Making of Text Mesh Pro

Stephan Bouchard is the creator of an amazing Unity GUI editor extension called TextMesh Pro. Recently I had the chance to ask him a few questions about the work he does.

How did you get started in this industry? 

Since my high school days which goes back to the 80’s, I always wanted to get into game development. Unfortunately, my professional career took me in a different direction where I was still involved in the video and computer graphics industry but on the sales, distribution and marketing side of things. Several years ago, the last company that I founded (with two longtime friends) was sold to Adobe. Finally, after 30 years, it was time for me to pursue my passion for game development.

What can you tell us about your journey with game design and Unity 3D?

I learned about Unity 4 years ago. I started learning the tool and like everyone had aspirations of making games.

Your best selling product on the Asset Store, “TextMesh Pro”, is a very successful asset so far. What was involved in developing it?

While working on my first game, (which I have yet to resume working on) more specifically the text portion of the game, I was pretty surprised how difficult it was to do cool stuff with text and how limited the functionality of the built in text components were in Unity. So I decided to make my own text tool and little by little kept adding new features and functionality and many months later it finally grew into TextMesh Pro.

What was your approach to marketing TextMesh Pro?

At first and like most Asset Store developers, I created a Work-In-Progress thread to get feedback and generate some awareness in the Unity community. Eventually, I also created a thread on the Unity forum in the Asset Store section but I can’t say the forum was all that effective overall.

Soon after releasing the first beta on the Asset Store, I decided to sign up as a Sponsor at Unite 2014 in Seattle. This was a pretty significant investment but I was confident that Unite was the right venue and audience to showcase TextMesh Pro. While at Unite, I spent every minute demoing TextMesh Pro. I was the only Asset Store publisher exhibiting there. Although it took several months to recoup my investment, it eventually led to several large studios choosing TextMesh Pro as their text solution in Unity. Exhibiting at Unite was the best investment I could have made which is why I was also presented at Unite 2015 in Boston and will be at Unite 2016 in LA.

I have also attended several Unity user group meetings in LA and SF and been active on Twitter which appears to have also done well for me.

What’s next for Digital Native Studio?

I have two other assets that I would like to bring to market. One of which would be kind of complementary to TextMesh Pro. Besides that, I would love to resume working on game development and create a game with my 19-year-old son who is on the art side of things.

Having said that, there are still tons of features that I would like to add to TextMesh Pro and given how blessed I am to have such great users, my priority and focus remains on them and TextMesh Pro.

What is your favorite activity or hobby outside of game development?

I like to play tabletop games with my wife and kids. I also play hockey twice a week and during the winter season I go skiing every Sunday.

Interview with the Polygon Maker

Can you tell us about yourself and your team?
The team is basically myself, Fabio. But I do have several guys that helps me sometimes in specific tasks such as modeling or concept art. I started in 2011 with the Unity Asset Store and I am located in Brazil, but the “team” is located anywhere in the world.

What is your personal favorite model or model pack that you’ve worked on?
I’d say that “Heroes – Goblin Warrior” is my favorite so far. It was the first one that had a more complete pack of features such as normal map and facial expressions. I had a great time doing his funny faces.

What software do you use to create your amazing assets?
Most of the time I use only 3DS Max and Photoshop, but I also use Zbrush and Quixel on the packs that have normal maps. The team uses many different software. Most of the time I don’t even know what software they individually use.

I always use CAT from 3DS Max for rigging. It is a great tool, but sometimes it can be really annoying due to some bugs. Most the time I enjoy the latest stages during texturing, where the pack is coming to life. But the early stages in Zbrush is fun too. Most of the time animations are where the problems occur, even though it is really fun to see those little guys moving like real creatures.

Most of your assets appear to be low poly/mobile assets. Have you considered creating next-gen assets, for PC or console?
Some of Polygonaker packs could be considered “next-gen” assets. The Heroes Goblin Warrior has normal maps, facial expressions, cloth, PBR Shaders and has around 9000 tris. But even this one comes with LODs and hand painted version of the texture for mobile use.

