Posts Tagged ‘unity’
Unity is fast. Unity 3.5 preview is available with exporting to Flash 3D/Stage3D available to test.
Unity has been very quick to add this to their editor and platform. I wasn’t sure how much Flash 3D would get traction if not for UDK and Unity support, as they also work so well on mobile devices. As everyone knows there is an immense mobile disruption and Adobe recently pulled mobile Flash player support. It is possible this will be resurrected as just the Flash Player when/if mobile ever really supports plugins in browsers well, current hardware and technology may be too early – the plugin may have also gone the way of the app on mobile. There is always a need for advancement to standards though, html5 is largely influenced by Flash and others. I think there will always be a need for technologies that are innovating ahead of standards, which leads to better standards later. Plugins are yet to exist on mobile in a useful way in favor of native apps, due to mobile device hardware limitations in the current generation. There will probably always be a need of some plugins for web games and interactives. And here Unity and Flash have been strong in that area, coming together to tackle 3D and hardware rendering is a great match.
Unity exporting to Flash Stage3D will provide a spark for the Flash Player 11 over WebGL as there is still some benefits to a proprietary solution to plugins currently. Internet Explorer is still holding out on WebGL and Flash 11 will be able to enter the IE moat. This export option allows another way to get your game on the web in a browser in addition to the Unity Player when exporting from the Unity tools. Game companies like Zynga, Playfish/EA, etc will probably be more apt to use the Flash 3D exported version rather than Unity Player only due to market saturation/penetration. I hope Unity Player support continues or possibly Unity gets bought by Flash and Unity becomes Flash. The integration could be good, but also bad for Unity if they don’t keep their player going so they don’t have to wait for the Flash Player standard from Adobe.
There is an immense market waiting for hardware accelerated games in the browser even for 2D games from core to social games, all of them need to move lots of sprites, logic and game renders around that require performance. Unity to Flash 3D has a slight edge over WebGL in that is is a single player and compiled assets, and supported by the best 3D/2D/game/interactive editor out there in terms of production pipeline. Flash Player is still compiled and a bit faster than WebGL scripted but there is still limitations on what you can do without a compiled app to run; interpreted code still adds heavy weight and delays to the 33ms needed on each frame for 30fps. An example of performance using Box2D across native to scripted rendering.
Unity has given us all a present to play with for the holidays, I am sure it will take some time to get right. But having this tool to iterate on and seeing what Flash 11 Stage3D can do as an export target will be fun.
There is even a contest that you can enter over the holidays to win some prizes and the entries are judged by none other than UnitZeroOne aka Ralph Hauwert, as well as Lucas Meijer and Unity’s CEO David David Helgason.
Unity 3.5 Preview
It’s alive! Unity Technologies has a preview of their Unity export to Flash 3D (Molehill now called Stage3D) posted. Unity and Flash exporting was announced earlier this year. This is great as it provides huge benefits for Unity developers and Flash developers for games.
Over the last few months here at Unity, we have been hard at work on, amongst many other cool things, the ability to publish from Unity to the Flash Player. This means that next to the already existing build targets of a Unity project, one will be able to target Flash with Stage3D, announced for Flash Player 11.
…
A sneak preview
This video preview shows the Shadowgun game demo by Madfinger Games, a highly anticipated iOS & Android Unity built game. Except now, it is exported for and running in the Flash Player !
Unity provides the 3d + editor pipeline tools that are arguably the best for web/mobile/desktop/console games. Flash it ubiquitous across all browsers and Unity content will be seen more often if users already have Flash and don’t need to download the Unity WebPlayer plugin. I do hope the Unity WebPlayer stays strong but if Flash 3D Stage3D low level player can integrate 3d with user interfaces kind of like how games use scaleform for killer interfaces layers on and into high quality hardware accelerated games, then we are all in for a treat, both developers, designers and consumers.
Unity is smart to provide more and more platform exports that are solid but I’d also like to see exporting to html5/WebGL. But for controlling the experience entirely in a plugin today, Unity and Flash are the top two interactive and gaming plugins that provide tremendous content and opportunity for the web. Unity also provides for better low level export to Android and iOS (in addition to desktop mac and pc, consoles). Seems like Adobe should buy Unity soon but hope that they don’t sometimes as the competition is nice.
