What are your go-to must-have Unity plugins/Shaders

[unc0nnected]

Hey guys, just thought that it would be a good idea to share some of the unity plugins or shaders that you couldn't imagine living without as there's so many gems in the asset store that some gems really get lost in the noise.  When we were using Unity 4, Alloy and Amplify Color were two that we rarely made levels without although now in Unity 5 we find the native tools to be enough to replace amplify but we still stick with Alloy as our PBR shader just because of how much more control you get over the materials.  uTomate was another one that I've had for a while but never had enough time to work it into our pipeline but remember getting super excited about.  What about everyone else?

[itsamoose]

If you want runtime-editable input bindings, cInput works quite well. Also for general prototype stuff there is a package called prototype textures that is pretty useful for blocking out elements. For visual scripting I recommend UScript, easy to use and really extendable for custom events. Basically if you've ever used Unreal's Kismet you'll be right at home.

[Dinosaursssssss]

I donno if this quite counts, but UnityVS.

[unc0nnected]

If you want runtime-editable input bindings, cInput works quite well. Also for general prototype stuff there is a package called prototype textures that is pretty useful for blocking out elements. For visual scripting I recommend UScript, easy to use and really extendable for custom events. Basically if you've ever used Unreal's Kismet you'll be right at home.

I've seen it but I'm a bit of chickenshit when it comes to anything node-based.  It just always ends up turning into a giant spaghetti factory by the time I'm done.  That's one of the reasons I've stayed away from Shaderforge.  No doubt to my detriment as I know how awesome node-based stuff is but my heart trembles at the thought of it

[itsamoose]

I've seen it but I'm a bit of chickenshit when it comes to anything node-based. It just always ends up turning into a giant spaghetti factory by the time I'm done. That's one of the reasons I've stayed away from Shaderforge. No doubt to my detriment as I know how awesome node-based stuff is but my heart trembles at the thought of it

Yeah I agree, node based systems can get pretty sketchy when you rely on them too heavily. What I like about uScript is that when you create a node system it actually generates a C# file you can edit as you like. Still, I wouldn't want to rely on it for gameplay scripting but for events and the like I've quite enjoyed it.

Shaderforge on the other hand I'm hesitant to use, mainly because I don't understand shaders well enough to make sense of the file it generates.

[RasmusS]

I can list a few plugins that are always in my library when developing with Unity:

 

uSequencer

http://www.wellfired.com/usequencer.html

 

A pretty robust timeline editor that works pretty reliably with Unity 4/5. It's no match for the Matinee tools found in Unreal Engine 3/4, but it does help you go pretty far and at a pretty inexpensive entry price. Only problem i have ever encountered in terms of platform support was on a Windows RT game, i did fix that issue and i think they added my fix to it back then.

 

 

Shader Forge

http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/

 

I cannot even express how important i think this tool is, it allows artists to much more easily create unique shaders that are really well optimized. It bridges the gap between Unity and Unreal Engine in some very significant ways and allows for much faster iteration than writing shaders from scratch.

 

Amplify Color

http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-color/

 

One of the best implementations of color grading i have ever seen in a 3D engine, it is so easy and fast to give that extra personal touch to your scenes and bridges with photoshop in a way that speeds up the process while taking a very visual approach to the actual grading(i personally think the tools Unity ship with are not up to task in this area in terms of workflow).

 

 

Log Viewer

http://www.dreammakersgroup.com/products-2/unity3d-in-game-logs/

 

A very nice and free little tool that can be of great use when testing on devices that are not actively debugging, gives you a lot of performance specific data on the fly and allows you to quickly see errors on the fly.

 

 

 

I also think uSMAA is worth checking out, but it's not really a complete thing, but it seems to work alright for what it is.