The latest version of Unity's leading game development tool, Unity 3, has been released to games developers this week, enabling the creation of high-end graphics and mobile game creation tools at a bargain bucket price.
Unity is perhaps best known for its use in creating mobile, web and 3D mobile games. This latest version of the game creation package -version 3 – also gives game creators some impressive desktop and console graphics features.
Tech innovation in gaming
Unity recently picked up The Wall Street Journal 2010 Technology Innovation Award for its games developer tools.
Unity 3 offers devs the integration of Illuminate Labs' Beast Lightmap tool, which gamers will know from titles such as Mirror's Edge and Killzone 2, used to create high-quality 32-bit floating point shadow maps.
In addition to this, the tool also offers devs a number of other features previously only available in much more expensive tools - such as deferred rendering (allowing for loads more real-time lights in the game environment), a built-in tree editor, native font rendering, automatic UV mapping, audio filters and occlusion culling for desktop OSes.
And not forgetting its mobile heritage, Unity 3 also adds Android support. Unity remains free, while Unity Pro will set devs back $1,500.
Via Ars Technica
