Issue #43 - Lighting, Builds, VFX, C#... All That And More!

Let there be light! Lots of content on lighting this week. Plus, some cool VFX tutorials, and be sure not to miss the Interior Mapping video! If you are more interested in the pure coding side of things, check out the C#, ECS, build pipeline posts, and more!

Entity Component System for Unity: Getting Started - In this Unity tutorial you’ll learn how to efficiently leverage the Entity Component System for more performant gameplay code.
raywenderlich.com

Faster builds with the new Caching Shader Preprocessor (Experimental) - Shader compilation is a lengthy process that involves several steps. One of the first steps is preprocessing the shader source. Unity 2020.1 beta introduces the Caching Shader Preprocessor, a new custom solution to perform this compilation step. It is up to 25% faster than the platform compilers’ preprocessor, closely follows the C standard, and offers new features.
Unity

CI/CD with Unity, GitHub Actions, and Fastlane - Unfortunately, getting a working CI/CD pipeline for a Unity project has not been as easy as I would like. Recently, I’ve had more success with GitHub Actions, so hopefully this guide will help others.
David Finol

Thread Synchronization Performance - Multi-threading is essential to performance on all modern processors. Using multiple threads brings along with it the challenge of synchronizing data access across those threads. Unity’s job system can do some of this for us, but it certainly doesn’t handle every case. For times when it doesn’t, C# provides us with a bunch of synchronization options. Which are fastest? Today we’ll find out!
JacksonDunstan.com

Unity C# Pattern Matching: Make It Shorter (C# 7.0) - I've been frustrated to see how much useless repetition I had in my C# conditionals and switches, but I knew programmers could do better. In this post, I'll show you how to make your code more concise with Unity C# Pattern Matching (C# 7.0)
The Gamedev Guru

Unity C# Discards: Make It Crystal Clear (C# 7.0) - In this post, I'll show you how you can make your code more explicit and simpler by using the Unity C# Discards feature (C# 7.0)
The Gamedev Guru

Hot Examples - Source Code Usage Examples Aggregator - This service was created to help programmers find real examples of using classes and methods as well as documentation. Our system automatically searches, retrieves and ranks examples of source code from more than 1 million opensource projects. A key feature of the service is an opportunity to see examples of using a particular class or method from multiple projects on a single page.
hotexamples.com

Clay Materials - New #under60sec tutorial here :) Learn to make clay/stop motion materials in Unity3d. It is really simple so you can extend it to fit your needs. Hope it helps!
Daniel Santalla

Shader effect: Soft "alpha clipping" - Short solution to a simple problem I came across. I downloaded a ready made effect from the Asset store and found a gray scale texture with no easing before the edge. Fix faulty textures with some minor shader tweaks!
gamedevelopersplayground.com

NoiseMixer - I often mix textures in PS for fx tests, but it's kinda clunky. Yesterday I made this small app, which can do all of that and a bit more!
FLOGELZ

Learn to create AR and VR apps in Unity - Designed for creators new to AR and VR development, these comprehensive courses on the Unity Learn platform teach you the skills to build AR and VR apps for a variety of use cases.
Unity

How Sine Wave turned Unity game assets into an online workspace for remote teams - When the global quarantine threatened the launch of their new Unity-based virtual world, Sine Wave rapidly created Breakroom, a 3D social hub for teams that suddenly found themselves working completely from home. Find out how they did it.
Unity

Awesome Unity3D: State Machines — Effective State Management - Without FSMs you need to use plenty of flags in your program, which can lead to many nested “if-else” statements everywhere, leading to a terrifying debugging experience. You do not want to waste your time in this self-made hell.
Daniel Tan

Unity Releases - Unity versions 2020.2.0 Alpha 10 and 2020.1.0 Beta 8 have been released.
Unity

Videos

Creating an Interior Mapping Shader using Unity's Shader Graph - Game Dev Sandbox - I've been fascinated by technique used on the windows in Marvel's Spider-Man and Forza Horizon 4 so I set out to learn how these games achieved the effect and to see if I could build an Interior Mapping Shader myself using Shader Graph in Unity. Here's how it went...
Game Dev Guide

The Heretic | HDRP lighting features - The Heretic was created on stock Unity 2019.3 and takes advantage of recent improvements in Unity’s graphics. It was entirely lit using real-time lights. In this video, we’ll take a look at how these lights work and how they enhance the world of The Heretic.
Unity

Realistic Lighting in Unity! (Tutorial) - Since my speed level design videos using Unity, I got asked to do a tutorial on lighting, so here it is! We'll gonna learn how to add realistic lighting using HDRP in Unity 2019.3. Will you enjoy? YES you will.
Sykoo

Setting up Environment Lighting in Unity 2019.3 with HDRP! (Tutorial) - Let's take a look at how we can set up Environment Lighting in Unity, using the High Definition Render Pipeline, or HDRP for short!
Unity

POLYGON Unity Lighting guide - (LiveStream) by #SyntyStudios : Construction demo. - In this live steam you can learn some basic lighting in Unity!
synty studios

How Lighting Improves Your Game's Visuals and Story (Unity) - Lighting can vastly improve your game's visuals and story. However, it's principles are rarely applied by indie devs.
Cole Chittim

Reflections and Refractions in Unity! – HDRP Tutorial - In this video, we're going to take a look at Reflections and Refractions in HDRP, the High Definition Render Pipeline in Unity 2019.3!
Unity

2D Vegetation Wind Movement Shader Graph - Easy Unity Tutorial - In this video you will learn how to create vegetation wind movement shader graph that can be apply to any sprite in your scene in addition to creating simple script to control the wind in your scene.
Binary Lunar

Use Grayscale to Optimize your Game Performance and Workflow - Unity Tips and Tricks - In this game dev tutorial I will show how to to easily optimize your unity sprites by shifting colour instead of creating new assets. It's a useful technique that will make creating game objects faster, and also increase performance by reducing memory usage.
Lost Relic Games

Unity VFX Graph - Weapon Effect Tutorial - We are going to see how to create cool effects for your Weapons (Swords, Axes, Knives and other objects) with VFX Graph and Shader Graph in Unity. This nice weapon effects use a mesh shader done with SG and a few particles made with VFX Graph.
Gabriel Aguiar Prod.