Most of Polygon Maker customers are looking for mobile assets and my professional background is 99% with mobile games. Currently there is not a plan to go totally “next-gen” with “PS4 characters for FPS games”. But more middle ground characters will keep being made for Mobile/PC/Console developers. I have received a lot of feedback about being able to achieve a very good look on the packs with such optimized polycounts. This is probably why it is not hard to make a game for PC/Console using Polygon Maker packs.

What are you working on next?

There is a big list of what I want to do next. I am having a hard time prioritizing. But there are several more enemies and a bunch more cartoon characters planned for 2016.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I am always looking for ideas and feedback about the products, and if y’all find anything that is out of place, please let me know. This way this can be fixed and will help other users.
Also if you are interested in some new pack or an update for an old pack let me know. Polygon Maker is always in search for new ideas!

Check out Polygon Maker’s incredible assets on the Asset Store!

Interview with Invector

Hello, my name is Tiago Teles. My partner Jorge Negreiros and I founded Invector in February 2015 but we’d been working together for awhile before that.
I found Jorge on a Unity Group by posting a question and he offered to add me on Skype. Since then we have never stopped developing together.

How did you learn Unity 3D?

I learned game design in college, and have been in love with Unity since the first time I opened it. We coded with AS3.0 before C#, and Unity has amazed me with all the physics c
omponents already there, ready to be used. Jorge learned by necessity; he has a job that requires creative solutions for events and stuff, so he found Unity and loved how much you can do with the software.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing to you about making games?

I have loved video games since as long as I can remember, and I think I love even more to develop video games, it’s just awesome to see the results. In 2014 we went to Unite, and so much cool stuff was shown, including Caitlyn Meeks talking about the Asset Store, and we loved the idea of developing an asset. Jorge really likes to develop for developers, and to see them using his tool really makes him thrilled.

Your Third Person Controller Template is phenomenal. How long did it take you to create it and what challenges did you face?

It took us about 8-9 months of development, at first I just wanted to make a 3rd Person Shooter like everyone else lol, and it was kind of awesome, to be honest. Jorge always helped me out with more difficult coding while I was just learning the basics. I’d even post the results in a thread and people really liked it, so we decide to turn it into a asset, but it was really hard to customize, it would need a book to explain how to use it lol. So we decided to remake the whole thing from the scratch focusing on the locomotion and so we did, several times until we looked at and said “Ok, now it’s cool!”. In the meantime, others have rushed and published, but we always aim at quality. We took our time and the results are even better than we expected 🙂

What are you working on next?

College was insane this final semester, but now that I’ve finished, I want to focus 110% on developing with Jorge, and he has a job with marketing events, but he also wants to focus more on developing, so we will start by upgrading his PC to better handle the softwares. Now we want to continue to support our asset and improve it with new features, and also we wanna make a shooter add-on to the Third Person Controller Template, it’s a add-on because not everyone wants to make a shooter. Also we have plans for our own game, which is why we developed the 3rd Person Controller Template.

Interview with Luís Fonseca

First, can you tell us who you are and what you do?

My name is Luís Fonseca, I’m 32 years old, Portuguese and currently living in sunny Porto, Portugal.

I’m a freelance game developer, currently focusing in Unity. I’ve been working remotely for over a decade, on a very wide range of technologies, and I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the world’s biggest brands on dozens of challenging projects.

You do a lot of 2D work. How did Unity 4.3 (when the new 2D toolset was released) affect your workflow?

Yes, I do a lot of 2D work. With the exception of a couple of projects, pretty much all the games I’ve worked on were in 2D or 2.5D. However, Unity 4.3 didn’t affect my workflow at all because I kept using 2D Toolkit. Actually, I still use it today and I think it provides a more robust alternative to the native 2D features of Unity. Especially the platform specific sprite collections, which allow you to have specific atlases for @2x, @3x, etc resolutions. You can also accomplish that without it by using Asset Bundles, but the whole process is a lot more cumbersome. Unity keeps improving their 2D tools at an incredible pace, so I believe soon, I won’t need to use 2D Toolkit any longer.

ProCamera2D has been out for almost four months now. How’s it doing?

