Discover some of the major updates for our artist tooling in Unity 2020.1, including 2D, Cinemachine and animation toolkit improvements. For full details, check out the release notes.
2D Animation performance improved with Burst
This release optimizes performance for high bone counts (including current performance gains for complex Sprite meshes with high vertex counts).
Animated Sprite deformation at runtime will get a performance boost by installing the Burst Compiler and Collections packages via the Package Manager. This allows the 2D Animation package to use Burst compilation and low-level array utilities to speed up Unity's processing of Sprite mesh deformation.
2D Sprite Shape corners and mesh baking
A new “Stretched” option is available for Corners to connect adjacent edges without custom Corner Sprites. This option will build geometry to connect adjacent edges without the need to specify custom Corner Sprites in the Sprite Shape Profile. Scripting API support for the new corner mode will be added in a later release.
Sprite Shape mesh baking allows mesh data to be stored while editing so it can be reloaded at runtime, avoiding unnecessary runtime mesh generation. It also saves CPU cycles when you have a static Sprite Shape that isn’t modified at runtime or when you have a Sprite Shape used with prefabs.
Be aware that since data is stored in a Sprite Shape component, your Scene size can increase if it contains a lot of Sprite Shape objects with highly detailed geometry. Also, Sprite Shapes baked this way cannot be dynamically modified during runtime.
Updated 2D template
The 2D default template has been updated. It now includes all the verified 2D tools, precompiled, so new projects load faster with the entire 2D toolset at your disposal. The template also includes packages and default settings that are optimal for a 2D project. Learn more in the forum.
Our 2D sample project Lost Crypt, which showcases all the recent 2D tools, has been updated to 2020.1. This project demonstrates how all the 2D tools can work together to create compelling 2D games.
2D Physics updates
This release features many updates to 2D Physics, including improvements to Rigidbody2D XY Position Constraint, which makes a Rigidbody completely solid under any force and has almost zero runtime cost. This feature resulted from changes to Box2D physics and was ported back to 2019.2.
Per-frame Auto-Simulation enables Physics to refresh at the same rate as the rendering cycle, providing smoother physics and visuals. As well, Edge Collider 2D now lets you control the start and end points to allow overlapped edges with other colliders to maintain a continuous surface.
Our 2D Physics Examples project has been updated with many Scenes to demonstrate all 2D physics features.
Cinemachine improvements
Cinemachine is our suite of tools for dynamic, smart, codeless cameras that let the best shots emerge based on scene composition and interaction, allowing you to tune, iterate, experiment and create camera behaviors in real-time. With 2020.1 version 2.5 of Cinemachine is now a verified package and recommended for productions of any scale.
Animation updates (Preview)
Animation Rigging: Bidirectional motion transfer is also available in 2020.1. Bidirectional motion transfer is an authoring workflow that lets you transfer existing motion onto active constraints and, inversely, transfer the motion from active constraints back to the original motion source while preserving visual fidelity of the motion. It can shorten the iteration loop by making animation edits directly in Unity and in the context of your Scene.
The long-awaited Kinematica is now available as a Preview package. Kinematica is a next-generation character animation system, based on the concept of Motion Matching, that produces high-quality character animation at runtime without relying on animation graphs. Watch this Unite Now webinar to learn more.