Unity3d VFX - How To Use Visual Effect Graph Point Cache Bake Tool To Map Particle Positions? - With Visual Effect Graph you can create incredible particle effects and today I like to walk you through a small but powerful tool called "Point Cache Bake Tool" which allows you to bake a mesh or a texture to then assign each particle position by using a map node.
Dilmer Valecillos

How to make a 2D OUTLINE in Unity! - In this video we create outline effect using 2D Shader Graph!
Brackeys

UA Tips & Tricks: A View from the Inside with Gram Games, Uken, and Small Giant - Unite Now - Acquiring the right players and leveraging different channels and partners can be hard. In this session, Paivi Putsepp-Seufert, Unity's head of performance marketing, shares her best tips for user acquisition (UA) based on insight from advertisers. She’s joined by other UA leaders to share their success tips.
Unity

How to Create Captivating, Deeply Interactive Mobile AR Games - Unite Now - Join Dan Miller and Phil Chacko as they share the Unity workflows that let you create AR experiences for any environment across devices.
Unity

Using Burst Compiler to Optimize for Android - Unite Now - In this session we'll talk about how our partnership with ARM helps bringing the power of the Burst Compiler to Android, enhancing multicore processor performance and power management. You'll learn how Burst grants ahead-of-time compilation of critical C# code to native code and the features it enables.
Unity

Saving Game Data in Unity - Learn how to save date in your games in Unity 2019.3!
gamesplusjames

ScriptableObject Events In Unity (C# Tutorial) - In this Unity tutorial we learn how to use ScriptableObject based events in order to create a simple, easy to edit and assign via the Inspector workflow that keeps game logic decoupled and hopefully should prove scalable in the long term.
Thousand Ant

Introducing Unity ArtEngine - Unite Now - Artomatix has joined the Unity family! In this Unite Now session, we will demonstrate powerful 3D material-creation workflows and quality-of-life enhancements made available with AI-assisted artistry.
Unity

C# Job System - Simple Example - Unity Tutorial - I'm not sure if I can call this one a tutorial cuz it's just a simple example, but it should be enough to get you started if you've never tried using the Job System.
Roundbeargames Choi

A Beginners Guide To Procedural Generation - Episode 5 - Unity3D
CodingWithRus

Assets

Humble BIG MUSIC Bundle For Games, Films, And Content Creators - Add the perfect ambiance to video games, movies, and more with over 8GB of music in different styles and genres! Put the finishing touches on your creations with over 300 different music works in the Big Action Music Bundle 1 & 2, Fantasy Adventure Game Music Pack, Epic Battle Trailers Music Pack, Big Casual & Arcade Game Music Bundle, and more.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Unity Performance Checklist for 2020+ - For Game Developers, Who're Sick of Working Hard to Release Games That Get Negative Reviews
Make your gameplay mechanics truly playable by learning the secrets behind CPU Optimization, to stop frustrating your players with frequent freezes Deliver top-notch, high-performing graphics using the GPU Performance Checklist, so you immerse your users in your unique art style Get your game to load under 5 seconds with the Memory & Loading Times checklist, so your audience doesn't give up on your game
The Gamedev Guru

JPEG/MP4 Compression PostProcessing Effect for Unity3D - This package aims to accurately recreate the effect of JPEG/MP4 compression as a PostProcessing Effect.
Jan Malitschek Open Source

UnityEventDebugger - Easily inspect callbacks on UnityEvents with UnityEventDebugger, a reflection-based solution to see which methods will be called upon invoking a UnityEvent.
Kevin Hagen Open Source

HUMBLE BOOK BUNDLE: C# & .NET CORE BY PACKT - Get hands-on with ebooks like ASP.NET Core 3 and Angular 9, Hands-On Domain-Driven Design with .NET Core, and Modern App Development with C# 8 and .NET Core 3.0! $1,403 WORTH OF AWESOME STUFF. PAY $1 OR MORE
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Svelto Entity Component System - Real ECS framework for c#. Enables to write encapsulated, decoupled, maintainable, highly efficient, data oriented, cache friendly, multi-threaded (if used with Svelto.Tasks), code without pain. Although the framework is platform agnostic (compatible with c# 7 and .net standard 2.0), it comes with several Unity extensions.
Sebastiano Mandalà Open Source

UnityAsync - Task and Async Utility Package for Unity. Start co-routines from anywhere.
Cory Leach Open Source

HUMBLE BOOK BUNDLE: APPLIED MATH PRODUCTIVITY BY MERCURY LEARNING - Get ebooks like Mathematics for Computer Graphics and Game Programming, Flight Science, The Special Theory of Relativity, Foundations of Physics, and more! $1,104 WORTH OF AWESOME STUFF. PAY $1 OR MORE.
Humble Bundle Affiliate

Spotlight

Len's Island - We've been hard at work making swords, spears, bows, hammers and lots of other weapons and tools for Len's Island!

[Follow this and many more devlog videos on their youtube channel]
Flow Graphics

You can subscribe to the free weekly newsletter on GameDevDigest.com

This post includes affiliate links; I may receive compensation if you purchase products or services from the different links provided in this article.