Advanced Features of the Unity Asset Store

Game app developers at Logic Simplified believe it’s important that there are no barriers in the development process. Unity Asset Store offers flexibility and more choices for bettering the process. The combination of plug-ins, assets, community support, and other features that the Unity Asset Store provides help game developers find advanced solutions to complex problems.

1. Access to a wide variety of assets

The Unity Asset Store has a massive library of free and commercial 3D assets, including 3D models, textures, sound effects, tutorials, music, animations, editor extensions, and plugins, that can be used to create more detailed and immersive games. By using pre-built assets, our game app developers save time and effort in creating assets, and focus on other aspects of game development, such as video game mechanics, level design, and user experience. 

2. Community Support

Collaboration between the people of the gaming community is essential for sharing assets, tools, information, tutorials, and feedback. The Unity community is a large community of developers that helps game developers learn new skills, improve their workflow, and create better games through -

• The Unity Forums offer information about the latest developments, allow you to submit feedback, and connect with other members of the community. 
• Blogs on this platform provide the members with news and information to keep them updated with all that is happening within the Unity ecosystem. 
• This platform welcomes everyone to engage by asking questions and replying with Answers so that all members can help each other. And its built-in voting system ensures that the questioner gets the best answer.  
• The Issue Tracker helps users get information on the status of bugs and the bugs that could be a threat are fixed on priority to avoid any obstruction in the workflow.
• Unity offers high-quality resources for the developers in the form of Documentation. This covers all information including guides and scripts regarding the Unity game engine platform.

3. Improved Game Quality 

The Unity Asset Store offers a variety of high-quality assets that can enhance the overall quality of a game. For example, our developers use advanced lighting systems, particle effects, and AI systems to improve the game's graphics and gameplay. You can also find tools that help with level design, AI programming, and UI design. Our professional game designers and developers ensure that the game has a polished and professional look and feel.

4. Supported Asset Types

Unity supports common image file types like BMP, TIFF, TGA, JPG, and PSD. While several types of assets are native to the Unity Editor, different platforms, such as iOS, Android, Windows desktop, Mac OS desktop, Linux desktop, WebGL, and Unity Web Player also support these assets. This multi-platform support is an asset in itself.

5. Increased Productivity with Cost-effectiveness

With access to ready-made assets, developers at Logic Simplified create high-quality games faster and more efficiently. This helps us meet project deadlines and launch games on time.

6. License and Support

The Unity Asset Store offers various license options to suit individual needs. Licenses vary depending on the asset but generally offer lifetime support and access to updates. Paid assets may include additional features such as extended support or customization options.

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Benefits of Using the Unity Asset Store - Our Experience

We asked our expert game app developers for the top benefits of using the Unity Asset Store:

• Saves time and effort: The Unity Asset Store provides a huge selection of assets, tools, and resources that saves developers’ time and effort when building games. Apart from our top concept artists creating assets from scratch, developers can simply purchase or download them from the store. We are known for our lighting-fast turnaround time, and tools like these help!
• High-quality assets:  As a leading Unity game development company, we give a lot of attention to quality. We ensure that every asset and tool is up to par to guarantee a high-quality gaming experience. The Unity Asset Store, with its thoroughly tested and optimized high-quality assets, helps us in our goal.
• Cost-effective: Many assets and tools on the Unity Asset Store are available at affordable prices, and some are even free. It’s great to find good quality assets that are also easy on the pocket - for us and clients, both! 
• Customizable: Most assets available on the Unity Asset Store are customizable. This allows developers to create unique and personalized games without having to start from scratch.

Best Practices for Using the Unity Asset Store

Here are some best practices that we use to speed up our game development process and drive performance.

• Read the asset description and license agreement carefully before downloading any assets. 
• Before downloading, look at the asset’s tags and ratings. It will give you an overview of how well others have liked this asset and whether it fits your project well.
• Try out the asset before you commit to buying it. Many assets on the Unity Asset Store offer free trials or demos for you to test out before purchasing.
• Keep your asset library organized and well-structured to easily find the assets you may need.
• Take advantage of Unity’s support system if you have questions or issues with the asset store. They are always available to help!

Conclusion

Logic Simplified is a game development company with a team of skilled, experienced and confident game developers leveraging the latest tools in game development, including Spine Animation. Our Unity 3D game developers have been successfully delivering exemplary Unity game development services to various industries. 

By integrating Unity assets, we have created immersive experiences that are truly next-level. Whether a virtual office or an interactive game, Unity Engine can make any experience come alive in ways that were not possible before. Unity’s assets store has helped us create extraordinary AR and VR experiences for our clients. If you have any queries regarding Unity game development, look no further and contact us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com or connect over the call.

Unity AI and its Innovative Approaches and Solutions

The game designers and developers at Logic Simplified are very excited! They want to explore how Unity AI will add to our existing expertise in creating real-time 3D experiences. We have high hopes for the new AI-integrated features and what they can bring to the table. In a few points, let’s discuss more on what major features will drive Unity AI.  

Unity AI-driven Characters 

Unity created an AI-powered high-fidelity character and named it Orb. This AI character is a way of Unity showing how its platform can be used not only to create and animate characters but also to dynamically interact with them. Inworld AI (a no-code solution) for Unity allows us as users to create generative AI characters with expressive personalities, memories, knowledge, motivations, natural dialogue, and more that make them more lifelike. 

You may also read about Why to use Unity ML-Agents to create intelligent gaming experience?

Unity Muse - Next-generation AI

Source: Unity

Unity Muse lets creators develop games and real-time 3D applications, games, characters, and experiences with natural input like simple text-based prompts and sketches. Its hero feature is the Muse Chat which helped Logic Simplified find relevant information across Unity documentation, training resources, and support content to speed up and ease up our game development process and troubleshoot issues. Also, its suite of AI tools reduced the creation time giving us the green light to be more creative and innovative. Using this feature, we could quickly create 2D sprite assets, instantly generate realistic textures, and do so much more with minimal coding.

Unity Sentis 

Unity Sentis greatly enhances a game or app on any device by enabling AI models in the Unity Runtime. We could embed neural networks in our builds to enable previously unimaginable real-time experiences and enhance gameplay and other functionality directly on end-user platforms. This extensively reduced the complexity, latency, and cost associated with model hosting in the cloud.

