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 Pipeline, 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 Sprite 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 scene 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 tilemaps 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.
timeAsDoubleTime.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 Runner 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 Profiler 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 mesh 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 scripts more accessible to create tools for use by non-programming team members.