>> See Also: Unity 5.6 now Available
Some highlight features in Unity 2017.1
Artists & Designers: Brand new tools for storytelling and in-game sequencesUnity 2017.1 introduces new ways artists & designers can create stunning cinematic content, compose artistic camera shots and tell better visual stories with the Timeline, Cinemachine and Post-processing tools.
• Timeline is a powerful new visual tool that allows you to create cinematic content such as cutscenes and trailers, gameplay sequences, and much more.
• Cinemachine is an advanced camera system that enables you to compose your shots like a movie director from within Unity, without any code, and ushers in the era of procedural cinematography.
• Post-processing lets you easily apply realistic filters to scenes using film industry terminology, controls, and colour space formats to create high quality visuals for more dramatic and realistic looks, so you can tell a better visual story.
Improved Post-processing stack (beta)
• Post-processing applies full-screen filters and effects to a camera’s image buffer before it is displayed to screen. You can use image post-processing effects to simulate physical camera and film properties.
The latest version of the post-processing stack is available in beta here. Final release is expected this summer.
• With Unity 2017.1, you have access to data-driven live operations that place rich analytics at your fingertips. Dive in and see how your audience is interacting with your creations and then make real-time adjustments that cater to their habits; all without redeploying a new version. Unity 2017 gives you the power to better serve your audience as you uncover smart ways to optimize gameplay experiences. • Change your game in an instant, without redeployment, with the new Remote Settings feature, which has been added to Unity Analytics.
2D improvements
In Unity 5.6, we released major improvements to tools and workflows for 2D game creators.
• In Unity 2017.1 we are introducing 2D Sprite Atlas, a new asset that will supplant the Sprite Packer. With it comes new and improved workflows that give you more control for packing sprites and using them at runtime. Atlases are an important part of 2D workflows in Unity, and the Sprite Atlas provides simpler atlas creation and management as well as a scripting API for more control and versatility.
• Sprite Masks are used to either hide or reveal parts of a Sprite or group of Sprites in world space. The Sprite Mask only affects objects using the Sprite Renderer Component as well as Particle Systems.
• In 2017.1, we are also adding a Sprite Physics Shape to the Sprite Editor. This allows you to set a custom default shape on a Sprite for generating collider shapes with a PolygonCollider2D.
Animation improvements
• Updated with the Animation windows to improve the keyframing workflow, make animating feel more comfortable and familiar, and allow interaction with animator state-machines. Performance Recording is provided as an experimental feature.
• Introducing GameObjectRecorder, a new experimental editor feature, which allows you to record any properties on a GameObject and its children. That way, you can easily create animations by saving everything that’s been recorded into an animation clip. Feedback is welcome on the forum thread.
Editor improvements
• A new ArcHandle class in UnityEditor.IMGUI.Controls to interactively edit arcs in the Scene View and a new IMGUI Control called SearchField, which comes with Normal and Toolbar UI styles but can also be customized.
• Other improvements include the addition of profiler labels to all player loop stages, general improvements to the Package Export loading state and log messages from connected players, which will now show up in the Editor console for easier debugging.
Model importer improvements
• Digital Content Creation (DCC) workflow has been made easier with the first set of significant improvements in the process of importing assets from popular DCC tools like Maya. The results? Increased productivity for artists and designers, and less hassle for programmers.
• Unity can now read visibility properties from FBX files with the “Import Visibility” property. Values and animation curves will enable or disable MeshRenderer components:
Progressive Lightmapper improvements
• In 2017.1, adding support for baked LODs in the Progressive Lightmapper. The major difference between Enlighten and the Progressive Lightmapper when baking LODs is that with the Progressive Lightmapper, it is not necessary to author Light Probes around the LODs to get bounced light on them. Having the indirect lighting at full baked resolution will lead to much better quality baked Lightmaps for LODs, and you can avoid the tedious process of setting up the Lightprobes for them. (This will also be available in 5.6.)
• Adding support for double-sided materials in the Progressive Lightmapper by adding a new material setting that causes lighting to interact with backfaces. When enabled, both sides of the geometry get accounted for when calculating Global Illumination. Backfaces do not count as invalid when seen from other objects. Backface rendering is not controlled by this setting nor will backfaces be represented in the lightmaps. Backfaces bounce light using the same emission and albedo as frontfaces. (This will also be available in 5.6)
Real-time shadow improvements
• Optimising the culling of shadows casters for cascaded directional light in stable mode. Meaning fewer draw calls are issued to generate shadow maps. The gain is scene and configuration-dependent. With four cascades, for example, we have seen the number of draw calls dropped by a significant amount. Based on the sun/camera direction, there could be 50% less shadow casters on your scene. An example in Viking village:
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