>> Hi, I'm Katie Stone Perez and welcome to GDC.
I'm here with Liz from Unity,
who's the technical evangelist.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> Gosh, what an amazing show, right? It's Friday.
We're closing out the end of the week.
It's been very busy.
I know you've got to be over at your studio offices,
and doing some fun things over there,
including I got to come over
earlier this week for the launch of
the Universal Game Dev Challenge.
>> Yes.
>> Very cool, tell us a little bit about that.
>> Yeah, thank you for having me and it was great
to come over to the studio as well.
So, Universal Game Dev Challenge,
I have a little bit of a video, can I show and talk it?
>> Fantastic, let's see it.
>> Here we go.
>> I'm so excited.
>> You have no idea how excited I am about this.
And so yes, so this is a partnership between Unity,
Universal, Microsoft and Intel.
So it's pretty huge, it's actually
the biggest competition Unity have ever
done in terms of prizes.
So why is essentially is Universal have
released five IPs and the task is to create,
the challenge is to create
a PC game based on one of those IPs.
So as you saw there was Jaws, Tolok,
Voltron, Battlestar, Galactica, and Back to the Future.
>> So exciting to you, I mean
what fantastic ideas to get to work with.
>> I know, I have so many ideas but I can't enter.
>> I know. We can game jam on the side.
>> We sure should, honestly
let's talk after because I have many ideas,
and I'm just so excited about
this competition because it's
a way for our community to bridge that gap to industry.
It's really a way for you to talk
to the big players and get feedback.
So, what I mean by that is,
the first stage of the competition is
the submission of
a game design document and a pitch video.
And going on from there,
we're going to select six finalists.
And those six finalists are
going to go to a VIP mentorships summit.
And what that means is that there
will be representatives, engineers,
experts from Microsoft, Unity, Intel, Universal.
People all there to enable to develop the success.
And we want this as much as the community do.
This is such a big deal,
you can make PC game with a great IP,
with some amazing giants of the industry.
So we're very excited.
>> Very cool. And even the
judges who end up reviewing the games,
I mean it's an amazing list like
Dean Takahashi and Cate Edwards,
I mean it's just such a cool list,
even to know that your proposal is
being reviewed by industry experts like that.
I think it's so cool for people.
>> It's really like, there is
$250,000 to develop your game,
if you're the finalist,
but actually everything else along the way,
as you've just mentioned, is
something that money can't buy.
It's a really valuable experience and we're really
excited to be bringing it.
So, it opened on the 19th of March.
It runs until the 19th of April for round one.
>> And you just need a design doc,
you don't have to have any code written by that point.
>> Exactly. So design document pitch video.
You can go to unityconnect.com
to get started and to register.
And you submit as an individual but you can have a team.
So, yeah, it's quite exciting.
We have on Unity connect,
we have a lot of frequently asked questions.
There's a forum that you can get on.
Myself and Lydia, partnership manager,
are constantly on there answering questions.
So ask us anything,
get involved, please unityconnect.com, check it out.
>> Very cool. And I'm so
excited because a part of this is that,
the final game will include some Mixer Interactivity.
>> I'm so excited.
>> Which I'm so excited to see,
especially like with Jaws.
Can you just imagine how like all of
these IPs actually can see such great things,
that you could do with Mixer Interactivity.
>> Yeah.
>> So, for those watching, if you're not
familiar what Mixer Interactive is,
it's our interactive toolkit that gives you,
as Game Developers the ability to really
transform your viewers, into players.
See, you can actually add
these interactive elements within
your game experience whether,
you're letting the audience
just cheer along or you're actually letting
them vote within experiences or you're letting them help
or hurt that core player of the game experience.
So, I'm really excited to see that part as well.
And as from the Mixer team,
are really excited to support you as
Game Developers along this journey,
and help you understand how to use our tools,
and all of that as well.
And we obviously have a great Unity
STK Plugin, and all that.
So, we're excited to give that.
Now, Unity is actually,
you guys have some exciting stuff
happening right now too,
I mean 2018 with Unity.
It just, it blows my mind.
I entered the game industry 17 years ago,
and the democratization that
we've seen and people being able to get in,
make content and bring it to the platform it's stunning,
like it's truly stunning.
So congratulations. It's very cool
to see what you guys are doing.
>> It's been incredible.
This GDC's been really exciting for all of us.
I don't know if you saw the Keanu when,
I mean Book of the Dead has been,
I have a video for that too.
>> Yeah.
>> So, Book of the Dead. My little video.
So, Book of the Dead
was created by the content team in Copenhagen.
They were behind sort of the Adam demos,
the Adam films, that you may have been seeing around.
The Book Of The Dead is really
focused on high graphical content.
And I think this is really relevant to
the Universal Challenge too because,
Unity 2018.1 is due to release next month.
