Unity goes Universal

Unity3D has released Unity 1.5, the largest update the company has released to date that brings native compatibility to Intel Macs as a Universal Binary. Unity is a fully integrated production environment designed for easy editing. Developers can hit the play button to test work without delays, and can modify the world while the game is running. Key new features of Unity 1.5 include a Windows Web-browser plug-in, a new animation system, high-speed car physics with a dedicated wheel collider that simulates the traction model of real vehicles, and additional full-screen filters. The update also offers full access to all vertex data via a mesh script interface, the ability to generate or modify textures on the fly with a textures script interface, a particle script interface, and Lightmap support. Unity 1.5 is priced at $250 for the "Indie" edition, or $1,500 for the Pro version. Unity 1.5 requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

The software includes TrueType typography, the ability to import Cinema 4D files natively, and improved documentation with annotated screenshots. The update also comes with five tutorials covering a wide range of topics for Unity users.

Unity 1.5 adds more than 256 new small features and improvements, most of which include:

Graphics

• Fullscreen AntiAliasing and Sync to vertical retrace (Set it up in Edit, Quality Settings)
  
• Improved texture compression quality and speed. We also now support DXTC5 texture compression which is better for textures with compressed alpha.
  
  
  
  • Water cleanup/additions:
    
  • Water prefab now reflects the skybox
    
  • Wave speed is now independent of wave scale
    
  • Made property names clearer
    
  • Added reflective & refractive water in Unity Pro
    
  • Optimized the shaders
    
  
  
• Pro Standard Assets:
  
  
  
  • Added reflective & refractive water
    
  • Optimized all water shaders, made property names clearer
    
  • Added Glow, Noise and Contrast Stretch image effects
    
  • Glow uses extra brightness from alpha channel, you may want to set main color of your materials to use zero alpha
    
  • Blur image effect more efficient at doing large blurs
    
  • Edge Detect effect now uses a different and faster filter
    
  • Image effects now no longer print "no subshaders..." warning on old video cards
    
  
  
• Builtin shaders cleanup:
  
  
  
  • Added lightmapped shaders
    
  • Properly handle texture placement offset
    
  • Work nice with glow (put extra brightness into alpha, i.e. specular highlights)
    
  • Diffuse shader is now truly per-pixel, so you can have bright lights near big polygons
    
  • There is a Diffuse (fast) shader which does the same as the old diffuse
    
  • DiffuseDetail now does a proper detail texture (i.e. gray texture has no effect)
    
  • Most of the shaders are faster
    
  • Skybox shaders use background render-queue
    
  
  
• Added light culling mask. This allows you to selectively apply lights to only some objects
  
• GUILayer now renders after all image effects
  
• Shaderlab now supports Fallback off statement, which won't complain if no subshaders can run
  
• ShaderLab now uses the Cg 1.4.1 compiler
  

by MacNN Staff