Autodesk and Unity have partnered to collaborate on strengthening the link between Unity and 3D artists working with Autodesk 3ds max and Maya. The result is that Unity will be the first creation engine (aka: game engine) that has source code access to the Autodesk FBX SDK.
Unite Austin 2017 Conference Demo
The streamlined process for asset sharing and in-game iteration due to this new FBX integration with Unity has been demoed at Unity’s confab event in Austin this week.
“Autodesk is very interested in making media and entertainment artists’ work as seamless as possible, and the workflow between 3D art tools and engines is a big part of that effort. 3ds Max and Maya users often utilize Unity technology, so we want to provide the best possible connection between these tools,” said Marc Stevens, vice president of Entertainment, Autodesk.
Unity 2017.2 Launches in October
The release of Unity 2017.2 launches in October and promises to empower artists and designers with improved workflows and faster roundtripping. In particular, it will be the first official Unity and Autodesk collaboration.
01 – Autodesk and Unity have collaborated around FBX technology streamlining 3D artists workflows between Maya and Unity, for example.
New in the release will be new and improved FBX import/export capabilities, including support for Autodesk’s interactive physically based shader, and custom properties.
Unity 2017.2 itself contains other important improvements, like updates to design tools like Timeline and Cinemachine, the latter in particular helps artists create cinematic content. There is also new support for Apple’s ARKit augmented reality SDK technology and support for Vuforia and Microsoft Mixed Reality, plus ARCore. So AR technologies are big in this release.
02 – A block was first created in Unity. Then a button takes the block into Maya. Transformed to a spaceship…
03 – transformed to a spaceship the a single-button takes the new spaceship back to Unity.
“Unity developers turn to Autodesk for the deepest 3D modeling and animation toolsets available,” said André Gauthier, Studio Lead at Unity. “Together we are improving FBX interoperability to increase productivity and give creators a better workflow in their asset pipelines so they can unleash their creativity.”
About Unity
Unity Technologies likes to remind the world about how it wants to democratize development, solve hard problems and enable success. Unity is the world’s most popular game engine and powers more than 50 percent of all new mobile games and two-thirds of all VR/AR experiences. Interactive content made with Unity reaches 3 billion devices worldwide.
To watch the keynote that took place this week see video below.
