UNIGINE Community SDK is now free to all the technical enthusiasts worldwide. There are only a few real-time 3D engines on the mass market, and now here comes another big one. Previously our platform was available only to the large companies (making professional 3D simulators, digital twins, and so on), so the free SDK edition is a big deal.

The UNIGINE 2 Community SDK makes the same 3D rendering technology used by leading enterprises available to a global community of programmers and digital artists. Individual developers or projects with annual revenue or funding not higher than 100,000 USD, and non-profit organizations can leverage from the main features of the engine, including photorealistic visual quality, VR optimizations, both C++ and C# APIs, a library of ready-to-use high-level objects, and a visual scene editor. This will enable the creation of various applications with 3D graphics: games, animation, architecture visualization, VR apps, product visualization, interactive art, and much more.

The enterprise-grade features, like large world support with virtual scenes as expansive as the solar system, distributed simulation over a network, embedding into proprietary apps, an extended set of GIS/CAD data formats, advanced video output, professional motion capture, and many others are available in the commercial SDK editions---UNIGINE 2 Engineering and UNIGINE 2 Sim.

What's New

Unigine 2.21: New Animation System, AI-Friendly Workflow, Project Templates, Performance Optimizations

Key Changes

  • Introduced a new animation system with a visual logic editor
  • Improved AI-friendly workflows for better integration with AI tools
  • Added new aviation-focused project templates (fixed-wing and rotary simulators, VR MRO, UAV simulation)
  • Delivered broad performance optimizations across CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM, and loading times
  • Implemented clustered rendering for advanced lighting scenarios
  • Enhanced renderer with multiple visual improvements
  • Python/C++/C# DataBridge system
  • Updated ROS 2 integration (Jazzy Jalisco support, expanded sensor coverage)
  • Improved Editor usability with multiple quality-of-life updates
  • Added new plugins (video-to-texture playback, PDF viewer, SQL database connector)
  • Introduced new SDK editions: Entertainment and Academic Research

New Animation System with Visual Logic Editor

  • One of the key highlights of this release is the completely redesigned animation system. With the introduction of a visual logic editor, building complex animation behaviors becomes faster, clearer, and far more intuitive – reducing reliance on manual scripting while giving teams full control over animation flow.

AI-Ready Workflow Improvements

  • UNIGINE 2.21 takes a major step toward AI-assisted development with a workflow designed to seamlessly integrate modern AI tools into your production pipeline.
  • These improvements enable AI agents to better understand UNIGINE's architecture and API, minimizing common issues such as incorrect assumptions or references to non-existent methods. The result is more accurate outputs, fewer iterations, and a significantly smoother development experience.
  • Developers can now set up and build UNIGINE-powered applications with the help of AI assistants simply by describing what they need. Backed by a deep, structured understanding of the engine – distilled from official documentation, tutorials, and sample projects – AI tools can generate code, assist with implementation, and accelerate development with far greater reliability.
  • As an example of AI-powered tools, UNIGINE 2.21 introduces an experimental MCPBridge Editor Plugin, enabling 3D scene editing through simple text prompts – allowing developers to create and modify scenes faster and more intuitively.

Ready-to-Use Industry Templates

  • To accelerate project setup in key industries, UNIGINE 2.21 adds a range of new project templates. These include ready-to-use configurations for aviation simulators (fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and UAV), as well as MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) scenarios in VR. These templates are designed to reduce initial development time and provide a solid foundation for industry-specific applications.

Performance That Keeps Up With Your Ambition

  • Large-scale projects demand serious performance – and this release delivers.
  • UNIGINE 2.21 brings extensive optimizations across CPU, GPU, RAM, and VRAM usage, along with faster loading times and improved runtime stability. Whether you're building massive geospatial environments or complex training systems, you get consistent, predictable performance.
  • Clustered rendering further enhances lighting in dense scenes, delivering higher visual fidelity without compromising efficiency.

Faster, Smoother Work in the Editor

  • Numerous Editor quality-of-life improvements streamline everyday tasks, reduce friction, and help teams stay focused on building – not fighting the tools.