AI-powered Unity Asset Store

Source: Unity 

This is one of Unity’s AI Verified Solutions which are third-party packages that are available on the Unity Asset Store and are of the highest quality and compatibility standards. The Unity AI Marketplace offers professional-quality AI solutions from providers like Convai, Inworld AI, LMNT, Modl.ai, Layer AI, Leonardo Ai, Polyhive, Zibra AI, and Replica Studios. The plugins offer solutions such as AI-powered smart NPCs, AI-produced VFX, textures, 2D sprites and 3D models, generative speech, in-game testing with AI, and more, to support the development process and overcome challenges during the phase. These verified solutions, services, and support are categorized into three categories - Generative AI, AI/ML Integration, and Behavior AI.

Unlocking Unity AI Marketplace and its Verified Solutions  

While our team studies and explores the scope of Unity AI, there is  general consensus that this could be path-breaking for game development companies like ours.  AI-driven plugins, third-party tools, scalable workflows, and SDKs ensure that our creators have access to the highest-quality solutions. There is a range of AI solutions to choose from and ensure that the solution fits every project's needs, including - 

Generative AI Solutions - It includes tools that let developers generate assets they would use in their projects.

Behavior AI Solutions - It includes tools that allow developers to create behavior in the game environment.

AI/ML Integration Solutions - It includes tools that could help in enhancing the creation of workflows or connecting projects to services from AI vendors.

Unity AI — The Next Big Thing for Us

With AI and Unity coming together, our Unity game development company, Logic Simplified has been onto it to create beautiful yet interactive gaming and metaverse experiences for its clients. Through AI-based agents that interact with the intelligent characters of the gaming world and provide intelligent decisions based on insights, Unity AI’s potential is at a stage where it is exponentially evolving and growing. And, it seems the unveiling of Unity’s very new AI tools — Muse, Sentis, and the AI-powered Unity Asset Store will impact every aspect of the creative development process and make game development faster and better. If you want any suggestions or have queries regarding Unity Game Design and Development, look no further and contact us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com

Features Of Unity Animation System 

Unity Animation system provides a set of powerful tools and features to create simple and complex animations, listed below are a few of them:  

• • Simple workflow and setup of animations for every element of Unity including objects, characters, and properties

• • Humanoid animation retargeting - The feature applies the same set of animations to various character models

• • Masking to create partial animations and enhance performance

• • Animating different components or body parts with other logic

• • Create realistic movement for limbs and joints with inverse kinematics 

• Simplified workflow for lining up animation clips and transitions, and their convenient preview

What are Unity Animation Components? 

To work with animations in Unity, you'll need to become acquainted with three key components: Animator, Animator Controller, and Animation Clips. These components perform together to control and manage your character's movements, along with other key components that contribute to Unity game development.

Animator

The Animator component is essential for recreating and blending animations on a character. It is Unity’s main visual tool to handle multiple animations in a GameObject based on the State Machine approach. For using Animator, you need to connect it to the character's GameObject in Unity which represents characters, props, and scenery. 

Animator Controller 

Once the Animator component is connected, you will need to assign an Animator Controller to it. The Animator Controller attaches to a GameObject and is controlled through code. It is the brains behind the processes, driving the logic for when and how animation should run. It lets you define the logic and conditions for moving between different states or animations.   

Animation Clips

Animations in Unity are created and operated using Animation Clips. These can be taken from external sources, like 3D modeling software or the Unity Asset Store. You can also create them straight away in Unity using the Animation window. An Animation Clip denotes a particular animation sequence or behavior, such as animating a walk cycle, combat attack animation, or idle animation.  

Animation Window

The Animation Window is the crucial interface for creating and modifying animation clips directly in Unity. Along with animating movement, the editor also allows you to animate variables of materials and components and enhance your Animation Clips with Animation Events. It delivers a timeline-based view for you to keyframe and manipulate various properties of your game objects over time.

Keyframes and Curves

An Animation Curve has multiple keys which are control points that the curve passes through. By positioning keyframes at different points along the timeline, you specify how the object or character should move or transform over time.  A frame in which one or more of the shown curves have a key is called a keyframe. Curves combine the keyframes and allow for interpolation between values. 

Animation Events

Animation Events are tags you can put at specific points in an animation clip. You can also use Animation Events to call functions at specific points in the timeline. They are useful for synchronizing sound effects, particle effects, or other game events with animation. For instance, for an animated character, you might want to add events to walk cycles indicating when the footstep sounds should play.

Animation Layers

Unity uses Animation Layers for managing tricky state machines or different body parts. They allow you to blend multiple animation clips, each with its weight and blending settings. This is handy for overlaying animations like facial expressions, combat movements, or additive animations on top of a base animation. An example would be if you have a lower-body layer for walking/jumping and an upper-body layer for shooting.

Animation Rigging

Animation Rigging works on top of Unity's animation system, and so requires an Animator. Unity's Animation Rigging system offers tools for creating complex character rigs and handling them through animation. It lets you build IK (Inverse Kinematics) setups, custom bone-mapping, and constraints to get refined character animation effects.

Wrapping Up

These are some of the key concepts and features of Unity's animation system.  By leveraging these components, you can create engrossing and vibrant animations for your game characters and objects. Tools like Animator, Animator Controller, and Animation Clips will help you get everything you need to bring your game world to life. With just some practice and playing around, you can unlock the full potential of Unity’s Animation System and take your game development skills to the next level.

You can take the help of Logic Simplified, our game development company to create interactive game projects using advanced and upcoming technologies of the Unity animation system. To know more about us, contact us or drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com.

The creators of the popular JetBrains Rider IDE wrote on their blog“At present, Unity stands out as one of the most popular and versatile cross-platform game engines available, catering to the creation of 2D, 3D, virtual reality, and augmented reality games. Some popular games built with Unity include Angry Birds 2 and Pokémon Go”.

However, they also note that “keeping up with Unity is crucial for anybody working in the game development industry, as the engine keeps evolving and becomes even more capable and powerful over time”.

In this article, we'll take a look at the most recent Unity 2023 upgrades and discuss their various enhancements and bug fixes.

Unity 2022.2.11

The latest version of Unity 2023 is Unity 2022.2.11 which includes numerous improvements and bug fixes to improve reliability and speed.