It’s doing very well. To be honest, much better than I ever thought it was possible. It has allowed me to dedicate more time to it, which has resulted in a constant stream of updates. The community has been great to give me suggestions and reporting bugs, and my to-do list for it keeps growing and growing. My goal is for it to become the industry-standard for 2D cameras. On top of that, it’s very fulfilling knowing that so many game developers are using a tool that I created to help them accomplish their goals.

That’s awesome. So what are your favorite 2D tools to use with Unity?

Besides 2D Toolkit which I already mentioned above, my favorite tools of the trade are Affinity Designer and Spine. They both integrate very well into my workflow and the companies behind them are doing an awesome and passionate work.

5. Anything else you’d like to share?

Yes! But not right now. 🙂 Stay tuned and soon I’ll share some details about my next endeavor.

How to Make a Split-Screen Game in 5 Minutes

For this tutorial I am going to be using the Car scene that comes with the Standard Assets Example Project. With that project open, you can find the scene in Assets > Sample Scenes > Scenes > Car.unity.

First, duplicate the camera rig. For the original camera, in the Viewport Rect settings, set H to 0.5. On the duplicated camera, set Y to 0.5 and H to 0.5. Now you have created the split screen view.

You may notice that there is a log message in the console due alerting you that there are two audio listeners in the scene. There are a couple solutions on the Unity Asset Store for split screen audio. Alternatively, you could simply delete one of the audio listeners, or create an audio listener that interpolates the positions of the two cars.

Next you need to duplicate the car and position it and the duplicated camera beside the original car. In the Auto Cam script on the second camera rig, change the target from the original car to the duplicated one and ensure that Auto Target Player is unchecked on both Auto Cam scripts (the one on the original car camera rig, and the duplicated one).

You can also change the material on one of the cars to differentiate between the two. At this point your game should look something like this:

In Edit > Project Settings > Input, create a couple new input axes by increasing the size value by two. Name the two axes Horizontal2 and Vertical2. For Horizontal2, set the negative button to ‘a’ and the positive button to ‘d’. For Vertical2, set the negative button to ’s’ and the positive button to ’w’. For both, set the Gravity and Sensitivity to 3 and check Snap. Then scroll up and in the original Horizontal and Vertical input axes, erase the values for the Alt Negative Button and Alt Positive Button.

Find the script titled CarUserControl.cs and duplicate it. Rename it to CarUserControl2.cs. You may get an error in your console but you can ignore it for now. Open CarUserControl2.cs. On line 8, there should be a public class called CarUserControl. The class name needs to be the same as the script name, so rename that CarUserControl2.

Next, around line 23 of the same script, the variables ‘h’ and ‘v’ are defined by getting the Horizontal and Vertical axes. Those should both be renamed as you renamed them in the Input settings, Horizontal2 and Vertical2. Save the script and return to Unity.

Select the duplicated car and replace the CarUserControl script with the CarUserControl2 script. Boom. You now have awesome split screen multiplayer on your PC/Mac. Press play to test it out. One player can use WASD to drive, and the other player will use the arrow keys.

Interview with Artem Netyagin from Vertex Studio

Hello everyone at LearnUnityNow.com! My name is Artem Netyagin, and I am from Russia. I’m a Unity game developer and publisher on the Asset Store. My own website is: http://vxstudio.ru/en.

I work at ComonGames studio and we are currently working on a game called “The Uncertain“.

How do you go about texturing your next-gen asset packs? What tools do you use? Do you photograph the textures or buy them online?

I use only baked maps from high-poly models and photoshop. Sometimes I use some free textures, but baked maps is the foundation of my textures. I have never tried to use my camera to photograph textures, but I am interested in photogrammetry. It’s a really cool method of creating photorealistic models. Maybe one day I will make my assets with it. I use purchased online textures in our game projects, but not in the assets we sell, because it would violate the rules.

What was it like to showcase your game at E3 2015?

Unfortunately, I did not personally attend E3. I was very busy with project, but a few guys from our team went there. A lot of people were coming to our stand and tried to play The Uncertain. In general, everything was fine, everyone enjoyed the game, and  there were almost no bad criticisms. In general, we saw that people are very interested in our game, and we are moving in the right direction.

What are the challenges of creating a multi-platform game such as The Uncertain? How do you ensure the game works well across mobile and desktop platforms?

