Unity is a
cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...
game engine developed by
Unity Technologies
Unity Software Inc. ( doing business as Unity Technologies) is a video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment (OTEE) and changed its name in 2007. Unity Technol ...
, first announced and released in June 2005 at
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a variety of
desktop
A desktop traditionally refers to:
* The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor)
Desktop may refer to various compu ...
,
mobile
Mobile may refer to:
Places
* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
* Mobile County, Alabama
* Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S.
* Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Mobile ( ...
,
console
Console may refer to:
Computing and video games
* System console, a physical device to operate a computer
** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device
** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...
and
virtual reality
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...
platforms. It is particularly popular for
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
and
Android mobile game development, is considered easy to use for beginner developers, and is popular for
indie game development.
The engine can be used to create
three-dimensional
Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informa ...
(3D) and
two-dimensional
In mathematics, a plane is a Euclidean ( flat), two-dimensional surface that extends indefinitely. A plane is the two-dimensional analogue of a point (zero dimensions), a line (one dimension) and three-dimensional space. Planes can arise as ...
(2D) games, as well as interactive
simulations
A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...
and other experiences.
The engine has been adopted by industries outside video gaming, such as
film,
automotive,
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
,
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
,
construction
Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Pr ...
, and the
United States Armed Forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is ...
.
History
The Unity game engine launched in 2005, aiming to "democratize" game development by making it accessible to more developers.
The next year, Unity was named runner-up in the Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics category in
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
's Apple Design Awards. Unity was initially released for Mac OS X, later adding support for Microsoft Windows and Web browsers.
Unity 2.0 (2007)
Unity 2.0 launched in 2007 with approximately 50 new features.
The release included an optimized terrain engine for detailed 3D environments, real-time dynamic shadows, directional lights and spotlights, video playback, and other features.
The release also added features whereby developers could collaborate more easily.
It included a Networking Layer for developers to create multiplayer games based on the
User Datagram Protocol
In computer networking, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core communication protocols of the Internet protocol suite used to send messages (transported as datagrams in packets) to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network ...
, offering
Network Address Translation, State Synchronization, and
Remote Procedure Calls
In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure (subroutine) to execute in a different address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network), which is coded as if it were a normal (lo ...
.
When Apple launched its
App Store
An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...
in 2008, Unity quickly added support for the
iPhone.
For several years, the engine was uncontested on the iPhone and it became well-known with iOS game developers.
Unity 3.0 (2010)
Unity 3.0 launched in September 2010 with features expanding the engine's graphics features for desktop computers and video game consoles.
In addition to Android support, Unity 3 featured integration of Illuminate Labs' Beast Lightmap tool, deferred rendering, a built-in tree editor, native font rendering, automatic
UV mapping
UV mapping is the 3D modeling process of projecting a 3D model's surface to a 2D image for texture mapping. The letters "U" and "V" denote the axes of the 2D texture because "X", "Y", and "Z" are already used to denote the axes of the 3D object ...
, and audio filters, among other things.
In 2012 ''VentureBeat'' wrote, "Few companies have contributed as much to the flowing of independently produced games as Unity Technologies.
..More than 1.3 million developers are using its tools to create gee-whiz graphics in their iOS, Android, console, PC, and web-based games. Unity wants to be the engine for multi-platform games, period."
A May 2012 survey by ''Game Developer'' magazine indicated Unity as its top game engine for mobile platforms.
Unity 4.0 (2012)
In November 2012, Unity Technologies delivered Unity 4.0.
This version added DirectX 11 and
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...
support, new animation tools called Mecanim, and access to the Linux preview.
Facebook integrated a
software development kit
A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...
for games using the Unity game engine in 2013.
This featured tools that allowed tracking advertising campaigns and deep linking, where users were directly linked from social media posts to specific portions within games, and easy in-game-image sharing.
In 2016, Facebook developed a new PC gaming platform with Unity.
Unity provided support for Facebook's gaming platforms, and Unity developers could more quickly export and publish games to Facebook.
Unity 5 (2015)
''The Verge'' said of 2015's Unity 5 release: "Unity started with the goal of making game development universally accessible.
..Unity 5 is a long-awaited step towards that future." With Unity 5, the engine improved its lighting and audio.
Through
WebGL
WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelera ...
, Unity developers could add their games to compatible Web browsers with no plug-ins required for players.
