Unigine 2.21 is out
Unigine’s new Animation Graph Editor is a visual environment for authoring animation logic.
Unigine has released Unigine 2.21, the latest version of the real-time 3D engine.
The release adds the Animation Graph Editor, a new node-based system for authoring complex animation behaviors, and improves rendering and support for 3D Gaussian Splats.
Unigine has also changed its licensing, dropping its old Community Pro and Engineering subscription plans, and introducing new Entertainment and Academic Research subscriptions.
The software remains free to indie artists and studios.
A high-end real-time 3D engine for enterprise-scale projects
First released in 2005, Unigine began as a more general-purpose game engine, but since 2012 has focused on enterprise markets, including simulation, engineering and training.
However, the software can also be used for entertainment work, and since 2020, has been available free for commercial projects that generate under $100,000/year in revenue.
Unigine 2.21: new Animation Graph Editor for authoring animation logic visually
The main new feature in Unigine 2.21 is the Animation Graph Editor, which makes it possible to set up animation logic by wiring nodes in a graph, like Unreal Engine’s Animation Blueprints.
You can find a lot more technical detail in the online release notes.
There are also improvements to rendering, primarily to render upscaling and tonemapping, and to the Gaussian Splatting system introduced in Unigine 2.20.
Performance and workflow improvements include optimized CPU, GPU, RAM and VRAM usage and a lot of quality-of-life updates to the Unigine Editor.
The other changes are mainly aimed at non-entertainment work, and include new project templates for aviation work, and better ROS 2 integration for robotics.
New pricing structure
Since the previous release, Unigine has also changed the pricing structure for Unigine.
The old $1,500/seat/year Community Pro subscription has been effectively replaced with a new Entertainment subscription, which costs $9,995/year for 10 seats.
There is also a new Academic Research subscription, which costs $15,595/year for 10 seats.
The old Engineering subscription has been dropped, but the features it provided are still available through the top-of-the-range Sim subscription plan, which is priced on enquiry.
Price and system requirements
Unigine 2.21 is available for 64-bit Windows 10+ and Linux (kernel 4.19+). Both engine and editor are hardware-agnostic: find a list of supported AMD, Intel and NVIDIA GPUs here.
The Community Free edition is free to use for non-commercial work and commercial projects with revenue or funding under $200,000 in the past 12 months.
For larger studios, Unigine Entertainment subscriptions cost $9,995/year for 10 licenses.
Read an overview of the new features in Unigine 2.21 on Unigine’s blog
Read a full list of new features in Unigine 2.21 in the online release notes
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