your assets again. Save your .psd file in Photoshop and see it update live in Unity without clicking a single button.
Customizable pane layout system. Allowing you to customize your work environment as you see fit.
All settings are editable in an easy to use property editor.
One-Click Deployment
Mac OS X web plugin.
Mac OS X standalone player.
Dashboard Widget.
Windows web player (coming soon).
Windows standalone [Unity Pro feature] (coming soon).
Protected deployment [Unity Pro feature].
Scripting
Game logic and AI most easily implementable in scripting.
All aspects of a game are scriptable with an easy to understandbut powerful interface. Scripts can be assigned to objects via drag & drop.
Edit script properties in the editor, and drag'n'drop to assign values.
Supported languages are JavaScript, C# and the Python-like language Boo.
Graphics
High performance mesh rendering engine. Mesh skinning with multiple bones. Realtime animation mixing for believable characters.
Very fast and flexible particle system which supports collisions as well as color and texture animation.
Animated textures.
Normal map generation from meshes.
Superb multiple camera support.
Skyboxes.
Flexible Shader Engine
Extendible render-to-texture effects, including glow [Unity Pro feature].
Spotlights, omni-lights and directional ligths, as well as projected textures, halos and volumetric light cones.
Support for latest graphics card features such as bumpmapping, reflection mapping, refraction, cubemaps, trilinear filtering and mipmapping.
Unity comes with an extensive library of 32 shaders including Vertex Lit, Diffuse, Glossy, Bumped, Bumped Specular, Reflective, Self-illuminating and 9 different particle shaders.
Novodex Physics Engine
Flat out world's best physics engine by Ageia.
Fast and realistic simulation allowing for physics based gameplay with large interactive environments.
Ragdolls, box stacks, cars, helicopters. Whatever you want to simulate.
Flexible dynamics system featuring hinges, ball-sockets and suspensions.
Tune friction, slipping, and restitution.
Support for mesh-mesh as well as mesh-primitive collisions.
Audio
3D positional audio with distance attenuation.
Support for all common file formats.
Game Structure
Component based modelling of game entities. Components can be added and removed while the game is running.
Powerful (and fast) query and messaging system for communication between components.
Support for switching between scenes, data that survives across scenes, and saving game settings and status.
Import File Formats
Import models, animations and animated characters from all major 3D applications such as Maya, Cinema 4D, Lightwave and MotionBuilder. Supported file formats are: fbx, maya mb files, 3DS and blender. With the 3DS format virtually every 3D modelling application can be used with Unity.
Imports all major image and movie formats using QuickTime. Save your Photoshop files complete with layers and let Unity automatically compress your images with Unity's high quality S3TC texture compressor. All automatic without even pressing a button.
Automatic heightmap to normalmap conversion.
Different mipmap generation methods (detail fade, Kaiser filters, gamma corrected, and others).
Limitations:
15 day unlimited trial version.
Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3 or later
Radeon or Geforce MX GFX card with at least 32 MB VRAM.
500MHz recommended.
Games run on Rage 128 GFX cards depending on the scene complexity.
Works with most 3D modelling apps, and imports almost any media file-format.
What's New:
New Features:
Unity-to-browser communication
Streaming of .unityweb files
Windows Vista support
Searchable documentation
Video tutorials
Audio effects
Collaboration improved
Raycasts give precise info about vertexes hit
Full .NET DLL support
Unity 1.6 keywords