Unity 5.0 offered real-time global illumination, light mapping previews, Unity Cloud, a new audio system, and the Nvidia PhysX 3.3 physics engine.
The fifth generation of the Unity engine also introduced Cinematic Image Effects to help make Unity games look less generic. Unity 5.6 added new lighting and particle effects, updated the engine's overall performance, and added native support for
Nintendo Switch, Facebook Gameroom,
Google Daydream
Daydream is a discontinued virtual reality (VR) platform which was developed by Google, primarily for use with a headset into which a smartphone is inserted. It is available for select phones running the Android mobile operating system (versio ...
, and the
Vulkan graphics API.
It introduced a 4K video player capable of running 360-degree videos for virtual reality.
However, some gamers criticized Unity's accessibility due to the high volume of quickly produced games published on the Steam distribution platform by inexperienced developers. CEO
John Riccitiello said in an interview that he believes this to be a side-effect of Unity's success in democratizing game development: "If I had my way, I'd like to see 50 million people using Unity – although I don't think we're going to get there any time soon. I'd like to see high school and college kids using it, people outside the core industry. I think it's sad that most people are consumers of technology and not creators. The world's a better place when people know how to create, not just consume, and that's what we're trying to promote."
Unity (2017–present)
In December 2016, Unity Technologies announced that they would change the
versioning numbering system for Unity from
sequence-based identifiers to
year of release to align the versioning with their more frequent release cadence; Unity 5.6 was therefore followed by Unity 2017. Unity 2017 tools featured a real-time graphics rendering engine, color grading and worldbuilding, live operations analytics and performance reporting.
Unity 2017.2 underscored Unity Technologies' plans beyond video games.
This included new tools such as Timeline, which allowed developers to drag-and-drop animations into games, and Cinemachine, a smart camera system within games.
Unity 2017.2 also integrated
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...
's 3DS Max and Maya tools into the Unity engine for a streamlined asset sharing in-game iteration process.
Unity 2018 featured the Scriptable Render Pipeline for developers to create high-end graphics.
This included the High-Definition Rendering Pipeline for console and PC experiences, and the Lightweight Rendering Pipeline for mobile, virtual reality, and augmented reality.
Unity 2018 also included
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
tools, such as Imitation Learning, whereby games learn from real player habits, support for Magic Leap, and templates for new developers.
The C#
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...
of Unity was published under a "reference-only" license in March 2018, which prohibits reuse and modification.
As of 2020, software built with Unity's game engine was running on more than 1.5 billion devices. According to Unity, apps made with their game engine account for 50 percent of all mobile games, and are downloaded more than 3 billion times per month, and approximately 15,000 new projects are started daily with its software.
Financial Times reported that Unity's engine "powers some of the world's most lucrative mobile games", such as
Pokémon Go
''Pokémon Go'' (stylized as ''Pokémon GO'') is a 2016 augmented reality (AR) mobile game, part of the ''Pokémon'' franchise, developed and published by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for iOS and Android ...
and
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...
's
Call of Duty Mobile
''Call of Duty: Mobile'' is a free-to-play shooter game developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by Activision for Android and iOS. It was released on October 1, 2019, where it was one of the largest mobile game launches in history, genera ...
.
In June 2020, Unity introduced the Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio (MARS), which provides developers with additional functionality for rules-based generation of augmented reality (AR) applications.
Unity released Unity Forma, an automotive and retail solution tool, on December 9, 2020.
Unity acquired Finger Food Advanced Technology Group in 2020, as it aimed to bolster its non-video game uses and offer additional design help to customers.
The company went public in September 2020, to further expand use of its game engine into industries outside of gaming.
Unity 2021 brought multiple new features such as Bolt, Unity's Visual Scripting system, a new multiplayer library to support multiplayer games, improved Il2cpp runtime performance, Volumetric clouds for the High Definition Render pipeline. Shadow caching and Screen Space Global Illumination for HDRP. For the Universal Render Pipeline it added new features such as point light shadows, Deferred renderer and general core engine improvements and fixes.
For the year 2022, Unity has come up with some upgrades which involves speed integration to enter play mode and import files, visual search queries and multiselection in the package manager.