In light of the problems encountered in version 2022.2.11f1, such as the Frame Debugger VRAM memory leak, flickering orbs while using RenderTargetHandle, and the Linux GUIView crash, Unity has implemented enhancements.

Some of the notable improvements include:

Improved Performance and Stability for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP)

The Universal Render Pipeline (URP) is a ready-made Scriptable Render Pipeline developed by Unity that streamlines artist workflows for creating graphics that run smoothly on various platforms, from mobile devices to high-end gaming consoles and computers.

The Universal RP was updated in the latest version of Unity 2023 to fix an issue where scenes wouldn’t update their camera volume settings after being altered.

Improved HDRP Asset Import Times in Unity 2023

HDRP stands for “High Definition Render Pipeline”, a rendering technology designed by Unity to generate high-quality images in real-time applications, including games, simulations and interactive experiences.

To create highly detailed and realistic visuals, HDRP employs cutting-edge graphics techniques like complex lighting models, post-processing effects, and real-time ray tracing. It can handle high-end graphics features such as physically-based rendering, volumetric effects and high dynamic range (HDR) lighting.

In its update, 2022.2.11, HDRP/Nature/SpeedTree8.shadergraph has been updated to utilize its Subsurface Map for the Transmission Mask node, fixing the issue of unintentional light transmission on tree barks and twigs.

Furthermore, this Unity 2023 update rectifies the excessively bright billboard lighting that previously did not correspond with the 3D geometry's lighting.

More advancements include the following:

• • Enhanced support for multi-resolution rendering

• • Unity will correctly transmit signals to the primary handlers and will no longer encapsulate native crashes in Android's Java exceptions as it previously did.

• • Improved UI Toolkit rendering performance

• Also, Unity 2022.2.11 includes various bug fixes for the Asset Pipeline, Physics, Editor, UI Toolkit, Graphics, Scripting, and XR.

According to Unity's release notes, these changes will help enhance the game's performance and stability built using the Unity engine.

VR and AR Experiences Improvement in Unity 2023

According to the recent blog post by Eric and Dave, the XR Interaction Toolkit 2.3 release introduces various updates and enhancements in VR and AR experiences.

One of the essential updates in XR Interaction Toolkit 2.3 is its support for OpenXR, an open standard for XR runtimes that allows developers to construct apps that perform smoothly across numerous hardware platforms. 

In addition to this, Unity's support for OpenXR also makes it easier to create VR/AR apps that work across several platforms. This paves the way for more diverse deployments of Extended Reality experiences created by developers.

Enhanced haptic feedback is another new feature in the 2.3 release of the XR interaction Toolkit, allowing developers to generate realistic user input while interacting with VR and AR objects. An improved user experience is the result of the update’s new Haptic Feedback system, which gives programmers the freedom to design more intricate and customized haptic feedback patterns.

The new Cross-Platform Input system is another major upgrade included in the XR Interaction Toolkit 2.3. It makes it simpler for developers to make cross-platform apps with consistent input mapping across various devices by providing a standardized impute mapping framework for XR platforms.

The Debut of Unity DevOps in Unity 2023

The use of DevOps technologies and practices has been shown to aid developers in releasing more frequently, finding issues sooner, and providing high-quality, more creative user experiences.

Unity DevOps integrates Version Control and Build Automation, providing users with improved visibility and traceability across tools, automating manual processes, and enabling flexible solution deployments.

In order to help users quickly get started with the platform, this solution features an updated onboarding process, streamlined administration and one billing for all components.

Common tasks on the platform, such as initiating a new build, managing built artifacts, and reviewing a pull request, have been simplified with the new navigation experience.

Conclusion

In conclusion, game designers, skillful gamers, and researchers keep up with the newest versions and features of the Unity engine. The latest update, Version 2022.2.11 of Unity 2023, includes a number of improvements and bug fixes designed to improve the platform’s steadiness and speed.

Notable improvements include improved performance and stability for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), HDRP asset import times, and support for OpenXR, among others. Unity DevOps, a new solution that unifies version control and builds automation, has also been introduced.

As a result of these updates, Unity continues to expand and become more capable and powerful, making it an excellent platform for building top-notch games, virtual reality, and augmented reality experiences. If you are looking for experienced creators to create fun and immersive games with Unity, Logic Simplified is a perfect choice for you. To know more about us, contact us or drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com.

Unity is the most popular game development engine that is used by developers to design and develop entertaining and dynamic games and interactive visualizations. It is a cross-platform gaming engine that lets you create, operate, and monetize 2D and 3D games for various target platforms. However, with the gaming industry on the rise, there is a soaring demand for game developers in the market. Various responsibilities come under the shoulder of a Unity Game developer that we will discuss later in the blog. Unity, the third-party game engine lets Unity developers, artists, and designers create and operate experiences in real-time. It is an extremely flexible, highly extensible, and well documented process. It provides the developers with the flexibility to create interactive prototypes for enhanced user experiences. Its physics, real-time 3D rendering, and animation are great tools that can help you explore and experiment with automation, simulations, and architecture. 

The process of developing a Unity game by Logic Simplified

We have a team of game designers for hire, engineers, coders, and testers who together develop a video game using the Unity game engine. The game development process involves stages such as planning, pre-production, production, testing, pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. It allows the users to develop games in 2D as well and 3D and in languages such as C#, Java, or Boo. A Unity 3D games developer designs and creates high-quality 2D and 3D games and applications using Unity software. 

After the idea is framed and before the development process begins, the team creates a project plan and production roadmap in the pre-production phase where decisions regarding the features and functionalities are finalized. Afterwhich, the game development process begins that includes steps that may vary depending upon the requirement of the game.

1. The process starts by creating a new project in Unity 3D. 

2. You customize the layout using the windows - Scene, Game, Hierarchy, Project, and Inspector.

3. You save the scene and set up the build by choosing the desired platform and player settings.

4. Then create the stage by adding cubes and adding a  plane GameObject.

5. Next, create the player using the GameObjects and add physics by adding components. 

6. Then make the player move by adding and minimizing components. Then start creating a script in the programming language you prefer. Add lighting and fine-tune the camera angle in a way that follows the players and their movements. This is done by creating a script called “cameraMovement”.

7. After all this is done, save the scene and the project. Next, create items and hazards by creating GameObjects and then you test the game.  