Key changes:

  • Faster scene loading, saving, and switching between large projects
  • Refined object selection and manipulation (gizmos, snapping, transforms)
  • Enhanced hierarchy management for large scenes (better organization and interaction)
  • Updated property panels with clearer structure and quicker access to key parameters
  • Improved asset workflow: drag-and-drop, instancing, and resource handling
  • More responsive Editor UI under heavy scenes and high object counts
  • Better handling of large-scale worlds and georeferenced scenes
  • Vertex Density Visualizer for analyzing mesh complexity and reducing excessive geometry
  • Quad Overdraw Visualizer for identifying pixel overdraw and optimizing rendering cost

Read the complete release notes.

Previous Release Notes:

UNIGINE 2.19.1: Upscalers in VR, USD Import, Animation Preview, Stabilization

Key Changes

  • Import from USD data format
  • Upscalers (DLSS and FSR) support in VR
  • Animation preview in the Editor
  • OpenXR handtracking and Linux support
  • WebStreaming plugin improvements
  • Performance optimizations: faster hashmaps
  • ImGUI Integration and sample plugin for UnigineEditor
  • New SpiderVision samples
  • Account registration in SDK Browser
  • Unigine Learning Course in C++

This release primarily focuses on stabilization, while also introducing several significant new features.

SSRTGI Improvements

We are continually enhancing our Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination (SSRTGI) technology to achieve even greater photorealism. The ray distribution across the hemisphere has been completely redesigned to improve the overall effect. Updates have also been made to the accumulation and application process for SSGI. Gamma correction issues have been resolved for SSAO, both when writing to the buffer and during rendering debug visualization.

Upscalers in VR

Upscalers such as NVIDIA DLSS 3 (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AMD FSR 2.2 (FidelityFX Super Resolution), introduced in version 2.18.1, are essential for reducing pixel load at higher resolutions, freeing up resources, and ensuring optimal performance. With this release, these upscalers are now available in VR as well, delivering a significant performance boost in virtual reality environments.

SpiderVision Plugin Updates

The SpiderVision plugin has been enhanced with undo/redo functionality, improved multiselection in Projection Setup widgets, main window designation, UI tooltips, and a new Borderless window type in the API.

Web Streaming Improvements

In version 2.19, we introduced the WebStream plugin, allowing you to broadcast audio and video frames rendered by a UNIGINE application via WebRTC. This release builds on that by enabling streaming from any existing camera to a separate web browser instance. This feature allows you to switch between cameras in the scene, provide different views to various client devices (including mobile), and display multiple views in separate browser instances on a single device. Additionally, the update includes optimizations and performance improvements.

USD Import and Export

Building on the USD (Universal Scene Description) export functionality introduced in 2.19, this release adds support for USD import, enabling the use of usda, usdc, and usdz files.

Additionally, the USD Export plugin in UnigineEditor has been renamed to USD Exchanger and is now available across all SDK editions, including the free Community edition.

Animation Preview

As part of our ongoing improvements to the virtual avatar animation system, animation preview is now built into the Editor, enabling you to easily view and select animations directly in the Asset Browser without needing to assign them to a Skinned Mesh object.

ImGui Integration

Dear ImGui is a bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++ enabling fast iterations and empowering programmers to develop content creation tools and visualization / debug tools quickly and efficiently. It has been used by a number of our customers, and there have been plenty of questions asked and answers provided. So, for this release we decided to implement and deliver an integration sample showcasing the most commonly used and frequently asked things regarding Editor plugins based on Dear ImGui.

This sample is available on the Add-On Store as ImGuiSamplesPlugin and covers multiple basic cases encountered by users when making their own Editor plugins.

The plugin adds a dedicated window in UnigineEditor with three tabs, each showcasing a unique sample:

  • Spline Editor: Demonstrates using the Undo/Redo system via API, remappable hotkeys, and custom visualization with spline editing as an example.
  • Editor (Immediate Mode): Showcases working with Editor and Engine widgets in immediate mode (similar to ImGui), ideal for prototyping or simple plugins. Features interactive polygon manipulation with live updates.
  • Components: Highlights in-Editor generation and assignment of C++ components to nodes, enabling real-time execution and parameter adjustments directly in the Editor.

Other Changes

  • OpenXR hand tracking and Linux support
  • Various quality-of-life improvements for the Editor
  • Performance optimizations, including faster hashmaps
  • GUI render optimizations made it approximately 2 times faster
  • Added force feedback support for steering wheel controllers
  • Numerous bug fixes
  • New user account registration directly from the SDK browser
  • Free UNIGINE learning course for C++ developers
  • New sample: physics-based robot arm with a kinematic chain