How are the new Stage3D APIs different from the 3D functionality introduced in Flash Player 10?
In Flash Player 10, we introduced APIs that allowed ActionScript developers and designers to apply 3D effects to 2D content. Those 3D effects allow developers to add perspective and projection to content – which could also be described as 2.5D or “postcards in space.” Additionally, these 3D effects are software rendered and cannot be used for highly complex scenes with a lot of content to render.
The new low-level APIs will provide advanced 3D and 3D engine developers the flexibility to leverage GPU hardware acceleration for significant performance gains. Today, Flash Player, renders thousands of non z-buffered triangles at approximately 30 Hz. With the new Stage3D APIs, developers can expect hundreds of thousands of z-buffered triangles to be rendered at HD resolution in full screen at around 60 Hz. Using the new 3D APIs in Flash Player and AIR will make it possible to deliver sophisticated 3D experiences across almost every computer and device connected to the Internet.
Why is Adobe adding 3D functionality to Flash Player?
3D has been one of the most popular requests from our customers. Enabling true 3D experiences in Flash Player aligns with Adobe’s commitment to innovation and delivering a more complete Flash Platform.
Adobe evolved the web with video and now we are going to evolve the web again with 3D. From interactive websites, e-commerce, and marketing to gaming, 3D will be available to everyone, everywhere.
Does this mean the 3D APIs introduced in Flash Player 10 will be deprecated?
No, the initial 3D APIs introduced in Flash Player 10 continue to provide designers, interactive designers and developers a simple way to apply 3D effects to 2D content. The new low-level 3D APIs are targeted to advanced developers for building complex 3D experiences leveraging GPU hardware acceleration. Choosing one API over another one will depend on the use case and type of content created.
What are the requirements for 3D to work in Flash Player?
We are working to ensure 3D content always works with the best performance, regardless of context and hardware configuration. The 3D APIs will rely on DirectX 9 on Windows and OpenGL 1.3 on MacOS and Linux. For mobile platforms, Flash Player will rely on OpenGL ES 2.0. For those graphics cards that aren’t supported, Flash Player will elegantly fallback to a fast software rasterizer called SwiftShader, a technology licensed from TransGaming.
How do the Stage3D APIs compare to WebGL’s proposal to have the capability be available through browsers and HTML5?
In terms of design, our approach is very similar to the WebGL design. However, we offer a consistent, browser-agnostic solution that will enable advanced 3D experiences on almost every computer and device connected to the Internet. Additionally, GPU-accelerated 3D in Flash Player will build on all the expressiveness features that exist today in Adobe Flash Player.
Interactive on the web is changing at a rapid clip. The path of the next wave of ineractive and gaming on the web is beginning to materialize.
WebGL, Canvas grouped with html5 are final and providing new landscapes to draw on and new ways to make levels to beat. Most browsers and platforms are supporting this technology. Tools like Three.js make that very fun. Mozilla Firefox, Chrome and Safari are including WebGL + canvas and mostly hardware accelerated, making Javascript an even more powerful glue of the web.
Adobe is going low level with Flash ‘Molehill’ 3D and hardware acceleration platform that companies like Unity will be including as an export target.
Microsoft has finally laid out their plans. Silverlight is alive with Silverlight 5 / 3D powered by XNA (any surprise? guess it isn’t dead) and hardware acceleration throughout Internet Explorer, this appears to be Microsoft’s version of the future.
Plugins like Flash, Unity, Silverlight, others will continue to push the bounds cross platform where standards cement the technology behind it for a platform to reach the next innovative step.
Mobile has blown up the scene with native and low-level focus, causing web platforms to also go low level for more performance thanks to Apple and now Android. Native languages like C, C++ and Objective-C came roaring back as the hardware was reset a bit back to late 90s/early 2000s processor and graphics power. However with mobile and cpu cost on platform as service system, native will stay more over the coming years.
Games, interactive and entertainment projects and apps are going to be even more fun. New opportunities all over the place. Game on!
Making 2D games in Unity is getting better with products like RageSpline for making vector like splines to create objects (texturable or color), by far one of the best additions to the Unity Asset Store. The Unity Asset store is a great new place for inspiring products that are excellent, RageSpline shows why.
$50 in the Unity Asset Store but worth it, I hope it is expanded to import many vector formats.