Popular and award-winning games like Norman’s Island, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run, Temple Run Trilogy, Subway Surfers, and more have been created using the technology provided by Unity. Highly realistic environments and effects, physically accurate and zero-gravity object behaviors and collisions, baked-quality artwork, and other such features and functionalities have allowed developers to use them to the best of their ability to create realistic animations and interactive games in many games. 

At Logic Simplified, the team of talented and creative Unity game developers follow all the guidelines and create immersive games that represent the client's idea 100%. They work with the highest level of precision when it comes to implementing game functionality, transforming game ideas, concepts, with strong coding, programming, and analytical skills.

You may also read: Hire Unity 3D Game Developers to understand in detail the aspects that make us so good at what we do, the development process that we follow, and get an idea of the kind of work we have done in the past.

Cost to develop a Unity game

It is always better to set a budget for your game project by considering all the factors that will go into producing it, especially hiring.

The various factors that influence the cost of developing a game are the operating platforms, pre-development expenses, complexity of the game, story, and others. To get a better understanding of the same, you may read “How To Determine The Unity3d Game Development Cost”.  

We, as a game development company, provide cost-effective solutions to our clients but at the same time, we offer quality game development skills and services by preparing a customized cost and delivery plan for them. 

Hiring the team 

For all hirers, hiring for any position involves finding, selecting, and hiring candidates that suit the role requirements the best and creating the perfect game development team. The team would mainly include game developers, designers, and testers. The specific technologies that are required for the game will determine the kind of experts one needs to hire. The requirements that are looked into are expertise in a certain programming language, a designing tool, UI/UX, audio, 3D modeling, and other unity game developer skills depending upon the job role.  

The must-have Unity Game Developer Skills: Technical

The most important skills that a Unity developer must possess are as follows - 

1. Knowledge of C# programming skills.    

2. Good knowledge of the Unity software and tools that help in scripting, animation, GUI styles, texture, and more.

3. Experience with technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial intelligence, 2D, and 3D development. 

4. Experience in creating games for console and mobile platforms.  

5. Good knowledge of game physics and particle systems. 

6. Good understanding of Data-oriented programming and Object-oriented programming (OOP).  

7. Experience in working with Entity Component Systems.

8. Good understanding of code versioning tools.

Other than having the applied knowledge and core technical Unity game developer skills, there are other proficiencies that one should look for when hiring a Unity game developer.  

The must-have key proficiencies in a Unity developer    

1. A good game developer is expected to implement game functionality effectively by interpreting design concepts, ideas, and needs into an entertaining and operational game. 

2. Creating games is an intricate and extensive skill. The functionality and versatility of gameplay plays an extremely important role in making a good game. A Unity Developer must have a good understanding to know when and how to focus on the creative side and the coding aspect. Both are equally important like every other minute facet of the game development process.

3. Game development engines nowadays offer a great range of tools and features for the developers to experiment and try new things and using the Unity tools efficiently is what one must know. This can have an astonishing impact on how a game idea turns out. The developer must know how to make the most of the asset store available that offers assets that can be used at various stages of development.      

4. Hard and soft skills of a developer that impacts the development of an idea. The team of Unity developers uses program designs, an extensive experience that includes evaluation of code, testing the performance of the game, identifying errors and problems, and making improvements accordingly.  

5. Knowledge of the Unity framework, writing and maintaining a trusted and reusable code, ensuring the game specifications.

6. Software expertise - Creating a new project, adding and manipulating game objects, organizing and optimizing your work, and importing and using assets from other programs, such as meshes, textures, and audio. Each lesson should refresh your knowledge and prepare you for real questions you’ll face on the exam.

7. Pre-production and scoping are necessary skills that let the developers communicate their abilities to the clients in a way that gives them an understanding of the developer’s work and how a client can trust them with their project. 

To know more about us, just contact us or drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com.

Web Graphics Library is a javascript API that renders interactive 2D and 3D graphics. It was designed by Khronos Group which is a computer software company based out of the US. The WebGL exporter uses WebGL API in Unity 5 to give the game developers the comfort to publish and run GPU-accelerated graphics and Unity 5 webGL games on the web and on any web browser effortlessly without the use of any plug-ins.  

Develop WebGL games with Unity 5

Unity 5 WebGL supports a lot of features that help the developers create and render visual elements with great quality and complexity.    

Global Illumination (GI) 

GI plays a significant role in making the virtual gaming world look more realistic and feel more immersive. Unlike other real time graphics applications, GI is not just limited to how direct light behaves but also models how / indirect light behaves, reflects and creates effects in the virtual world. Objects that are placed in a gaming ecosystem affect each other’s appearance. Unity also backs up the process of Baked GI or Baked Lightmaps where baked GI is pre calculated and stored to render more realistic shadows from indirect light. On the other hand, Precomputed realtime GI computes all possible light and provides information for use by a developer at runtime.

Procedural Materials 

It is Unity’s asset type that functions as standard materials. These are textures that are produced at run-time and the procedural material assets contain procedural material. It provides the developers with the advantages of flexibility, modularity, faster workflow iteration, and reuse. This Procedural Material System supports all hardware configurations on various platforms such as Windows, Linus, Mac, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Each procedural material in Unity lets the developers create unique materials from scratch by setting up a script at runtime. It also lets you integrate complex texture animation to the scene. There are design tools available for the artists to generate procedural materials. Also, applications with substance technology like Allegorithmic’s Substance Designer and other 3D modelling apps are available to create procedural materials.

Linear Rendering 

Linear Rendering support in Unity 5 WebGL ensures consistent lighting across the scenes and assets which is possible when the inputs, outputs, and the computation of a shader are in the right color space. Linear color space workflow gives more precise rendering compared to Gamma color space. While using linear space rendering, the colors blend in a linear color space resulting in precise blending results.  

Movie Textures

These are animated textures that are created by placing a video file in a project’s assets folder to import an image or a video into the Unity Editor. The movie textures inspector has the anisotropic filtering level that makes textures look better, especially from a steep angle. This property of movie textures is used to enhance the appearance of roads, grounds, and floor Textures. The filtering mode of movie textures filters textures in different ways when it is stretched by 3D transformations. Movie textures also comprise the property of loop where after the movie finishes playing, the movie texture loops.  