For 2D creators, they've focused on accelerating foundations, import, animation, and physics. They have added Sprite Atlas v2, support for
PSD PSD may refer to:
Educational bodies
* Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, a Pre-K to 12th grade school for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
* Philippine School Doha, a Filipino scho ...
extension files and layer management in the 2D PSD Importer, and
Delaunay tessellation for 2D physics.
Overview
Unity gives users the ability to create games and experiences in both
2D and
3D, and the engine offers a primary scripting API in
C# using
Mono
Mono may refer to:
Common meanings
* Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease"
* Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono
* Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single
Music Performers
* Mono (Japanese b ...
, for both the Unity editor in the form of plugins, and games themselves, as well as
drag and drop
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...
functionality. Prior to C# being the primary programming language used for the engine, it previously supported
Boo, which was removed with the release of Unity 5, and a
Boo-based implementation of
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
called ''UnityScript'', which was deprecated in August 2017, after the release of Unity 2017.1, in favor of C#.
Within 2D games, Unity allows importation of sprites and an advanced 2D world renderer. For 3D games, Unity allows specification of
texture compression
Texture compression is a specialized form of image compression designed for storing texture maps in 3D computer graphics rendering systems. Unlike conventional image compression algorithms, texture compression algorithms are optimized for random ac ...
,
mipmap
In computer graphics, mipmaps (also MIP maps) or pyramids are pre-calculated, optimized sequences of images, each of which is a progressively lower resolution representation of the previous. The height and width of each image, or level, in the ...
s, and resolution settings for each platform that the game engine supports, and provides support for
bump mapping
Bump mapping is a texture mapping technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting cal ...
,
reflection mapping
In computer graphics, environment mapping, or reflection mapping, is an efficient image-based lighting technique for approximating the appearance of a reflective surface by means of a precomputed texture. The texture is used to store the image of ...
,
parallax mapping
Parallax mapping (also called offset mapping or virtual displacement mapping) is an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures in 3D rendering applications such as video games. To the end user, this means t ...
,
screen space ambient occlusion
Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) is a computer graphics technique for efficiently approximating the ambient occlusion effect in real time. It was developed by Vladimir Kajalin while working at Crytek and was used for the first time in 2007 by ...
(SSAO), dynamic shadows using
shadow map
Shadow mapping or shadowing projection is a process by which shadows are added to 3D computer graphics. This concept was introduced by Lance Williams in 1978, in a paper entitled "Casting curved shadows on curved surfaces." Since then, it has b ...
s,
render-to-texture and full-screen post-processing effects.
Two separate
render pipelines are available, ''High Definition Render Pipeline'' (HDRP) and ''Universal Render Pipeline'' (URP, previously LWRP), in addition to the legacy built-in pipeline.
All three render pipelines are incompatible with each other. Unity offers a tool to upgrade shaders using the legacy renderer to URP or HDRP.
Supported platforms
Unity is a cross-platform engine. The Unity editor is supported on
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
,
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, and the
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
platform, while the engine itself currently supports building games for more than 19 different platforms, including mobile, desktop, consoles, and virtual reality.
''Unity 2020 LTS'' officially supports the following platforms:
* Mobile platforms
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
,
Android (
Android TV
Android TV is a smart TV operating system based on Android (operating system), Android and developed by Google for television sets, digital media players, set-top boxes, and soundbars. A successor to Google TV (operating system), Google TV, it fe ...
),
tvOS
tvOS (formerly known as Apple TV Software) is an operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the Apple TV, a digital media player. In the first-generation Apple TV, Apple TV Software was based on Mac OS X. Starting with the second-generation, ...
;
* Desktop platforms
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...
(
Universal Windows Platform
Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is a computing platform created by Microsoft and first introduced in Windows 10. The purpose of this platform is to help develop universal apps that run on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile (discontinued), Windo ...
),
Mac,
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
;
* Web platform
WebGL
WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelera ...
;
* Console platforms ''PlayStation''
(PS4,
PS5), ''Xbox'' (
Xbox One
The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...
,
Xbox Series X/S
The Xbox Series X/S are home video game consoles developed by Microsoft. They were both released on November 10, 2020, as the fourth generation Xbox, succeeding the Xbox One. Along with Sony's PlayStation 5, also released in November 202 ...
),
Nintendo Switch,
Stadia
Stadia may refer to:
* One of the plurals of stadium, along with "stadiums"
* The plural of stadion, an ancient Greek unit of distance, which equals to 600 Greek feet (''podes'').
