Unity 2017 stumbling blocks for Unity 5 users

[TiktaalikDreaming]

I thought I'd start a topic on oddities and annoyances with U2017 for us peeps that are used to U4 or U5.

There's already a topic on the animation import joys.  Basically, we're all used to marking animation imports as "legacy", but now you apparently have to also untag "Import visibility", see @Orbital_phoenix's post, 

Other issues I've had are that Unity seems to export normal maps as some other type of weird normal map.  Not the old familiar tangent space blueish thing I'm used to, and from the result in game, not the type KSP is expecting either.  At the moment, I'm just overwriting the Unity export normal, and that seems to work, but remembering to do that every export, especially when using texture atlases is a pain.  A slight advantage to workflow can be had by using two different formats, eg; save the correct normal as PNG, and use TGA for the unity export.  This means you just need to delete the funky one when doing repeated exports that don't involve normal changes.

Unity2017:  Unity 5: 

 

Part Tools window is no longer resizable.  That may sound petty, but when building IVAs, one long name for a prop and all the Spawn buttons go missing off the right, and then you scroll to see those and can no longer see the prop names.

Internal Space reload/refresh features no longer seem to do anything.  There's something going on, as it takes a short while to return to normal operation.  But there's no reload apparent.

There may be more things I haven't stumbled on of course.  Feel free to add them.

 

 

[Shadowmage]

On 5/19/2018 at 5:02 PM, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Other issues I've had are that Unity seems to export normal maps as some other type of weird normal map.

Your normal maps seem to represent two formats, both of which are 'correct' depending upon the texture file format and data encoding.

Left = the encoding that should be used for DDS (DXT5_NM), and is known as 'swizzled'; this format should only be used (afaik) on DDS textures, encoding a PNG like that would be wrong.  If this is the output you are getting from PartTools...something is obviously wrong (it should only encode them like that for DDS)

Right = standard normal map format, and the expected format for .png textures.

(likely not much help to solve the problem, but hopefully some useful information).

[Stone Blue]

On 5/19/2018 at 7:02 PM, TiktaalikDreaming said:

Part Tools window is no longer resizable.  That may sound petty, but when building IVAs, one long name for a prop and all the Spawn buttons go missing off the right, and then you scroll to see those and can no longer see the prop names.

Yeah, I've felt the pain of this one... I spent a good 6 or 7 hours poking around the scripting, to see if I could get it to resize. 
 

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Left = the encoding that should be used for DDS (DXT5_NM), and is known as 'swizzled';

<snipped>

Right = standard normal map format, and the expected format for .png textures.

Good to know... I generally mess with existing mods, and I convert the DDS textures to png before working in Unity, due to some issues with Unity not reading DDS... I usually export from Unity in png, but looks like maybe a change to tga may be better vOv

[TiktaalikDreaming]

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Your normal maps seem to represent two formats, both of which are 'correct' depending upon the texture file format and data encoding.

Left = the encoding that should be used for DDS (DXT5_NM), and is known as 'swizzled'; this format should only be used (afaik) on DDS textures, encoding a PNG like that would be wrong.  If this is the output you are getting from PartTools...something is obviously wrong (it should only encode them like that for DDS)

Right = standard normal map format, and the expected format for .png textures.

(likely not much help to solve the problem, but hopefully some useful information).

I was hoping someone knew what they were. Thanks. Maybe if I convert to DDS. Although, I'm not sure if the ddsify software will much like it when it tries detecting if it's a normal.

It's nice to know what they are, considering I knew I'd seen them but didn't know. At the very least I can stop torturing myself with bad google searches. Thanks

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 hour ago, Stone Blue said:

Good to know... I generally mess with existing mods, and I convert the DDS textures to png before working in Unity, due to some issues with Unity not reading DDS... I usually export from Unity in png, but looks like maybe a change to tga may be better vOv

Well, I got some bad news.  I get the DDS style normals when exporting TGA as well.  Still not sure if this dds normal thing is just me or a unity project setting or what.  I at least have something to look for thanks to @Shadowmage

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Converting to DDS does indeed allow them to be loaded and used correctly.  Presumably someone's tool to convert to DDS doesn't convert the normal type.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

Another thing I've noticed, not sure if I've broken my part tools, or if it's a unity 2017 thing, since if the ksp shaders seem to be missing definitions.

Imported objects using those shaders get unity pink, and selecting the shader (which are still selectable) the shader definition is empty, ie you can't choose textures or settings.

I'm missing bumped specular (which I didn't notice because I was using the emissive equivalent) and one of the particle effects shaders.

anyone else seeing similar?

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

47 minutes ago, TiktaalikDreaming said:

anyone else seeing similar?

Hi, sadly confirming that  you are not alone,  I've fallen out with U 2017 and the part tools for it big time,  as a unity and part tools user since unity 3 days I reckon this is the worst implementation ever, and don't get me started on particles and effects...  Not a happy modder,  thankfully  for most of the things I'm doing  U5 works fine, though while initially, i could get U5 particle effects, particularly multi emitter types into  KSP 1.4 fairly painlessly , the recent 14.4 has broken that as well , leading to only one element of the group playing.

[TiktaalikDreaming]

2 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

Hi, sadly confirming that  you are not alone,  I've fallen out with U 2017 and the part tools for it big time,  as a unity and part tools user since unity 3 days I reckon this is the worst implementation ever, and don't get me started on particles and effects...  Not a happy modder,  thankfully  for most of the things I'm doing  U5 works fine, though while initially, i could get U5 particle effects, particularly multi emitter types into  KSP 1.4 fairly painlessly , the recent 14.4 has broken that as well , leading to only one element of the group playing.

Oh, I was still using unity 5 for particles effects as the updated ui came with a stack of things that don't work. Only one particle emitter is a bit excrement.