Rive for Unity: new features and platform compatibility

In November we announced Rive for Unity as a tech preview. A mere four months later, we’ve made huge advancements that make it even easier for designers to build better UI. Rive for Unity is quickly maturing thanks to improvements to the supported rendering backends, a more robust feature set, and new API updates. To top it all off, Rive for Unity runs on more platforms, including any Windows hardware with 100% support for D3D11. Rive now also works with Unity’s WebGL builds, meaning you can run Rive graphics in Unity games on the web. 

But those are just the highlights. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty technical details.

Mega fast and pristine rendering

Unity runtime is now on par with our other runtimes, meaning it’s mega fast. Game developers can expect lower resource usage, better clarity into what the assets are within a file, and more control over render textures. We also added some helpers that'll let you get a compatible RenderTexture format for the rendering backend you're currently using. This means you can easily request a specific supported format.

Out-of-band assets

Rive for Unity now supports out-of-band assets, an important feature when building UI across multiple Rive artboards, and sharing images or font files. Loading assets out-of-band lets you upload once and share across multiple files. It makes importing, exporting and organizing files easier, and is more effective at memory management. The import pipeline links files properly and even shows a preview.

Procedural rendering

Another powerful feature we’re rolling out is procedural rendering. It’s through C# using the Rive Renderer, with the C# code directly controlling the Rive Renderer. This lets you perform custom-computed draw commands with the Rive Renderer by taking control of the paint, path, blend modes, and other properties. When you need more control over what is on the screen, use procedural rendering. For example, you can mirror the Rive Renderer to Unity’s 3D rendering by layering them in custom editor windows or by drawing edit-time gizmos. 

Rive for Unity features continued

• State Machine inputs

• Rive Events

• Update text run values from C#

• WebGL support 

• Measure shapes from C# — helps align multiple artboards when necessary

• Broader compatibility for all end users and their customers

This year we'll continue rolling out exciting new features and expanding the Unity API. The Unity runtime is automatically updated to use the latest changes in the underlying C++ runtime, so you can expect constant improvements.

Let's chat game engines

Because Rive for Unity’s rendering is open source, Rive can run on any game engine. If you’re waiting for your favorite game engine to get Rive support, reach out and let us know. And if you have a custom game engine, we’d love to talk to you.

Coming soon: Rive for Unity samples and tutorials.