* Stadia (Caria), a town of ancient Caria, now in Turkey
* Stadi ...
;
* Virtual/Extended reality platforms
Oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following
Architecture
* Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American ...
,
PlayStation VR
The PlayStation VR (PS VR, known by its code name Project Morpheus during development) is a virtual reality headset developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, which was released in October 2016.
It is fully functional with the PlayStation 4 an ...
, Google's
ARCore,
Apple's ARKit,
Windows Mixed Reality
Windows Mixed Reality is a platform introduced as part of the Windows 10 and 11 operating system, which provides augmented reality and virtual reality experiences with compatible head-mounted displays.
Its flagship device, Microsoft HoloLens, w ...
(
HoloLens
Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking tech ...
),
Magic Leap
Magic Leap, Inc. is an American technology company that released a head-mounted virtual retinal display, called ''Magic Leap One'', which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real world objects, by "projecting a digital light field ...
, and via ''Unity XR SDK''
Steam VR
Steam is a Digital distribution of video games, video game digital distribution service and storefront by Valve Corporation, Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their ...
,
Google Cardboard
Google Cardboard is a discontinued virtual reality (VR) platform developed by Google. Named for its fold-out cardboard viewer into which a smartphone is inserted, the platform was intended as a low-cost system to encourage interest and developme ...
.
Formerly supported platforms are
Wii,
Wii U
The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.
Th ...
,
PlayStation 3
The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...
,
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generati ...
,
Tizen,
PlayStation Vita,
3DS,
BlackBerry 10
BlackBerry 10 is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system for the BlackBerry line of smartphones, both developed by BlackBerry Limited (formerly Research In Motion). BlackBerry 10 is based on QNX, a Unix-like operating system that was ...
,
Windows Phone 8
Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was s ...
,
Samsung Smart TV
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, acco ...
,
Gear VR
The Samsung Gear VR is a virtual reality headset developed by Samsung Electronics, in collaboration with Oculus VR, and manufactured by Samsung. The headset was released on November 27, 2015.
When in use, a compatible Samsung Galaxy device acts ...
,
Daydream
Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. This phenomenon is common in people's daily life shown by a large-scale study in which partici ...
,
Vuforia,
and Facebook Gameroom.
Unity formerly supported other platforms including its own Unity Web Player, a Web browser plugin.
However, it was deprecated in favor of
WebGL
WebGL (Short for Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelera ...
. Since version 5, Unity has been offering its WebGL bundle compiled to JavaScript using a 2-stage language translator (
C# to
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
and finally to
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
).
Unity was the default software development kit (SDK) used for Nintendo's
Wii U
The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.
Th ...
video game console
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...
, with a free copy included by Nintendo with each Wii U developer license. Unity Technologies called this bundling of a third-party SDK an "industry first".
Licensing model
During its first ten years as a product, the paid versions of Unity were sold outright; in 2016, the corporation changed to a subscription model.
Unity has free and paid licensing options. The free license is for personal use or smaller companies generating less than $100,000 annually, later raised to $200,000, and the subscriptions are based on revenues generated by the games using Unity.
The paid option, Unity Pro, had been required for developers that had over $200,000 in annual revenue, but this also could have been provided for console developers through a Preferred Platform License from the console manufacturer. The Unity Pro keys would have been part of the other SDK from the console manufacturer that the developer paid for. In June 2021, Unity changed this plan slightly to require any developer making games on the closed console systems (PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox) regardless of revenue to have a Unity Pro license or a Preferred Platform License Key from the manufacturers. Sony and Nintendo provide this as part of the SDK, but Microsoft had yet to implement this functionality for their SDK. The engine source code is licensed on a "per-case basis via special arrangements".
Unity Asset Store
Creators can develop and sell user-generated assets to other game makers via the Unity Asset Store. This includes 3D and 2D assets and environments for developers to buy and sell.
Unity Asset Store launched in 2010. By 2018, there had been approximately 40 million downloads through the digital store.
Usage
Video games
The engine is used in games including ''
Pokémon Go
''Pokémon Go'' (stylized as ''Pokémon GO'') is a 2016 augmented reality (AR) mobile game, part of the ''Pokémon'' franchise, developed and published by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for iOS and Android ...
