> I'm biting maya tongue right now to stay on topic and not to go off on a > certain package.
You just cracked me up with that one :) On 20 January 2015 at 15:55 Eric Turman <i.anima...@gmail.com> wrote: > @ Siew Yi Lang I felt compelled to respond to your review of Unity because of > certain inaccuracies and/or misconceptions. I hope that you do not feel > slighted as this is not a personal attack at all. > > Although my day job now deals with commercial/film/vfx, I have worked on > several AAA game titles in the past and I am currently wrapping up an indie > game with two other people that we made in Unity. I'll admit that I agree with > some of what you have stated but not nearly as strongly or vehemently. One > point I will agree in is that while they have added a bunch of new features > they do need to fix what is broken. That can be said of many software > packages...I'm biting maya tongue right now to stay on topic and not to go off > on a certain package. > > Shaders: I agree that ShaderForge makes shader creation much easier and it is > worth the added expense. Shaderforge > <https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14147> has enabled us to > develop some very specialized and unusual non-photo real shaders that could > have been a stretch for us otherwise. That being said, we are friends with a > programmer who codes his own non-node based shaders for multiple platforms in > Unity without a problem and he has helped us with such shaders for other > projects. > > Mechanim: I'm going to mostly disagree with you here and my experience is > nearly opposite of yours with Mechanim. We definitely did not use legacy. We > were able to, without scripting, make our own avatar. You do not need to use > the built in avater, just don't use it. Additionally, Unity did not retarget > it to two bones for us. Unity Mechanim dealt just fine with our custom > skeleton setup. Animation and hierarchical blending also worked just fine OOTB > for us with our custom shadow rig skeleton. After glancing at how Unity wanted > the shadow rig to be organized, our animations came in without a hitch from > Softimage. I did not have to do anything with ROMs. I mean no disrespect, and > no hard feelings are intended, it's just that I know firsthand that it works. > > Shuriken: I am not going to argue with you on this one. Unity's built in > particle system is, in a word, weak. Fortunately, an asset called Particle > Playground <https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/13325> comes to > the rescue and, as I understand it, its code is exposed if you need to tweak > it. > > Pipeline: I'll agree that the hundreds and thousands of pieces of metadata > was a bit cumbersome on the check in/checkout. But this is a technical > industry, the artists are working with technology and it is not unreasonable > to expect them to have a modicrum of technical knowhow. The artists at Element > X were sat down and launched with instructions on the use of SVN. After a few > days, they were shown that how they had misunderstood/cut corners were doing > things with SVN were causing problems and shown the procedure once more. After > that, we didn't have any issues. Its a partial matter of training the artists > what to do and the consequences of not following procedure, and it is another > matter of making certain that they are not going to be lazy about following > those directions. For teams of more than a few people, custom created pipeline > tools can help the artist make certain that they are not making mistakes. > > On a side note: I think that Never Alone <http://neveralonegame.com/> is a > beautiful game on many levels. Congratulations Siew Yi Lang! I'm very much > looking forward to playing it on Steam > <http://store.steampowered.com/app/295790/> once I clear off my plate a bit. > Any large production is quite an ordeal, but I hope that you can feel proud to > have worked on it. > > Cheers, > -=Eric > -- > > > -=T=- > > > >
