“Book of the Dead” uses Unity’s new Scriptable Render Pipeline to showcase breakthroughs in real-time rendering on Unity 2018

SAN FRANCISCO — (BUSINESS WIRE) — January 16, 2018 — Unity Technologies ( https://unity3d.com/), creator of the world’s leading real-time development platform, today released a sneak peek at “Book of the Dead,” which demonstrates the power of real-time rendering on Unity. Making extensive use of Unity’s powerful new rendering system, the Scriptable Render Pipeline, “Book of the Dead” shows how developers can take total control of the rendering process to achieve a level of detail and visual fidelity made possible by Unity in 2018.

“Forests are amazing; they can be mysterious, dangerous, and breathtakingly beautiful. Achieving the feelings a forest evokes is one of the hardest challenges when working within real-time graphics. We set out to tackle this with ‘Book of the Dead’ to see how much a small team like ours could accomplish working within Unity,” said Veselin Efremov, Creative Director, Unity Technologies. “Seeking out challenges like this helps Unity to evolve and advance. We use new features when they’re introduced early in their development cycle, and we partner closely with our tech teams to push new features to their limits, so that the innovations we uncover together will make a better product for our developers. When a demo is done, we know that the engine has achieved new functionality; and we are excited to see developers use this tech for their next creations."

Built using Unity 2018’s Scriptable Render Pipeline, Progressive Lightmapper, and Post-Processing Stack, the sneak peek at “Book of the Dead” gives viewers a look at the first-person interactive experience being played in real-time, targeting the PlayStation 4 computer entertainment system. The story unfolds in two parallel timelines, and as the audience views the scattered memories of our protagonist, they discover there's more to her story than she is willing to tell. More information on how “Book of the Dead” came to life can be found on the website.

Sneak Peek at Unity 2018 - Delivering New Innovations to Advanced Developers

The release of Unity 2017.3 in December completed a year-long cycle which delivered tools such as Timeline and Cinemachine, empowering teams of artists and developers to do more together. Unity 2018 will build on this foundation to give advanced developers and engineers control of new features such as the Scriptable Render Pipeline and the C# Job System, the first versions of two major features that will continue to evolve to help unlock beautiful graphics and increase runtime performance on Unity. Key highlights include:

• Scriptable Render Pipeline: Unleash the Power of Modern Hardware Without the Burden of Building a New Engine - Unity 2018 places total control of a powerful new rendering process in the hands of advanced developers. The Scriptable Render Pipeline is a combination of power and ease - developers now have the freedom to control the rendering engine at a fine-grained level without the complexities of writing a complete rendering pipeline - leading to an increase in graphics quality and gameplay performance in AAA console, PC, and mobile.
• C# Job System - A New Coding System That Unlocks Major Performance Increases - The C# Job System is a new high-performance multithreaded system that makes it possible to take advantage of multi-core processors without the heavy programming headache. Combined with a new programming model (Entity Component System), it enables developers to optimize creations for major increases in performance. Developers can add more effects and complexity to their games, or use that horsepower to add complex AI, to make rich worlds that immerse gamers.

Unity brings the world’s best talent together with the goal of making Unity 2018 the best choice for all creators - from AAA studios and solo developers to indie studios and more. Unity has hired engineers and artists from renowned studios such as Insomniac, Bungie, and Naughty Dog, who are building the foundation alongside a team of more than 1,000 engineers that are making their breakthroughs available to all developers around the world. Games and experiences made with Unity have reached more than 3 billion devices worldwide in 2017 and were installed more than 20 billion times in the last 12 months.

For more information on Unity, please visit the Unity store.

About Unity Technologies

Unity Technologies is the creator of a flexible and high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich interactive 2D, 3D, VR and AR experiences. Unity exists to democratize development, solve hard problems and enable success -- three core values that are the driving forces of Unity’s adoption by millions of creators. Unity’s powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor serve as the foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and easily bring them to multiple platforms: mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, and embedded systems. Unity also offers solutions and services for creating games, boosting productivity, and connecting with audiences including Unity Ads, Unity Analytics, Unity Asset Store, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Collaborate, Unity Connect and Unity Certification. Unity Technologies serves millions of registered developers including large publishers, indie studios, students and hobbyists around the globe. For more information, visit www.unity3d.com and to see the latest games and experiences created in Unity, go to https://unity.com/madewith .