The author is Juha Kiili is the author of this awesome piece of tech and it is seemingly doing well. This could be a full fledged 2d toolkit easily with many import/export capabilities.
Features of RageSpline
- Creating 2D meshes and lines with bézier-based splines.
- Outlining with single color, variable width per control point + natural/sharp switch per point.
- Solid one color fills.
- Linear gradient fills with two colors and GUI-adjustable scale, offset position and rotation.
- Emboss styling with two colors and GUI-adjustable adjustable scale, rotation and smoothness variable.
- Texturing support with GUI-adjustable scale, offset and rotation.
- Automatic physics generator.
- Adjustable vertex count for outline, fill, emboss and physics.
- Example game included: RageCar.
Other Asset Store must haves like EZ-GUI and Sprite Manager make the 2D game creation experience in Unity very focused on the game development and design with performance handled.
At the Flash Games Summit today there was good news from Unity and Adobe about the Flash 3D API called Molehill. Adobe’s Flash 3D API Molehill public preview was released and Unity announced they will be adding export support for it.
New features available in the current Incubator build include:
- “Molehill” 3D APIs for Flash Player and AIR — A new set of low-level, GPU-accelerated 3D APIs that enable advanced 3D experiences across devices through the Adobe Flash Platform runtimes.
- Cubic Bezier Curves — Using the cubicCurveTo drawing API, developers can easily create cubic Beziers without requiring custom ActionScript code.
This is really a new era of browser based game development support that is going to be very exciting. It was announced at the Flash Games Summit by Thibault Imbert (Adobe Product Manager) and Lee Brimelow (Adobe Platform Evangelist) after they explained and showed examples to the audience of what “Molehill” could do for flash games.
Thibault has a list of available Molehill enabled 3D engines already:
Also a test of hardware accelerated molehill vs software rendered flash:
- Check 2D animation with the display list (check your CPU usage)
- Check 2D animation with Molehill (check your CPU usage)
Flash Molehill is coming and Unity will be targeting it for export. Unity states that they will allow it as an export option just like there are mobile options for iOS and Android.
These are exciting times. Today, at the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco (of which we’re proud Gold Sponsors), Adobe has announced the public availability of a beta version of the Flash Player, codenamed Molehill, that has a very interesting new feature: hardware accelerated 3D support.
Molehill exposes a very low-level shader-based interface to the graphics hardware. Adobe has decided to focus on that low-level part, and do that really well. The molehill pre-release will not be shipping with a 3D engine, scene building tools, model and animation importers / exporters, physics, lighting or lightmap creation tools, etc.
The article states that Unity will be keeping the Unity Player and the developer will decide when to target Flash or Unity Players or other platforms like desktop, mobile that are currently available and use the rendering platforms that work best with each (DirectX/OpenGL/OpenGL ES/Molehill… maybe WebGL in the future).
There is no announcement of a date but Unity is pretty fast to add updates and new platform versions so if they take this on they will ship. Currently they mention using Unity and coding with AS3 within Unity script or using Mono.NET C#/Javascript/Boo as currently used. An intersting option is using Unity to create content and code in C#/Javascript over AS3.
Unity addresses these issues here:
Q. Is this the end of the Unity’s own Web Player?
Absolutely not. The Flash and Unity Web Players both have their strengths. We’re excited by the opportunity to target the Flash Player and all of its features with Unity, but there will be plenty of experiences that the Unity plugin is better suited for. It will be up to developers in the end, to decide whether they want to target only the Flash Player, only the Unity Web Player, or some combination of the two (now things are getting interesting!)
Q. What programming language will I use?
You’ll have two options:
- For people with a Flash background:
Target our ActionScript API directly from Flash. Think:
var go:GameObject = new GameObject(“Just normal ActionScript 3 code”);- For people with a Unity background:
Script your content in C# / JavaScript / Boo, like you’re used to, and have Unity automatically translate it to ActionScript when you hit publish.
Adobe is good to move to a model where hardware acceleration is part of the platform. Since Molehill is low level and competing products like Unity, WebGL, and others would take that in time, opening it so others can build tools on their platform will attract interesting new developments like this.
There is an article at gamasutra about Flash vs. Unity for the future of web 3d games. But it really is the future of true, hardware accelerated gaming, applications and interactives, not just 3d but massive, immersive 2d+3d works/projects on the web and available via browser.