Like all Unity platforms, Unity 5 WebGL supports font rendering and has access to the fonts that are included by the user in the assets folder and not the ones that are installed in the user’s system. It lets the user create or import fonts for use in GUI Text or Text Mesh components that lets the user change its color using custom Material for the font. The font rendering mode in Unity’s WebGL tells Unity how to implement smoothing to the glyphs (the visual representation of a text element or character).  

WebGL is about creating shaders and to do so it requires a vertex shader and a fragment shader that are linked to one another in a shader program. A vertex shader receives data through attributes (from buffer), uniforms, and textures (from pixels and texels) to calculate the coordinates of vertices and create clip space coordinates. On the other hand, a fragment shader gets its data from uniforms, textures, and varyings (from shaders) to compute the pixel colors. 

WebGL supports Anti-Aliasing that makes the appearance of the graphics smoother and enhanced. This feature can be used on most combinations of browsers and GPUs. Anti-aliasing uses anti-aliasing algorithms that makes the lines appear less jagged as they usually seem in aliasing by surrounding them with shades of colors. 

Reflection Probes 

It works great in changing the reflections on the object according to its surroundings by capturing a spherical view of its environment in all directions.  The reflection probe can be used for a baked, custom, or realtime setup. The box projection, box size, and box offset lets the user enable projection for reflection UV mappings and set the size and the centre of the box where reflection will be applied to the GameObject. The Cubemap in the reflection probe inspector is where the captured image is stored for objects with reflective materials to use it.

Some of the best Unity 5 WebGL games have been developed in recent years and the WebGL API has made that possible by offering its users innumerous frameworks, game engines, tools, and libraries. The artists and developers no longer need the support of third party plugins to carry out simple processes. The Unity 5 WebGL games are enhanced with better quality graphics and hardware. This native, free, and fast technology allows you to use external libraries to create outstanding 3D gaming experiences. 

Browser compatibility

Unity WebGL supports major desktop browsers but the level of performance varies in different browsers. Web Assembly is a format that is portable and load-time efficient and it allows high-performance applications to function on web pages. It has many advantages that include its exemplary load time and performance in four leading browsers. New features, functionalities, WebGL2.0 graphics API support and an emscripten that lets the user compile applications and libraries written in C or C++ ahead of time and run efficiently in most web browsers.  

WebGL Browser scripting 

With Unity WebGL, the web developers can explicitly interface with the browser’s javascript engine allowing all elements on the web page to interact with each other. This communication on the web or implementation of functionality using web APIs is carried out by the browser’s javascript engine through interfacing. The data and notifications are sent from the browser’s javascript to the Unity script by calling methods on GameObjects in your content. With Unity WebGL, the users can publish content as javascript programs. 

In order to use browser Javascript in your project, you need to add javascript sources to your project and use your script code to call its functions. An Emscripten provides the GL.textures array to access a texture in WebGL and map native texture IDs from Unity to WebGL texture objects.

Unity 5 WebGL features lets you you map textures that are arrays of data including colors that the user can access in the shader program. The mapping of textures can be done by supplying data (add code) from Javascript to textures.              

Logic Simplified, is a Unity game development company based out of Dehradun that has a team of web developers that hold the relevant knowledge, skills, and expertise to create 3D canvas graphics for the Unity 5 WebGL games. If you’re looking for  passionate creators to build you a powerful and high performance WebGL game with Unity 5's striking 2D and 3D graphics programming interface, hire Unity game developers at Logic Simplified. To know more about us, just drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com.

For those of you who are not well acquainted with the term “Unity Machine Learning Agents”, it is an open source Unity plugin with a license of Apache 2.0. that allows developers to train, modify, and embed intelligent agents to create an intelligent gaming experience by creating smart behaviors and reasonable virtual characters. A Unity ML-Agent allows programmers to not just code but teach these agents and make them intelligent using imitation learning, neuro evaluation, deep reinforcement learning, and other ML techniques through a simple Python API that contains the RL Algorithm for interacting and manipulating a learning environment. These Unity ML-Agents learn from the AI environments that contribute towards enhancing gameplay and giving players an immersive gaming experience. 

In September 2017, Unity released its first version of Machine Learning Agent Toolkit, the v.10 Unity package which was verified for the 2020.2 Editor release. Then in May 2021, they released the v2.0 version of the ML-Agent Unity package. The primary benefits that it gave the developers was to use Unity to train and integrate intelligent agents with API stability, easy installation, and a verified package. Over the years, these agents have improved and evolved in the gaming industry by addition of new training options like curriculum learning, the curiosity module and by improving the speed and efficiency, self play for multi-agent scenarios, and providing native, cross-platform inference support for all Unity ML-Agents. This toolkit has been developed by Unity through the years and there continues to be work done to make it even better in its performance and efficacy.

You may also read: Unity or unreal for game development

Machine Learning in video game creation is leveraged by developers across the globe to adjust game balance by training models. This helps in creating games that are entertaining, balanced and aligned with the creator’s vision. However, Unity brings these amazing innovations and upgrades that contribute towards the expansion and transformation of the gaming industry.

1. Grid sensors in Unity ML-Agents were developed and restructured by Eidos and added to the extensions package with changes to both sensor interfaces and behaviors.

2. It has cross-platform inference support which means that the developers that use Unity inference engine can deploy their ML-Agents on any platform that is supported in Unity.

3. It offers 18+ example Unity starter environments which contain the Unity scenes and all the game characters. This environment is a scene that has one or more ML-agents and other GameObjects that the agents can interact with. The Unity game developers can use these environments to get started on their projects by just opening an example environment and training the agent in it. Having said that, the agents have a certain behavior which can be Heuristic (this is used to test the environment), Training (where the AI trains), or Inference (where the learned model is used to make decisions) which determines how the agent will make decisions.

4. A Unity ML-agents Extensions package contains optional add ons to the C# SDK for the Unity ML-agents Toolkit. Its structure includes documentation, Editor, runtime, and tests where the runtime includes Physics-based sensors, input system package integration, custom grid-based sensors.

5. The Match 3 Unity environment was introduced in Release 10 and new features were added to the extensions package.

6. Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) is being used to build Unity’s core that lets builds be smaller in size and run faster boosting its overall performance. This also lets developers train agents in large and complex Unity environments.

