Issue #49 - Level Building, Rigging, Meshes, Lighting, And So Much More!

A diverse set of posts this week. From level building, to animation and rigging, to lighting, to performance tuning, to shaders, and more. Whatever you are working on for your current game there is something for you. Enjoy!

Level Design In Pursuit of Better Levels - . [Alex also put together a spreadsheet with "sections on level design, accessibility, recommended reading, design tools, etc."]
Alex K

My take on shaders: Cliff terrain shader - I thought that both splat-map using and biplanar terrain mapping can be an interesting item for a tutorial, as you can use them as a base for a lot more cool stuff! Since this shader is a surface shader too, you could easily expand it by making custom lighting models for example!
Harry Alisavakis

Creating shader animation in Unity - Create 200 Skinned Meshes with keyframe-animation just for 1 FX is a waste of resourses. I decided to use particle systems instead, but to do so I had to apply different approach to animation. In this blog-post I will explain how to animate simple creatures using vertex shader.
Andrey Torchinsky

Level Up Your Programming Skills by Investing in Dependency Injection - As a developer coming from the enterprise application’s world, I am not allowed to use the new keyword. We can do this successfully, thanks to a Dependency Injection (DI) framework. So, I will give a basic explanation of the pattern and its advantages. In addition to that, I will introduce you to a nicely designed DI framework — Zenject — targeting C# programming language.
Erdi Izgi

C++ For C# Developers: Part 5 – Build Model - Today’s article continues the series by introducing C++’s build model, which is very different from C#. We’ll go into preprocessing, compiling, linking, header files, the one definition rule, and many other aspects of how our source code gets built into an executable.
JacksonDunstan.com

Learn how Animation Rigging can level up animation in your project - A year ago, Unity introduced a preview package called Animation Rigging, and we’re adding new functionality to it in 2020. We’re also sharing new presentations from GDC and Unite Now, which detail the expanded possibilities and show the creative potential and flexible workflows of this preview toolset for real-time films, AAA games, or smaller indie titles.
Unity

Luna Tech Series: A Deep Dive into Unity Configurable Joints - ConfigurableJoint is one of the most powerful parts of Unity’s physics engine, combining functionality from every other joint. With more than 40 configuration options available, you can create almost anything from a door hinge to a ragdoll and anything in between.
Vladimir Tikhonov

How to Analyze the Performance Cost of Your Unity Shaders - In this post, you will learn how to analyze your unity shader complexity with numbers so you finally can: Stop being fragment-bound in your unity game performance. Compare the GPU complexity between two shaders. Analyze shader costs in terms of texture, arithmetic and load/store GPU cycles. ... And finally reach 60, 90 or higher FPS.
The Gamedev Guru

Mesh Baking Your Assets (With Ian Deane) - Today, I had the pleasure to interview Ian Deane. Ian is the developer behind Mesh Baker, the famous Unity asset that lets you drastically reduce your draw calls so your game runs at substantially higher frame-rate.
The Gamedev Guru

Load in Background - Optimizing Audio Load Times in Unity - Today we’ll be talking about the Load in Background option in Unity’s Audio Import Settings and why deferring the loading of certain audio assets is important for your game.
Made Indrayana

Lighting tips for mobile game development - Lighting is one of the most important visual elements of your game. Our partners at Arm have provided some handy tips to help you optimize your mobile game lighting.
Unity

Diablo's Souls: Lighting, Camera & Post-Process Work in Unity - Rafael Rodriguez Bellot and Marcos Ivan Rebollo from the Nin-Ja Company team talked about their stunning cinematic project Diablo's Souls in which they combined two popular franchises.
80 Level

Reading Google Sheets - In this tutorial I am going to look at reading data from Google Sheets.
Martin Dobie

Scaling Kubernetes Jobs for Unity Simulation - This blog post showcases how our engineers are continually innovating to ensure that our customers’ jobs run as fast and as cost-effectively as possible on Unity Simulation.
Unity

Unity 2020.2.0 Alpha 15 - Unity 2020.2.0 Alpha 15 has been released.
Unity

Videos

How to build your first FPS game, part 1 - Unite Now - In this two-part Learn Live interactive video, you'll learn how to develop a first-person shooter (FPS), one of the most common game types. No coding experience needed.
Unity

Implementing an Ability System | Prototype Series - Welcome to the Prototype Series - a group of videos that focuses on the creation of playable prototypes, showcasing how multiple features of Unity can be used to achieve game mechanics that can be used in real-world scenarios!
Unity

Unity VFX & Shader Graph - Black Hole Effect Tutorial - We use Shader Graph to create a Heat Distortion effect and the VFX Graph to add some particles to the Black Hole. There's also a Fresnel shader for the center of the Black Hole. Love this effect, hope you too!
Gabriel Aguiar Prod.

Unity Procedural Clouds shader tutorial - Decompiled Art - Tools: Unity Shader Graph, Universal Render Pipeline.
Decompiled Art

Quick ArchViz Designing with ProBuilder in Unity | Part - 1 - Let learn how to quickly create Architectural Visualization designs using Pro Builder in Unity.
Unity Guruz

Build and Publish Unity Game to Itch.io - Unity PC Build or WebGL build to Itch.io tutorial. I also show you how to upload to Unity Connect.
samyam

Reusing and retargeting animations between rigs - Unite Now - In this Learn Live interactive session, work with a Unity Certified Instructor through a series of mini-challenges to learn how to create reusable and scalable animations for characters.
Unity

Cinemachine: powerful camera tools for games and film - Unite Now - Cinemachine is well known for creating cinematics, but did you know it's actually designed for game cameras? Tune in to learn how to make more engaging and dynamic game cameras.
Unity

Getting started with Addressables - Unite Now - Get an introduction to Unity’s Addressables system for live content management in this Unite Now session. Learn what the Addressables system is, how it works, and how to set up and begin working with Addressables in your own project.
Unity

How to Program in C# - BASICS (E01) - Let's write our first code in C#!
Brackeys

Transparent Unity App! (Overlay, Assistant, Particles) - Let's make a Transparent Unity App! Build Overlays on top of the desktop or make an Assistant to tell you corny jokes!
Code Monkey

HDRP vs. URP - which one to use? | Unity 2020 Beginner's Guide - It can be hard to choose between using HDRP and URP, or the High Definition Render Pipeline and the Universal Render Pipeline. This video will help you make up your mind and decide which SRP to go with!
Sykoo

Creating Photo-Real Assets for Unity with a Phone (display.land) - Try out 3D Scanning and make some of your own assets by downloading the Display.Land.
Game Dev Guide

How to Make a Voxel Renderer in Unity - In this Unity tutorial I show you how to make a voxel renderer using Unity's Shuriken Particle System. Voxels are used in games such as Minecraft and Astroneer to render the Terrain among other things.
DevOrenge

Procedural Mesh Generation - Introduction - In this series we are going to discuss the procedural mesh generation basics and go step by step to build the base mesh class ,which we are going to use for building a smart assets .
Digital Touches

Assets

Fantasy Mega Bundles - Now through June 30th, we’re featuring up to 90% savings on a collection of high-quality fantasy tools and art in the low-poly style. Whether you’re new to creating games or a seasoned developer, these bundles boost your library of game-ready content for any future projects.
Unity Affiliate

PlayMode Inspector for Unity - PlayMode Inspector for Unity 2019.3 and newer. It allows you to display internal state, such as from a MonoBehaviour, to a dedicated editor window.
pschraut Open Source

UFPS: Ultimate FPS - UFPS is the battle-tested FPS solution for Unity! UFPS first appeared on the Asset Store in 2012 and has been evolving ever since. Tens of thousands of users have used UFPS to successfully create their ultimate first person shooter! UFPS is a professional, kinematic character controller designed to include the smoothest first person controls and to excel in all areas: PC, mobile, console, AI, networking, and VR.
Opsive Affiliate

Texture2DArray Import Pipeline for Unity - Unity has no built-in import pipeline for texture arrays in Unity 2020.1 and earlier versions yet. The Texture2DArray Import Pipeline package you're currently looking at tries to fill the gap of that missing import pipeline and provides an implementation to create and modify texture arrays.
pschraut Open Source

UnityHeapExplorer - Heap Explorer is a Memory Profiler, Debugger and Analyzer for Unity.
pschraut Open Source

Trail Debugger (Free) - Trail Debugger is a RR(Record-Replay) debugger for Unity. It gives you the ability to record and then replay(visualize) variables, forces and motion of objects. It can be a pretty powerful tool for solving complex bugs.
thedevelopers.tech

Chronos (Now Free!) - As of Monday, June 15th Chronos, our award-winning time control plugin for Unity, is now free! Chronos brings full time control to Unity. It is easy to use, optimized for performance and equipped to handle any scenario you have in mind. Perfect for magic spells, puzzle games, sci-fi abilities or special effects!
Ludiq Affiliate

Spotlight

I Made Super Mario 64 Slides in Unity!! - Hey guys, this is the third Devlog for my New Game! I dont have a title for the game yet but in this devlog we go over how I Made Super Mario 64 Slides in Unity!! Ive spent a long time working on the physics and video so I really hope you enjoy it!
[Jake describes the game like this:]
I dont have a title for the game yet but in this devlog we go over the creation process of what I have so far. Ive spent a long time working on it so I really hope you enjoy it! This game is created using the Unity 3D Game Engine. This is the 1st Devlog about my Indie 3D Platformer Game also known as a "Collectathon". It is inspired by games such as Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Odyssey.
Jake McNeal

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