Adobe, or Macromedia previously, owned 3d games with Director (8.5 with Shockwave3d) for a time, but that was really before mainstream was ready (2000-2001-ish). There was a lack of computers with dedicated video cards and GPUs. Today, even the bottom line computers have a decent video card. Also, the surge in mobile and the need for native level access to graphics hardware has spawned this new battle (Thanks Apple!).
Unity has the pipeline, 3d and has been doing that well since 2005/6. They emerged from Director and even have some members of the Director team working at Unity. Adobe is just getting back into this, they dropped Director (or left it wavering) and are now going to attack on the Flash level not just against Unity but to hardware accelerate it for mobile and better video playback hopefully (they currently hardware accelerate scaled video to full screen).
Like the Silverlight vs. Flash product competition, Unity vs. Flash is actually a good thing for developers and both platforms. With Torque3d wavering, html5 and WebGL more than a year out (and WebGL maybe 2-3) for broad mainstream support (I am looking at you IE), this is the time for Flash to move on this and Unity to keep going they way they have. Hardware acceleration makes these plugins relevant and ahead of the current standards emerging in html5 and WebGL.
I love using both tools and they have come a long way since painful Director lingo/w3d/plugin hell for hardware accelerated gaming, apps and interactives. The gaming industry and web are merging, these two products should get a good portion of that projected $87-billion total game market’s annual revenue in five years, as investment advisor Digi-Capital predicts.
It is also a great time to be a developer having these companies vie for developer support. It is exciting that hardware acceleration, 3d games, and widening game industry are all emerging and will be a big thing for the next few years at a minimum.
It is finally time to kick it up a notch. Game on!
Unity 3 has been released. It was released to the world late yesterday. I have been using it for a few beta releases and it is very nice and many great improvements. One awesome improvement is the occlusion culling was ported from iPhone to all Unity builds. Other notable features are a unified editor for all platforms, deferrered rendering and more.
Grab Unity 3 and take a spin.
Occlusion Culling Demo
Unity 3 Feature – Occlusion Culling with Umbra from Unity3D on Vimeo.
Apple’s official statement on this topic.
Well good news, after the massive frenzy of 3.3.1 in the App Store Terms of Service, Apple has been wise to loosen restrictions on the AppStore for native apps that use scripting such as Mono, Actionscript, Lua and others as long as it doesn’t download any code (for security reasons). The apps have to be AOT Ahead of Time compiled which Unity, MonoTouch and the AIR iPhone Packager for Flash apps all use or the script has to be downloaded with the binary that was approved or an update (Lua scripting for instance).
This is a huge change in stance for Apple and basically allows Adobe Flash based AIR apps to run on the device natively again. I think this is a very wise decision by Apple to let the market decide on what is a quality app while respecting Apple’s concerns about downloading and running code that might create security concerns (non compiled script outside the web sandbox).
The only bummer is that we won’t see a C++ Unity version which was plan b. But the benefits are really great for all types of developers as long as it is safe and with Apple’s latest update, quality.
Developers using Unity, MonoTouch, Adobe Flash AIR Packager, Lua scripters etc are now all safe as long as it is AOT compiled and scripts it uses are downloaded with the binary and not downloaded later (only content and data can be downloaded unless it is in an approved app update).
All your technologies are safe… for now.. dun dun dun…
However Apple also tightened quality control so they will be rejecting bad or duplicate apps, so at the same time this has made it harder to get apps approved if there is questionable quality or too many of one type of app. It is good on the surface but also I believe the store should be an open market where the best app wins, crap will naturally filter out. This is probably a stop-gap for all the apps that will be submitted with AIR or other less complex platforms because more novice users will be submitting them. So this is good for skilled developers on any platform making quality and original content. But it could cause some problems.
Engadget has some nice covereage if you dont’ have access to the iOS developer site:
Pretty sweet web racing advergame for Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by C4RL05, made with Unity. Carlos Ulloa is of course the same dude that made the Unity HelloRacer. He is also famous for starting Papervision3D for Flash but has been doing some amazing work in Unity for more immersive 3D experiences.
The game is another example of how when you need really immersive experiences for advergames or brands, Unity is looking like a great choice. Unity isn’t perfect for many things that Flash is such as video, 2d games, mixing media, mic/cam apps, and data, but for games where 3d is required it seems to be the way to go.
