Etermax at Unite Copenhagen 19
One of the many Unity conferences from this 2019 was Unite Copenhagen. Etermax was there in search of new features and contacts to strengthen relations.
We have been using Unity at Etermax for over 2 years as main graphic engine for all new products that are developed. This is why it is important to keep up with the news and upcoming features.
Location
Unite was held at the beautiful city of Copenhagen, in Denmark, Unity’s birth country, where it was founded in 2004. The conference took place in the lonely and impressive Bella Center Hotel, where more than 3,000 people and 150 speakers attended.
What it matters
Unity keeps stepping it up in many aspects. Apart from continuing to lead as one of the most popular engines at the moment, it wants to gain ground in other areas, like automobiles, architecture, movies and animation. Another of its great promises is still DOTS (Data-Oriented Technology Stack), which we have already seen and heard of C# Job System, Entity Component System and Burst Compiler.
Automobile
We were able to witness how different companies are already starting to use Unity to develop car software. Some use it for the visual part of the dashboard, for autonomous car simulation, for ads or for presentations. They use VR and AR so as to see the inside or parts of the vehicles, which seems promising for future tools.
Architecture
We got to see Unity Reflect, a tool to visualize real-time architecture projects by synchronizing BIM and CAD files metadata combined with AR and VR. This will bring a brand new way of carrying out projects like these.
Animations & Movies
As we have seen last year, Unity is still stressing out the importance of animators and directors using Engine for their work. And, in case you didn’t know, the last The Lion King movie used Unity. Interesting, huh?
The animators in London would receive “3D scene files,” according to Newman, that contained the three-dimensional camera moves. MPC’s task was to translate that camerawork, which had been shot in the Unity game engine, into a version of the movie that had final, production quality, assets and animation. It was a new workflow for the company, but one that provided some advantages. The camera tracking had already been handled, for instance. “The virtual production kind of took that away from us,” Newman said. And unlike The Jungle Book, the team didn’t have to shoot around any live-action performances. Everything was CG.
The Keynote
Highlights
2D Features
Some excellent new features were presented, like 2D Lights, 2D shadows, 2D ShaderGraph and more.
Rapid iteration workflow for Mobile
Getting in PlayMode will be much faster now! Unity realized that we all carry out play testing in the editor, which is why getting into Play Mode faster will save a lot of time.
ScriptOnly: the compiled library of scripts will be cached, which will make our builds to be much faster. We will also be able to Patch to add changes in our code and update the library.
Device Preview: the frame will be now simulated and have information on the different devices, as well as their safe area. With this, we will have a better vision on how our games look in the different devices (it won’t simulate hardware).
UI Builder
In the 2018 Unite in Los Angeles, UI Elements was presented, a new UI framework that Unity started using for the same Editor as well as for the games themselves. This year they presented UI Builder, a tool that enables to create UI easily, using UI Elements. They also showed UI Debugger, a tool that allows us to debug UI Elements, providing very useful information.
Package Manager
With Unity Package Manager, the delivery of the new features is facilitated, both in Unity and our own packages. In a nearby future, everything will be distributed through this tool, but in the meantime its important to learn how it works and how to create a package.
Workflow & Creation
In 2019.3 will be experimental On-demand import feature. This will import only the assets when you need them and runs in the background without interrupting your work.
Core & Performance
In 2020.1 the Editor performance will be improved to create responsive, intuitive and predictable experience.
DOTS, DOTS and more DOTS
As you know, Data Oriented Technology Stack is Unity’s newest feature and they want to highlight that. Since last year, Unity has been changing its core components (Physics, Networking, Audio and more). This is why all the several talks on this matter don’t come as a shocker.
Unity 2020 Features
One of the many talks that the Unite have is the roadmap. This is an interesting talk on the new features and mainly, the Unity version that will have them.
Summary
All in all, we think these were the most relevant aspects, even if there were many other interesting topics. If you want to watch all the Unite Copenhagen videos, you can do it by clicking here.
Authors:
