Unity 4

Unity Engine

Unity Technologies released the latest version of the Unity engine on November 21, 2012.

Unity 4

Unity 4 is a brand new version of the powerful Unity engine. In addition to the features of Unity 3, a long running and well known game development system, this new version features upgrades to support the latest technology improvements.

Here are the major improvements:

New Animation System

A brand new animation system, Mecanim, is included in Unity 4. This supports reusing the same animation without conversions on multiple models of different sizes, as well as creating generic or hybrid skeletons for animation quickly and easily.

DirectX 11 Support

On Windows Vista and later, DirectX 11 support allows Unity to support better shaders, textures, and effects.

Linux Game Type

Unity developers can now create games that run on Linux! Official support is available for 32 or 64-bit Ubuntu Linux, but should run under most Linux-based operating systems with similar graphical support.

Graphic Updatess

Normal map & custom shader support for Terrain, which allows easier creation of high-quality landscape. This requires texture extension, which most Tegra 2/3 devices and Android OS earlier than “Honeycomb” do not support.

Dynamic font rendering using HTML-like markup allows better font usage across all devices.

Additional (and improved) image effects, including depth of field (DoF), motion blur, noise and grain, bloom, lens flare, color correction, and edge detection.

Cubemap texture import, allowing importing of images that will align properly and perform smoothing.

Improved lightmapping, including normalization and UV corrections.

Improved shaders, including several new included macros to help properly configure shading. Shading quality under OpenGL has been improved, which includes Android platforms.

Particle System

The Shuriken particle system offers collision support at multiple qualities, automatic culling, and support for external forces (including wind simulation). The system also bends normals for sprites, allowing them to act more naturally.

Project Browser

The old Project windows has been replaced with a new Project Browser, which allows easier access to resources, as well as searching of the Asset store.

Other Features

Numerous other fixes, optimizations, and improvements have been made. A full list of these changes can be found in the Release Notes for Unity 4.

Go get it!

Unity 4 is available at unity3d.com.