Currently we are developing it only for PC on Steam. So at the moment we do not feel any problems. We will do a mobile version of the game in the future. We’ve made a mobile demo as a test for Android, and it was not too difficult. It is only necessary to slightly change management and work on optimization. We gave our demo to try for a famous reviewer of mobile devices, you can see our game in one of his videos:  https://youtu.be/ff7RhwIwTpQ?t=1m37s. After the release on the PC we will make versions for Mac and Linux.

The robot in The Uncertain has a particular style of animation, a nice blend of human and robotic movement. How did you go about animating the robot?

We have a very experienced 3D animator. We have recently made changes to the gait of the robot. The latest version of the animation was done using motion capture. It is difficult to find a middle ground. We are faced with such a well-known term used in robotechnics: the “Uncanny Valley” effect. We had to animate the robot so that it looked natural and realistic to our eyes, and did not evoke hostility or estrangement, and did not look ridiculous or attract undue attention.

There are quite a lot of post-apocalyptic games out there. What makes The Uncertain unique?

I personally have not seen any games or movies, which showed robotic apocalypse quite like The Uncertain. If you remember the movie Terminator – there is a war of humans and robots. The story of our game is completely different. Humanity is gone and robots live on the planet. I can’t tell more, because that would be a big spoiler.

What obstacles do you face in communicating with clients and customers who do not speak Russian?

My English is not good enough to communicate directly and we have to use an translator. But usually there is no trouble, and we understand each other without problems.

How excited are you for Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

Super excited! I love the Star Wars universe. I recently 3d printed and painted a 3D model of a lightsaber 🙂 That was my first experience in painting a 3d model, but I think it came out nicely. I also bought the first Star Wars Battlefront a long time ago and look forward to the new Battlefront’s release, which is already quite close!

Thanks for chatting Artem!

Check out his awesome assets on the Asset Store.

Interview with the Tornado Twins

 

About the Tornado Twins:

We grew up in Holland, Europe, and moved to California. We’ve been making games pretty much our entire lives, starting at age 10. Since graduating from college we’ve been launching new online media companies every six months — and we love it. Our customers include ING Bank, Thompson, Pearson Education, RedHat, Logica CMG, Orange and many more.

We’re involved in any type of media production, from electronic music to games, print media and art. I guess we just can’t pick one over the other. However, definitely one of our favorite things to do is to create video games.

Do you plan on making more Unity tutorials?

Absolutely. We’re constantly uploading new ones, but not on a weekly timeline, more in large bursts of bulk. This year we did the CGSociety Game Challenge where we’ve added something like 30 training videos on how to make an FPS.

How is FPS Control going?

Better than ever! Obviously, this project is going to continue strong since our own… game uses it. We’re seeing more people getting the source license and creating their own extensions with it.

What do you think of the Oculus Rift?

At GDC last year there were huge lines of people trying it, so no doubt it’s a hit. Haven’t had the chance to use it myself, but sooner or later we’ll support it.

What’s your favorite modeling software?

We don’t get to do much modeling ourselves. We have to keep an overview of all processes with our global team, so we can’t afford to get into the detail much. Which is sad because I love spending time in Max, Cinema4D, Maya, etc. Also the founder of Blender is a Dutch guy and we talk with his sometimes. It’s incredible to see how each modeling tool has their own business-model and how they push each other forward. Blender’s UI influenced a lot of others and Maya’s Viewport 2.0 is going to push all the other ones. We live in a great time!

Check out their website here.

Interview with Manufactura K4

Manufactura K4 is the name of one of the best selling Unity Asset Store publishers. See his amazing assets here.

Welcome! How did you get started making 3d art?

It was a few years ago. I started my adventure with 3d by modding Warcraft 3; it was fun. I then did a Starcraft 3D mod. From today’s perspective it looks ugly but I just learned the basics of making models for games.

What does your Asset Store name ‘Manufactura K4’ mean?

It just means Killst4r ‘s Factory. Killst4r (aka K4) was my old nickname.

How has the Unity Asset Store been profitable for you?

Actually, once it was just for fun after work, but now I have developed some products and it seems to be pretty good work. Once an artist said “It’s a fun job, but it’s still a job”.