7. NVIDIA PhysX 4.0 works great for robotic simulation and thus Unity 2020.1 has a new articulation joint system powered by NVIDIA PhysX 4.1 which has improved in robotic arms and joints simulation. It works on a featherstone’s algorithm, a non-linear iterative solver, and a reduced coordinate representation which helps in shrinking the unwanted stretch on the joints and helps accomplish stable movement.

8. There are several training options that are environment agnostic and environment specific that it offers the users. Curiosity for sparse-reward environments, RND for Sparse-reward Environments, Self-Play and MA-POCA for multi-agent scenarios, and few others are the varied training options.

9. The trained intelligent agents help in automated testing of the game builds, controlling NPC behaviour,  and assessing numerous game design decisions previous to its release. 

10. Its progressive algorithms are based on TensorFlow that lets Unity 3D game developers train brainy agents in different Unity environments with ease.

The working of an ML-Agent

The process involves Integration, training and Embedding. It starts by consolidating and connecting the Unity ML-Agent toolkit package. Then the agents are trained as per the desired behavior. Once the training ends, the trained agent has to be embedded back to the Unity project. The setup is quick and easy and requires minimum coding. 

From v1.0 to v2.0

In the past years there have been fifteen key updates bringing new training algorithms, improvements in workflow, and promoting performance. Cooperative Push and Dungeon Escape are two new sample environments that have also been developed. Both the environments highlight tasks that require one agent (in Dungeon Escape) and also multiple agents (in Cooperative Push) to complete. Then another feature update that the toolkit offered is to enable game characters’ reactions to various entities. The memory allocation during interference has been more enhanced. The deprecated APIs are removed in the newer version and along with that the API footprint is also reduced. The three core developments in this version have been the ability to train corporate behaviors, support training multiple tasks, and enable agents to observe various entities in their environment. 

The newer 2.0 version was about algorithm improvements and enhanced approaches like Grid Sensors component, Match 3 game boards, ML-Agents Cloud offering, exciting new game environments and with every release there were many more incredible features that were added to the list.

You may also like to read about ML-Agents v2.0 release

The update with ML-Agent Cloud gave the programmers the ability to start, pause, resume, and stop training experiments whenever they like. It lets them upload game builds with ML-Agents implemented. Multiple experiments can be launched at the same time with cutting-edge machines and also results can be downloaded from multiple training experiments. Other than this, there is continuous work being done to develop ML-Agents Cloud and to add great functionalities to it.

The Closing

The Unity Machine Learning Agents Toolkit comprises of a C# software development kit and an advanced library to train AI agents for 2D, 3D, and VR and AR environments. The advancements in ML in Game AI development and the tools, features, and programmes in this tool-kit allows developers and artists to create real-time solutions for different industries. 

This plugin in the Unity game engine lets game developers and AI researchers innovate & create and its pre-made environments already contain the Unity scene, game characters, and the environment elements where the agents observe, act, and learn. The process allows you to create intelligent agents and integrate them into your own Unity games to impart compelling and intelligent experiences. 

Logic Simplified is one such game development company based out of India that works towards giving the gamers around the world an enhanced gaming experience with its games that are built using advanced technologies and techniques to keep up with the emerging industry. Over the years, our team of game designers and developers have learnt a lot and their curiosity and zeal towards their work pushes them to explore and to be creative and innovative with their approach and it wouldn't be wrong to say that all of this reflects in the amazing projects and work that our company has done so far. To know more about us and our work, just contact us here or drop us an email at enquiry@logicsimplified.com

That said, I am going to discuss the features and capabilities of both Unity and Unreal Engine, along with factors to consider to make the best bet.

But first,

Unity was introduced to the world of game app developers as a cross-platform game engine by Unity Technologies in 2005. The game engine, which has immensely evolved in six versions so far, is popularly used for 2D and 3D game development world over.

Epic Games, which was behind Unreal Tournament, debuted Unreal Engine in 1998. Unreal Engine quickly became a popular choice to build first-person shooter (FPS) games, but is now also widely used for building many different genre games like side-scrollers, MMORPGs, RPGs, etc.

I am comparing below the features and what the both game engines are capable of:

Based on the features and capabilities of the two game engine powerhouses, the decision comes down to answering four major questions.

What type of game do you want to build?

The type of game you want to build is an easy way to solve a good part of the puzzle. For example, if you’re planning to build the next Gears of War and visuals are more important for you (sometimes even more important than gameplay), Unreal Engine should ideally be your bet for next-gen physics and graphics. Blueprint does wonders for such games. But if your game is a simple puzzle game like Braid, 3D platformers, logic games, and even first-person shooter games, Unity is the best game engine to go for. We can put it as Unreal for heavy-hitting genre titles such as Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Unity for games like Temple Run and Cuphead. 

What type of device do you want to build the game for?

If your game’s target devices are mobile phones, using Unreal Engine’s high processing power is unnecessary. Unity works the best for lower-powered devices as it allows to create complex games without requiring a powerful setup as of a PC. But if you want to create an immersive and magical experience for high-end devices, Unreal is a good choice but that is also subject to if you can’t do that with Unity. The key here is if you’re looking at your game as a visual artist or as a game developer because the former would more likely go for Unreal and the latter for Unity.

What’s Your Team Size?

If your team size is small, you will be very unlikely to finish a quality game on time using Unreal Engine. To make the best of Unreal Engine, you need a big team where different roles can be distributed to different individuals, like someone just working on getting the particles right and someone only doing the shaders. Unity’s Asset Store and community support makes it way easier for smaller teams to build fast without compromising on what was actually desired. The beauty of Unity game development services is that smaller teams can also create an effective experience by building AR and VR for their games. Triple A studios with bigger teams usually use Unreal Engine for better horsepower for development and more polishing, 

What’s your budget?

If it’s the first time you’re building a game, you have a limited budget and can only afford a small team, go for Unity. Unity 3D is also free until you earn $100K USD in annual revenue. You only pay when you upgrade to Unity Plus or Unity Pro for things like Asset Bundle, etc. Unreal is also free to use except for the first $3,000 per quarter and then 5% royalty on gross revenues per quarter. But that price doesn’t bother much after the game hits the game charts and turns into a revenue generator machine.