So, if you're creating that kind of games to sign
up for Universal Challenge,
and you're wanting to have
this focus on high end graphics,
I mean it's for PC, we have
some great features for you to take advantage of.
Buy into a games design documents
to start experimenting with.
So Book of the Dead is really a big focus on that.
>> I mean this is stunning, it's
just stunning to see this.
>>It's incredible.
>> Especially, that level of graphical performance
partnered with the ease
of entry into the tool set, right?
I mean it. It really is
just amazing where we are at in 2018.
>> Definitely.
So if you go to like unity3.com/bookofthedead,
we actually have a lot of blogs,
and a lot of features on what went into this demo,
and you can get a hold of that.
So, for example we use
White Grammetry for this to
get that realistic environment.
And, we use pixel mega scans.
We actually have a whole solutions page on hey,
how to get started with that, and make the most of it.
This was used in experimental OD lighting tool
with Grammetry tool.
So you can start a base with
a Photogrammetry that you're bringing
in like your whole scene realistically.
And, then really what Book of the Dead is doing,
is highlighting on those Scriptable Render Pipeline.
So, before the graphics Pipeline for
Unity was not as accessible to developers as it is now.
So now what we're doing is,
we are obstructing it with C-sharp,
so you really do have more control of
the Scriptable Render Pipelines
that you want for your production.
So we have to- so
that is going to be available for Unity 2018.1.
And this is showcasing our HD Render Pipeline.
We also have a lightweight one too.
So, this really just shows the potential of what you can
do with the engine as Scriptable Render Pipeline,
and all the great tools that we
have for high graphical fidelity.
I'm super excited about it.
And I know the Copenhagen and Denmark team are
really excited to have this out in the public now.
>> Very cool. Now, if I'm a developer,
I'm currently on 2017,
is the primary reason for me to move over to 2018?
How does this new level of graphical performance
or are there other key
features that I should be thinking about?
>> Sure. So if you are developing 2071.3,
if you were developing in 2017,
and say you'll create your game now,
and you locked into that version.
You can still carry on using
the Legacy Graphics Pipeline.
>> Okay.
>> We're not like deprecating that and not getting lid of
the like put to leverage the Scriptable Render Pipeline,
and also our Shadow graph,
which uses Scriptable Render Pipeline.
Yes, you will need to upgrade to 2018.
>> Okay.
>> And the Shadow graph is super exciting too.
So, if you are maybe wanting,
an artist who wants to double with Shadow
or you're a programmer who just wants to
have a bit more of a visually interactive way.
The Shadow Graph is really great to be
able to efficiently film your shadows,
which you can then export code, so-.
>> Very cool.
>> Yes, it's super accessible to
programmers and technical artists or artists of the like.
Watch this video that's coming on.
>> And we have,
I know we have some people watching.
If you have a question for
Liz you can go ahead and throw that in the chat.
>> Yes.
>> And then we can go ahead and pop that up here as well.
>> Sure.
>> But, what are some of the other things
that you guys have been talking about at GDC this week?
What are some of the other big exciting
things happening from Unity?
>> We've had a lot of great talks on, so we've had,
so this week at
GDC it's been absolutely incredible, I've loved it.
We've had Unity Central,
which has had a host of talks,
and you could come to the studio,
in San Francisco and watch the talks there.
A lot of that has been on 2018 features.
We had a talk this morning,
I was actually there,
that was about job system,
and our entity component system.
So, the job system is coming in 2018,
and it's a way to save Multi Threaded Code.
So, it's really about,
again we wanting to enable developers to
make as performing high,
and as they as they would like.
So it's really exciting.
And we also announced
in the key note that the next Free Folks are coming.
That was quite exciting to be in the room,
when Mr. Free Folks came up on
the screen and everyone went.
So that was good. So, really exciting news for Unity.
>>Everybody needs three cups of wine.
>> Everybody needs [inaudible]
>> Very cool.
Well, how do people actually go see
all that great content
that you guys have been doing this week?
>> That's a really good question.
So, if you go to our YouTube channel,
we've actually been streaming
a lot of discussion from Unity Central.
>> Okay, great.
>> And if you are at GDC today,
we do have the mixer launch,
which is [inaudible] three one five one where we
also streaming and repeating a lot of those sessions.
So, for those of you that maybe don't want to go to
the office or want to nip it in between meetings.
You can go chill out there, chat to
the Evangelist there and watch those live streams.
>> Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for joining us.
I am are so excited about
the Universal Game of Challenge.
>> Oh my gosh, me too.
>> I can't wait to get to see this content come out.
I can't get to wait to meet
the six finalists. Like it's just going to be stunning.
>> It's going to be incredible.
>> Thank you so much to all of you Game Devs out there.
We cannot wait to see what you guys are going to do.
So go get it.
We're excited to see all your proposals
and thanks for joining us here at GDC.
>> Thank you. Thanks for having me.