As some of you may know I teach Unity as part of my job and part of my recent research has been focused on developing a new method of teaching Unity to beginners. Having collaborated with a number of other Unity tutors worldwide in critiquing my previous approach to teaching, I have developed a new modular approach which combines small modules of information, and challenges that bring what you have learned together.
I am currently appealing to the Unity community to take a look at the early beta version of the site and give me feedback via the comments and suggestions parts of the site. Anything you’d like to see added – or you think works or doesn’t work in an educational sense – feel free to let me know!
More awesome new features presented prior to the release of the new Unity version 3.0 – this time a presentation by me on the Cloth Physics features and a presentation by Samantha Kalman on the awesome new Beast powered lightmapping tools. Watch the videos below, then go share them around the web, this stuff rocks!
IF you’re one of those people who’ve stuck with the sprawling virtual world of Second Life the past few years, you may be interested to hear that London based developer Rezzable have come up with something you might like.
Utilising OpenSim, an open source client which can interpret Second Life assets, Rezzable have used Unity to bridge the gap and create the first (to my knowledge!?) web browser based second life experience. Go take a look at Caitlyn’s article all about it on the UT blog -
Learn Unity 3D’s own Will Goldstone previews some more of the new features in Unity 3.0.
This time its audio, and you’ll get a sneak peek at the new Scene Audio Preview feature, Custom Rolloff Curves, Audio Reverb Zones, Audio Effects and Mod file support. Watch it embedded below or go video on vimeo here
ActiveDen, part of the fantastic Envato network, have opened up their asset selling portal to assets for Unity developers.
If you’re familiar with the Tuts sites (PSDTuts.com, Nettuts.com and so on then you’ll already have seen the professional quality of the Envato network at play already. Now with the chance to sell your assets you’ll have the chance to add revenue to hard work and labours of love created in Unity and other modelling apps. Take a look at the press release here – http://activeden.net/forums/thread/new-category-unity-3d/27965?no_signin=true
CNN are using Unity to visual the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Allowing its readers to look at the surface or submerge to the seabed and look at what is happening, it is fascinating to see Unity being used in a non-gaming context.
Whilst this is certainly going to be great for Unity being picked up by other non-game institutions, I can’t help but notice that the CNN implementation runs a little poorly – is it my eye or are those models a little high poly? I may just be being a picky developer. Anyway, enough rant from me, go take a look -
Those wishing to get into android game development with Unity will be overjoyed to find out that if they pre-order the license and are in the first 500 customers to do so, they’ll also be receiving a free unlocked Nexus One phone handset to get started with.
Massive props to Unity Technologies (yes, again) for such a great offer to new developers, its this kind of support for their community that keeps them in high esteem and rising in leaps and bounds in the software industry – great work guys!
As part of the viral push for the new Tron game, they have released a remake of the game seen in the original Tron film – ‘Space Paranoids’ – an awesome Battlezone-esque tank based shooter made entirely in Unity – what more could you ask for? check it out here – http://www.spaceparanoidsonline.com/
The game is developed in partnership by Disney Interactive and 42 Entertainment and is part of a large scale viral campaign which has seen a fake press conference for fake software company ‘Encom’ – the apparent software overlords from the Tron universe, and a campaign to find Kevin Flynn – Jeff Bridge’s missing hero from the original – they are really going to town with some fun marketing and you’ve got to commend them for that!
A slight digression from the usual Unity related stuff on the site, so apologies!
As part of a set of ongoing research into the best way to teach Unity, I’d like to hear from you.
If you use Unity in any way, please take part in this short survey, it shouldn’t take any more than 3 minutes of your time and comes with a tiny treat at the end!
If you are a tutor who works with Unity in a high school, college or university, i’d love to discuss my research with you and maybe help you out too! please email at willgoldstone at gmail with the subject line ‘Unity Teaching‘, thanks!
Learn Unity 3D’s own Will Goldstone previews some of the upcoming features in the new release of Unity 3.0.
Various new Asset Management features such as searchable asset window, searchable highlighting scene view and asset labelling (think online tagging to match assets together) are all shown off in this video, go watch now on Vimeo.com or use the embedded player below, leave a comment and let the Unity Tech guys know what you think of these awesome new features!
Big thanks from me to Ethan Vosburgh and Thomas Grové for organising this stuff btw!
Stumbled across this really nice informal interview with Tom Higgins, Unity’s Product Evangelist (and thoroughly cool dude, I can attest!) talking about the current state of the toolset, and where Unity are looking to expand to.
Tom also discusses the new publishing options such as Android etc and reveals some insights into the ethics of Unity and his own background. Really interesting watch, thanks to Whats Up Android!
Here’s the first video embedded – check out the rest by clicking on the member name or follow the links below -
Wishing everyone at Unity Technologies a Happy 5th Birthday.
Its been an amazing 5 years of progress, from humble beginnings as OTEE I’ve really enjoyed watching UT grow into the powerful innovative ‘powerhouse’ (yeah I went there!) it is today.
Ever been frustrated by positioning in Unity? wanted to take the position of one object and apply it to another but had to parent, reset and unparent to achieve this seemingly simple task? Worry no longer!
Thanks to the fine work of Seth Illgard you can now use his Transform Utilities script to give you access to a new area of the Inspector to copy paste positions / align objects and more – even randomizing positions for when multiples objects seem too ‘arranged’!
Big thanks to Seth for his hard work, go grab the utility at his site and leave him a comment to say thanks!
Unity Technologies have now made Unity 3.0 available for pre-orders, be one of the first to get in on the ground floor of this awesome new development proposition. See our previous post on the new features of Unity here -
As some of you may know I teach Unity as part of my job and part of my recent research has been focused on developing a new method of teaching Unity to beginners. Having collaborated with a number of other Unity tutors worldwide in critiquing my previous approach to teaching, I have developed a new modular approach which combines small modules of information, and challenges that bring what you have learned together.
