To find out more about the new features, changes, and improvements to this Unity version, see the 2021.1 Release Notes).
If you are upgrading existing projects from 2020LTS, read the Upgrade Guide to 2021.1 for information about how your project may be affected.
See what’s changed in Unity 2021.1 since 2020LTS and view the documentation for the affected areas.
The 2D game development quickstart guide has been released, which provides a workflow for developing a 2D game in Unity. This quickstart guide helps you decide what game perspective and art style you want your game to have, set up your Unity project, and create a 2D game.
The 3D game development quickstart guide has been released, which provides a workflow for developing a 3D game in Unity. This quickstart guide helps you set up your Unity project, and create a 3D game.
Visual scripting has been integrated into the Unity Editor, and improvements have been made to the Universal Render PipelineA series of operations that take the contents of a Scene, and displays them on a screen. Unity lets you choose from pre-built render pipelines, or write your own. More info
See in Glossary, High Definition Render Pipeline, and 2D tools. This includes optimized workflows to ensure stunning results on the widest variety of platforms and enhanced features for your highest-fidelity needs.
This release includes usability and stability improvements for 2D tools, with a focus on SpriteA 2D graphic objects. If you are used to working in 3D, Sprites are essentially just standard textures but there are special techniques for combining and managing sprite textures for efficiency and convenience during development. More info
See in Glossary Swap workflows and 2D graphics.
Recorder is now a released package and includes new codec like Apple ProRes for better compatibility with graphics and quality of life updates to enhance your capturing experience.
FBX Exporter is now a released package. Export sceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary references for animation and interoperate with popular 3D modeling software like Maya and Max for efficient iteration. You can also record animation in the Editor, so you can export references and re-key animations.
You can now cache a portion of non-directional shadow maps, which can result in performance improvements. HDRP renders dynamic shadow casters into their respective shadow maps for each frame.
Slicing options now let you slice sprite sheets that contain continuous neighboring isometric tiles. This helps to speed up the process of preparing isometric tilemapsA GameObject that allows you to quickly create 2D levels using tiles and a grid overlay. More info
See in Glossary if your art is contained in one single image.
The latest graphics packages have been integrated into the core Unity engine. This includes the most recent versions of:
We’ve also improved your coding experience across the board with code coverage, better profiling and simulation support, and even more compilation improvements.
You can now use Version Defines to include the latest API features and provide backwards compatibility for older versions of Unity and the API, all within a single code base.
timeAsDouble
Time.timeAsDouble has introduced various AsDouble properties, which let you use double precision time in your project. This is especially useful for creators building long-running applications, such as dedicated game servers.
Use Unity’s Code Coverage package with Test RunnerThe Test Framework package (formerly called the Test Runner) is a Unity tool that tests your code in both Edit mode and Play mode, and also on target platforms such as Standalone, Android, or iOS. More info
See in Glossary to check for test coverage of your project’s code, including detailed HTML formatted reporting to find areas that are being missed by your current test suite.
The Memory ProfilerA window that helps you to optimize your game. It shows how much time is spent in the various areas of your game. For example, it can report the percentage of time spent rendering, animating, or in your game logic. More info
See in Glossary package has been updated to ensure that all relevant data is reported for managed data types, including multi-dimensional arrays. Additionally, improvements have been made to texture and meshThe main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info
See in Glossary memory reporting.
You can now run multiple Player instances on one machine, and connect Unity Profiler to a specific instance to get deep insight in how it’s performing, making you more productive with less hardware. Watch the Profile multiple players in 2021.1 video on youtube to see it in action.
Device Simulator is now installed as part of the main Unity installation and you no longer need to add it as a package. Use Device Simulator to view how your game would appear on mobile devices.
Visual scripting is now included as a core feature, built directly into Unity. You can use this to Ccreate logic with visual, drag-and-drop graphs to supplement your code for faster prototyping and iteration. Visual scripting is also a great way to make existing scriptsA piece of code that allows you to create your own Components, trigger game events, modify Component properties over time and respond to user input in any way you like. More info
See in Glossary more accessible to create tools for use by non-programming team members.