I hope that this blog has answered all it takes to decide on choosing the best game engine among Unity and Unreal. But, if there's still something I missed out on in this blog, please feel free to get in touch with us, and I will be more than happy to answer that particular query of yours. Now, I would like to introduce you to Logic Simplified, an India-based game development company with more than six years of hands-on experience of building video games using both Unity and Unreal. At Logic Simplified, we shape video games ideas into a reality. It’s not just our expertise in using the power of tech, but our overall passion for games to imagine the concept and create a game design & architecture that a specific target audience craves for in a particular genre of video games. Working on a game idea from scratch is not an easy task for its own challenges, however, our expert game designers and developers are committed to help game visionaries who dare to dream and this is what we are really proud of. We also very well understand the changing requirements of modern games and level them up by leveraging the power of AR/VR, AI and IoT as well. For any query that would help you make a decision to start building the next gaming mania, please write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com. We will be obliged to help you with gaming solutions that we take great pride  in.

Logic Simplified, supported by its team of diligent, hard-working developers and animators has perfected the art of creating true-to-life games. Our Unity game developers have spent countless hours getting the right camera shot developed for various games. When you partner with us, you know you’re partnering with the experts.

What are cameras in the Unity Shooter Games 

While building Unity Shooter games, a Unity game development company creates scenes by arranging and moving objects in a three-dimensional space. However, this three-dimensional orientation cannot be portrayed, as it is, on computer screens, since those are two-dimensional. Thus, different views are needed to be captured and flattened. “Cameras,” in the context of Unity games, help accomplish this. You can hire shooter game developers to create a new shooting game mania for millions of fans out there.

In the Unity platform, a camera is an object that describes a view in a game scene. The placement of this object determines the point of view. Using the “Camera component,” the size and shape of the region that falls within the view can be decided. According to these set parameters, the camera “captures” a scene and displays it on the screen. When the camera object moves and rotates, the view on the screen also moves and rotates accordingly.

Although Unity supports several camera views, there are several factors to be considered when using these cameras. These factors are determined by the game, the gameplay, a particular scene, or gesture. Some of the factors that play an important role in camera determination and performance are as follows.

Lighting

Lighting effects in Unity work by simulating the behaviour of light in the real world. For more realistic results, detailed models of light behaviour are used, while for stylized results, simplified models are used.

Direct and indirect lighting

Unity has provisions for both direct and indirect lighting. Direct light is the one that is emitted from a source, hits a surface a single time, and is then reflected directly into a sensor (for example, the camera, in the gaming world, or the eye, in the real world). Indirect light can be defined as the light that, after emitting from a source, reflects from multiple objections and eventually falls on a sensor. This includes the light that hits surfaces several times and the skylight. Since unity provides provisions for both, realistic lighting results can be achieved by using Unity.

Real-time and baked lighting

Sometimes, lighting parameters need to be calculated at runtime. This is called real-time lighting. Unity enables adjusting lighting at runtime, which makes for a great development and playing experience.

Baked lighting is the lighting that has been predetermined by Unity by performing lighting calculations in advance. After performing the calculations, the results are saved as lighting data, which is then applied at runtime.

Unity allows using both real-time and baked lighting, or the combination of the two (called mixed lighting) depending upon the gameplay requirements.

Global Illumination

Global illumination is a combination of techniques that use both direct and indirect lighting to provide realistic lighting results. Unity allows two global illumination systems, which facilitate combining direct and indirect lighting. These are the Baked Global Illumination system and the Realtime Global Illumination system.

The Baked Global Illumination system comprises lightmapping, Light Probes, and Reflection Probes. The Realtime Global Illumination system comprises Realtime Global Illumination using Enlighten, and provides additional functionality to Light Probes.

Projections: perspective and orthogonal

Two very popular camera projections used in games are perspective and orthographic views.

Perspective Projection

In the real world, as objects move farther, they look smaller from the point of view. This is known as the perspective effect. There is a “sense of depth” included. This effect is observed not only in case of cameras, but the human eye too. This perspective effect is extensively used in computer graphics to create scenes as realistic as possible. Unity has provisions for including perspective camera renderings in games and graphical videos you might create on its platforms.

Field of View

In other words, the camera angle becomes significant when you choose the perspective view. It is measured in degrees and signifies how much of the current view would you like to include in the shot. The degree here becomes important because we are talking about perspective view and not orthogonal. Thus, how much of the scene to cover becomes important.

Orthogonal Projection

On the other hand, sometimes one may not require a perspective effect. That is, sometimes you might need to display some information or map for which a real-world, perspective camera effect may not be required. It may not be required to diminish the objects on display with distance. This is known as orthogonal projection. Unity provides an option for this too.

Thus, with Unity you can use both perspective and orthographic camera renderings, for developing your shooter game, as and how the storyline of the game might dictate.

Size

Since what the camera “sees” and shows remains static, the size of the visible region has to be determined by the developer. In orthogonal projection, the size becomes important. Because size determines how much of a region can be viewed and not the camera angle.

Clipping planes

Clipping planes are two imaginary planes that are perpendicular to the camera’s forward direction. There are two clipping planes, the near clipping plane and the far clipping plane. The region beyond these planes is not “viewed,” hence the word clipping. The near clipping plane is close to the camera and behind it lies the region that is too close for the camera to “see”. Similarly, the far clipping plane is farthest to the camera and defines the limit beyond which the camera cannot “see”.

The visible region

In both modes, perspective and orthographic, the distance to which cameras can “see” from their current position is limited. Two planes, the far clipping plane and the near clipping plane, determine the viewable region. These planes are perpendicular to the camera’s forward direction. They are called clipping planes because regions beyond these planes are excluded from rendering. The viewable range is the region lying between the two planes.

Unity Development with Logic Simplified

We at Logic Simplified understand the nuances of developing games on the Unity engine. The great news is, we enjoy the complexity! Our dedicated game designers and developers are experts at understanding the requirements of your game idea and turning it into reality. Whether you're looking to develop a first- or a third-person shooter game, our Unity game development services cover them all! Partner with us to see how we turn your dream game into reality!

Grand Theft Auto and The Last of Us are two great examples of that as they got extremely successful not just because of advanced game mechanics and creative stories, but also because of amazing cinematic cutscenes. What it implies for a Unity game development company is the significant importance of the camera to bring video games to life and make them intriguing. So, if we talk Unity action games, most 3D shooting game developers use Cinemachine, a great offering by Unity to make cutscenes and revolutionize in-game cameras like a Hollywood movie director.