Yes, that’s very true. So, did it ever occur to you when you were first starting out that you would be as successful as you are now?

I didn’t expect it. I’d used Unity for some time when they launched the Asset Store. My friend persuaded me to put some of my stuff there, and so it began.

Tell us about the process of creating a nature pack for the Asset Store.

First is the idea. Then, I take a digital camera and go into the woods. I spend several hours collecting references and textures. The rest of the work is just photo editing, cutting out background, etc….

Do you have any advice on how to create realistic yet low-poly foliage?

If you do lowpoly objects then probably the best solution is the use of photos of trees and plants. Then it will look pretty natural.

What software do you use the most?

I am in favor of free applications such as Blender. When it comes to more commercial software I like Maya. In my opinion it is a little more user-friendly than, for example Max.

And how do you think Unity compares with other game engines such as Cryengine?

I think that Unity has advantages over the competition. It is very easy to use and intuitive, and the free version allows people to make a game for any platform without any problems, and the Asset Store provides thousands of ready-made solutions. In my opinion other engines may have better rendering or other better things. But Unity together with the Asset Store becomes a complex tool that is ahead of its competitors.

I certainly agree. What are your plans for the future? What sort of environment do you plan to make next?

I can’t say much, but I will continue in what I am doing and I’ll do some things that I have planned for some time, for example, Postapocalyptic City.

Thank you for your time!

Check out Manufactura K4 on the Asset Store!

Interview with Pete Sekula of Quantum Theory Entertainment

First, could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started with Unity 3D?

I’ve been in the game industry for over 12 years as a 3D artist with a sharp focus on environments. I’ve taken the role of Lead Artist, Art Director, and Senior Environment Artist on a number of Ubisoft projects including the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six series. Currently, I’m working on Tom Clancy’s: The Division.

I got started with Unity over 3 years ago when a buddy at work mentioned how he enjoyed working on assets for the Unity Asset Store. I always wanted to do more work on the side, and it seemed to be a good thing to try. As I got more and more in to Unity, I realized how powerful it is in its simplicity.

Is the Unity Asset Store your main source of income?

My main source of income is my time at Ubisoft, though revenue from my Asset Store efforts is meaningful and substantial.
How do you go about making an optimized and modular environment like the Urban Construction Pack?
I wanted to make a city that was very harmonized and high resolution in its textures, but it also had to run fast on mobile. Working on games, you learn how to budget your content up front so it’s not costly on the gpu when an entire scene is rendered. I knew atlasing the majority of textures was the obvious answer, but that method also limits how far you can go with variety. You have to get very creative in that regard. I compiled custom photo-sourced textures, kept them at an even texel resolution, then atlased them to a 4096. I then built 5 styles of buildings from those, all with modular pieces like corners, doors, walls, etc. Even though there is a ton of mesh variety, I knew it would be cheap to render as they all share the same material. All this had to be thought and planned before the first vertex was created. That’s what makes the Urban Construction Pack unique from all other urban packs out there.

Can you tell us about the process of making a terrain pack?

World Machine is the de facto standard for heightfield terrain creation. It is what I used on all my terrain packs and what I also use at Ubisoft. Heightfields present a lot of restrictions, so you have to get creative to work around them. The first step of all my projects is reference gathering. I purchased books on unique geographical locales of the world and picked only a few that represented different climates. With my experience in World Machine, I was able to replicate a number of natural features.

Where do you get the textures for your packs? Do you photograph them yourself?

The great majority of textures are from photos I take myself. If I can’t find one I need, I head to cgtextures.com and intelligently composite theirs to create one that is unique.
What different software do you use to create your asset packs?
3DSMax primarily, but I’ve used ZBrush and Mudbox for normals and diffuse painting, respectively. XNormal is very much often used for normal map projection. NDO2 is used for some very very quick normal map details. Photoshop, of course, is used for textures when I’m not doing too much Physically-Based texturing.

What’s next for Quantum Theory?

I’m focused on getting myself out there, sharing my techniques, and producing some cool artwork. My content will be ported to the Unreal Engine in time. I’m also putting together some instructional videos on the methods I use to texture inside Photoshop. And of course, expanding the PolyWorld series of asset packs.

Check out Pete’s incredible assets at his website!