Rip Unity Assets

[Gisberto Letter]

Thelast few months of development of our Unity game have been really annoying. We don't know exactly what happened or when, but all of a sudden there was a button that had its image gone missing, as well as a few text objects with their fonts go missing. We would fix them, do some code changes, commit and push to GitLab. My partner would pull the changes and the button/text object would be missing their things. Then a few objects would start having their scripts go missing. We would add the scripts/icons/fonts back to their right place, commit, push, pull they are still broken. We figured it was the fact that Unity does not auto save, as we are not the best at ctrl+S like we should. Created a script that saves every minute. That did not fix it. The other day we made all the changes, File Save, File Save Project, closed unity, Commit, push, I deleted the project, Re-cloned it, these problems still persist.

Hi. I would like to export some assets from unity, for example materials and meshes. They end in .asset format.

How can I export these so that I can import the exact same assets into threejs?

Thank you !

hi, have a real hard time believing im the only one who would love to be able to figure this out, previously worked with unity 3d (pro version) and as a lot of others have done am jumping ship to ue4, in the last few months have bought quite a few nice assets (characters and meshes) and packages (mainly environmental) and could really use a tutorial or help on figuring out how to get them into the editor. most of our characters were bought rigged and animated so sure that complicates things even though guess we could just bring in the meshes and start fresh in the rigging tool kit. any help highly appreciated.

sorry for late response been at work, thanks for the suggestions, will try it hopefully tonight, wonder if its possible to simply bring the static mess into maya and use the ue4 plugins to rerig it in the correct proportions and then reimport the animations ? we have both maya and 3ds max even though it seems maya is more supported with ue4. hopefully this will pickup some interests as we like many others had a lot invested in unity. thanks again for the suggestions so far.

[QUOTE=;9349]

sorry for late response been at work, thanks for the suggestions, will try it hopefully tonight, wonder if its possible to simply bring the static mess into maya and use the ue4 plugins to rerig it in the correct proportions and then reimport the animations ? we have both maya and 3ds max even though it seems maya is more supported with ue4. hopefully this will pickup some interests as we like many others had a lot invested in unity. thanks again for the suggestions so far.

However: The materials and textures will not import correctly, so do not include these when importing into UE4. Simply import the textures manually and then create new materials and plug the textures into where you want them, then put the new material into the empty material slot on the mesh.

My goal is for people to be able to use the framework to develop their own projects and only be required to release any changes made to the framework back to the community i.e. they should not be required to publish their project's 'content' as open source.

GPL/LGPL/AGPL do not trigger the "linking" requirement on artwork, unless the code itself is present in the artwork. Also note that no free license forces people to contribute back their private changes.

The GNU LGPL looks like it might be a good fit but seems to have been written with a heavy focus on .dlls and code. Some of this framework will be non-code files (sprites, textures, sounds, etc) that I would like to be covered by the same licence. I am also concerned that anti-DRM clauses may limit adoption.

As of version 2.1, the LGPL has been renamed from Library General Public License to Lesser General Public License. This means you can use it on any work, not just libraries.

There is no "one size fits all" license. Your only viable option if you want everything to be licensed the same way is some form of public domain dedication, like CC0 1.0 Universal (which is suitable for everything, despite being part of Creative Commons; however, please note it is only FSF-approved and not OSI-approved).

This is why I recommend using two separate licenses if you are going to copyleft: one for code (GPL, LGPL, AGPL, version 3 or later) and one for assets (CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 depending on use case). If you want to maximize adoption of your framework, your best bet is using the Apache 2 (has a patent grant) or the MIT license for code, and CC BY 4.0 for assets.

Just for the record: "copyleft" means that any downstream recipients who distributes adaptations of your framework, is required to offer anyone who receives an adapted work, source code for the adaptation, under the same license (or one with identical terms).

That requirement will not be a problem, the separation between "code" and "content" (sometimes called "assets" or data") is well-known, and no copyleft license requires source code of "content" that is simply read by the program to be regarded as part of the adaptation.

You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement. (CC BY-SA 1.0 & 2.0)

You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any right or authority to forbid You from making technical modifications necessary to exercise the Licensed Rights, including technical modifications necessary to circumvent Effective Technological Measures. (CC BY-4.0)

Normally, I would not recommend using a software license for non-code. However, in this case, all the CC licenses are off the chart because they're anti-DRM. The GFDL is copyleft and allows DRM, but it is (IMHO) painful to use because its over-the-top formal requirements. Other content licenses I am aware of (i.e. Open Publication License, Free Art License, Academic Free License) are either non-copyleft, or they are anti-DRM.

LGPLv2.1 and LGPLv3 are "weak" copyleft licenses that allows downstream recipients to combine your framework with anything, including games that are sold commercially, without giving anything back to the community. The requirement to share adaptions does not trigger until they alter your code and distribute the resulting program. If this is OK, then you should use one of these for the framework (I prefer LGPLv2.1 because I think it is clearer that GPLv3 - but this is a personal preference).

GPLv2 is "normal" copyleft that requires both adapted and linked source code to be shared (if some derived work is distributed). This does not disallow use in commercial games, but the source code of any game that is distributed commercially must be given back to the community. If you want this stronger type of copyleft, then GPLv2 seems to be the right license.

To avoid any copyleft confusion, you should specify (e.g. in README) that the while the non-code assets are under the same license as the code, they are included as "mere aggregates" and do not trigger any copyleft clause on user created content.

One of the things I'm finding is that I really wish I could import Unity assets directly (or more directly) into Godot. A lot of asset packs are set up for Unity specifically, and even if they come with FBX or OBJ, these raw files are often incomprehensible and unusable, just a bunch of textureless planes and boxes, since you're meant to use the set up prefabs. Importing materials would also be really helpful, as sometimes there are no clues about what texture goes to what model.

One of the work-arounds I've been exploring is Unity's FBX Exporter. It's still a pain in the butt to get Unity up and running and unpack assets. I don't know if you can borrow the code somehow, but it'd be great to do this in Godot, or at least a program that's not as big and lumbering as Unity.

Suggestions/proposals like this belong on the godot-proposals tracker, however that is a feature I don't see happening. Too many potential issues involved. There was a quiz by the devs, last year I think that included a question if the community would like to see an official asset store similar to the one that unity has though. So that is something on their radar.

I've bought assets on CGTrader before, and I would say like 70% of the time, they don't work (in Godot or any engine). Not sure what the issue is, I think sometimes those sites do autoconversion (for example from FBX to glTF) and the conversion is borked. Sometimes the vertices are a mess, materials rarely work etc. This is why the Unity and Unreal asset stores are so good, because when you buy an asset it will almost always work (assuming it says it supports the version you are using). Godot could definitely use something similar, it could be a good way to share assets and maybe generate some money too.

Other content creators who own their creations(that is they didn't create the assets under payed commission by Unity or another party) are free to sell to anybody for any use they(the content creator/rights owner) see fit. So it might well make sense that you shouldn't expect something bought from unity asset store to work in anything else other than unity however if the seller is ok with you using their content in another engine, that is likely fine.

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