How Cinemachine helps create Magic in Third Person Shooter Games

Third-person shooter games are like watching a film because unlike first-person shooter games, they show the protagonist from an "over the shoulder” camera or "behind the back" so the entire player body is visible from behind and you ‘follow’ the protagonist. So, game concept designers get more freedom in third-person games to create a more strongly characterized avatar. But yes, as shooter games are about shooting and it’s not easy to aim from a third-person camera, most third-person shooter games also offer a first-person view. Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is a good example that allows players to shoot from a first-person perspective, whereas chase and do hand battles from a third-person perspective. If we talk about another example of a third-person shooter that was given a person-person perspective to improve the interface for aiming and shooting, then Halo: Combat Evolved is the one that currently comes into my mind.

Now, What is Cinemachine?

Cinemachine is a complete Unity package which empowers Unity game developers, designers, camera artists and cutscene creators to get precise controls for every camera in a gaming project. The beauty of Cinemachine lies in freeing the developer from the burdensome task of writing reams of codes to get the cameras to follow an object, follow a track, orbit an object, and much more. Cinemachine comes with no external dependencies which means you can easily install it as a plugin and start using it.

After installing Cinemachine, you will see a new Cinemachine menu as shown below.

But before you start creating a virtual camera or any other camera from the dropdown, you need to add Cinemachine to your main camera. Once Cinemachine-enabled, the camera starts using a new component: the Cinemachine Brain.

Cinemachine Brain: The central Cinemachine component

Cinemachine Brain is what Cinemachine uses to control the Unity Camera. This component is responsible for monitoring all the Virtual Cameras in the scene and takes the best shots. It does the camera positioning and configuration based on the instructions passed on by the virtual cameras. The brain installed on the Unity camera observes the instructions and takes action to ensure that the camera is in the right place at the right time.

Learn how to configure the Cinemachine Brain

A question that might be popping in your head - Do you need to replace your existing camera with Cinemachine? Well, the answer is No. Cinemachine is built to work alongside your existing camera system and you can easily switch between both systems. If you can’t resist using some camera tech,  you can continue using it but can also use Cinemachine for something else you deem fit. So yes, you can mix the two together as well.

Fundamental Behaviours of Cinemachine

Custom Blends

It means defining relationships between two cameras and comes handy for state-machine type setups. A wonderful way to create custom camera blend setups pr level.

Composer

Lets you configure the camera to enable automatic rotation to adjust framing so as to ensure that your subjects are always in the screen space, irrespective of the position. Composer paves the way for real-time procedural composition. 

Transposer

Transposer helps you attach the camera to any object and set up how you would want to follow any object. A wide range of options and behaviours lets the camera to follow the object under various conditions.

Free-look

Free-look cameras help manage 3rd-person action-adventure orbit cameras. You get a lot of controls for orbit speed, shape, recentering, damping and input type. Depending on game events, you can blend multiple Free-look cameras to get incredible control.  

Target Groups

Target Groups help track multiple objects and also adjust the weight and influence of each object in the group. You can track, compose and adjust Field of View (FOV) and even how the camera is positioned based on the activities of multiple subjects.

Advanced Control and Powerful Features

Split Screen and Picture-in-Picture

As the name suggests, you can easily configure multiple Cinemachine Brains to enable picture-in-picture, split-screen or quad split screen. You can also switch from single to split screen.

Follow Zoom

Even in the event of changing positions of characters, the on-screen size of the subject is always right. The camera will automatically zoom-in and zoom out to ensure the desired size. This helps create great interactive dialogue scenes.

Post-processing Stack Integration

Unity Cinemachine provides the ability to create custom looks or each camera and blend between them. Post-processing profiles support is there and those settings can be blended as well.

Clear Shot

Clear Shot picks the best camera when something gets between the character or subject to give the best shot. This is a brilliant feature for replays or cutscenes as it perfectly evaluates the shot in variable scenarios.

Impulse

Camera shakes add value to your videogame actions that players cherish. For example, camera shakes during explosions. Once you set up Impulse sources on objects, the camera responds on the basis of scale and distance. A six dimension shake is what you get to hand-craft or generate procedurally. 

Mixer

This feature gives you ultimate control by allowing you to customize your shots. You can mix up to eight virtual cameras to create the perfect shot under varying conditions.   

Collider

Collider helps avoid obstacles without having you required to write any code. There are multiple ways you can prevent your camera from getting tangled in your gaming world. 

Confiner

You get to define limits with Collider so that your camera doesn’t leave specific volumes or areas. So, you can define the internal boundaries for your cameras 

Priority

With the Priority feature, the most desired camera comes into action in large state-machine setups.

Unity Timeline and Cinemachine lets game app developers experiment and build a dynamics camera for 3rd person shooter games. With the Timeline feature, you can add your shots right there in one place. If things change, the Cinemachine camera knows the shot you wanted and more procedurally moves to recompose to keep the shot. Timeline allows you to mix and match and experiment with your shots by adding different camera tracks. And the best part is that it takes rapid prototyping to the next level because you no longer need to rework all of your cameras when making animation changes. Besides, developers can refine the cameras even when they move close to completing their shooter games, whether a first-person shooter or a third-person shooter using Unity.

So, are you also looking forward to creating the next Gears of War 4 or Tom Clancy’s The Division or Tomb raider? Yes! That’s wonderful!  Don’t worry about technology challenges, as that’s exactly what Logic Simplified, a Dehradun-based game development company, exists for on this planet. By offering Unity game development services, Logic Simplified helps gaming businesses of all sizes to bring the best into their videogames. You can also hire 3D shooter game creators from us to convert your shooting game idea a reality. Our game designers, developers, 3D modellers, concept artists and animation artists are passionate about gaming and know what solutions will suit your game requirements. We know what it takes to bring the magic of Cinemachine in a third-person shooter game to create highly immersive experiences. Remember, it’s not only about storyline, but how you show your story too which makes a difference in today’s modern games.

For any query related to a third-person shooter game development using Unity 3D Cinemachine, write to us at enquiry@logicsimplified.com, and we will get back to you shortly to get you started in a jiffy.