'', ''
Monument Valley'', ''
Call of Duty: Mobile'', ''
Beat Saber
''Beat Saber'' is a virtual reality rhythm game developed and published by Czech game developer Beat Games. It takes place in a surrealistic neon environment and features the player slicing blocks representing musical beats with a pair of cont ...
'' and ''
Cuphead
''Cuphead'' is a run-and-gun video game developed and published by Studio MDHR. The game follows the titular Cuphead who, in a deal with the Devil after losing a game at the Devil's casino, is sent on a quest to repossess the souls of runaway ...
'' according to the
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...
.
, Unity had been used to create approximately half of the mobile games on the market and 60 percent of augmented reality and virtual reality content,
including approximately 90 percent on emerging augmented reality platforms, such as
Microsoft HoloLens
Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking tech ...
, and 90 percent of Samsung Gear VR content.
Unity technology is the basis for most virtual reality and augmented reality experiences, and ''
Fortune'' said Unity "dominates the virtual reality business". Unity Machine Learning Agents is open-source software whereby the Unity platform connects to machine learning programs, including Google's
TensorFlow
TensorFlow is a free and open-source software library for machine learning and artificial intelligence. It can be used across a range of tasks but has a particular focus on training and inference of deep neural networks. "It is machine learnin ...
.
Using trial and error in Unity Machine Learning Agents, virtual characters use reinforcement learning to build creative strategies in lifelike virtual landscapes.
The software is used to develop robots and self-driving cars.
Non-gaming industries uses
In the 2010s, Unity Technologies used its game engine to transition into other industries using the real-time 3D platform, including film and automotive.
Unity first experimented in filmmaking with ''Adam'', a short film about a robot escaping from prison. Later, Unity partnered with filmmaker
Neill Blomkamp
Neill Blomkamp (; born 17 September 1979) is a South African filmmaker. He employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending naturalistic and photo-realistic computer-generated effects, and his films often deal wit ...
, whose
Oats Studios
Oats Studios is an independent film studio started in 2017 by Academy Awards, Oscar-nominated South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp.
The studio was created with the goal of distributing experimental short films via YouTube and Steam (service), ...
used the engine's tools, including real-time rendering and Cinemachine, to create two computer-generated short films, ''Adam: The Mirror'' and ''Adam: The Prophet''.
At the 2017 Unite Europe conference in Amsterdam, Unity focused on filmmaking with Unity 2017.1's new Cinemachine tool.
In 2018, Disney Television Animation launched three shorts, called Baymax Dreams, that were created using the Unity engine. The Unity engine was also used by Disney to create backgrounds for the 2019 film ''
The Lion King
''The Lion King'' is a 1994 American animated musical drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 32nd Disney animated feature film and the fifth produced during the Disney Renaissance ...
''.
Automakers use Unity's technology to create full-scale models of new vehicles in virtual reality, build virtual assembly lines, and train workers.
Unity's engine is used by
DeepMind, an
Alphabet Inc.
Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and sev ...
company, to train artificial intelligence. Other uses being pursued by Unity Technologies include architecture, engineering, and construction.
Unity Technologies Japan mascot
On December 16, 2013, Unity Technologies Japan revealed an official
mascot character named , real name (voiced by ). The character's associated game data was released in early 2014. The character was designed by Unity Technologies Japan designer "ntny" as an open-source heroine character. The company allows the use of Unity-chan and related characters in secondary projects under certain licenses. For example, Unity-chan appears as a playable character in ''
Runbow
''Runbow'' is a platform racing video game made for the Wii U and later ported to Microsoft Windows, New Nintendo 3DS, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. ''Runbow'' was developed by Canadian indie team 13AM Games as their debut ti ...
''.
See also
*
List of game engines
Game engines are tools available for game designers to code and plan out a video game quickly and easily without building one from the ground up. Whether they are 2D or 3D based, they offer tools to aid in asset creation and placement.
Engines ...
*
List of WebGL frameworks Frameworks are available to create WebGL content quickly and easily without building from the ground up.
Note: The following list mixes WebGL libraries with game engines as well as cloud services without any distinctions.
See also
* WebGL
* ...
References
External links
*
{{Wii U
.NET game engines
2005 software
Game engines for Linux
Game engines that support Vulkan (API)
IPhone video game engines
MacOS programming tools
Mono project applications
Video game engines
Video game IDE