The last release of 2019 delivers a brand-new interface, a new Input System, and the production-ready High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Visual Effect Graph. It includes the debut of ray tracing in Unity as well as a ton of 2D features now verified, the DOTS Sample project, DOTS packages, and more.
Unity 2019.3
The Texture Streaming system gives you control over which mipmap levels Unity loads into memory. This system reduces the total amount of memory Unity needs for Textures, because it only loads the mipmaps Unity needs to render the current Camera A component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. Open a Unity project and add this fbx file.I am using Unity 2019.4 with URP Template Create a new scene and rename it to 'Character Demo'. The character is working in the scene but the character material is not found. Import Character & Set Material of Character.
Regardless if you work in games, film & entertainment, architecture, or any other industry utilizing 2D or 3D real-time technology, the 2019.3 release has something for you.
The last release of the 2019 TECH cycle delivers even more performance, visuals, more artistic power, and better workflows for any artist, designer or programmer.
Get all the details on what Unity 2019.3 offers you here, including videos, talks, documentation and more – and to help you get started.
Artist and designer tools
Learn what's new for artists and designers in Unity 2019.3, including production-ready 2D features, Timeline support for Animation Rigging, terrain updates, Presets, and a new, simplified DOTS conversion workflow.
Programmer tools
Learn what's new for developers in Unity 2019.3, including major updates to DOTS, improvements for version control, profiling tools, and Serialization, as well as Configurable Enter Play Mode, Physics updates and more.
Editor and team workflows
The Unity Editor has a new look and feel, Quick Search helps you find anything, and UI Builder is now in Preview. And save time when importing assets and switching platforms with the Asset Import Pipeline, the default for new projects.
Platforms
Learn what's new in Unity 2019.3 for platform support. It offers support for Google Stadia, updates to AR Foundation, additional tooling for VR and mobile developers, a new Input System and more.
Graphics
2019.3 has numerous updates for graphics and the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Visual Effect Graph are now production-ready. Real-time Ray Tracing is currently in Preview, and we have improved the Universal Render Pipeline, Shader Graph, terrain, and lighting.
DOTS and the DOTS Sample project
The DOTS Sample project demonstrates how all the new DOTS packages work together in a multiplayer shooter game, including DOTS Game Code updates, DOTS Netcode, Conversion Workflow, Unity Live Link and more.
The Heretic – Full version
The Heretic is a short film by Unity's award-winning Demo team, who also created Adam and Book of the Dead. The first part of the project premiered at GDC 2019 running at 30 fps at 1440p on a consumer-class desktop PC. We shared an early preview of the second part at Unite Copenhagen 2019.
The Heretic runs on Unity 2019.3, leveraging a broad range of graphics features, including every possible aspect of HDRP and the Visual Effect Graph. See the reveal of a new, entirely VFX-based character in the full film.
About to ship? Consider using Unity 2018.4 LTS.
The Long-Term Support (LTS) version of Unity is for projects about to ship. If you wish to lock in your production on a specific version of Unity for maximum stability, we recommend you use Unity 2018.4 LTS.
The LTS release doesn't have any new features, API changes or enhancements. It's simply a continuation of the 2018 TECH stream, with updates and fixes. That's why we call it 2018.4, while this year's TECH stream began with 2019.1, followed by 2019.2, and has now become 2019.3. With the release of 2020.1, which is targeted for spring 2020, 2019.4 LTS will be made available as well.
Two 2020 TECH stream releases
With the last release of the Unity 2019 TECH stream, we're excited to announce the plans for 2020. With more new features being continuously distributed as packages, we're changing our core updates to two TECH stream releases in 2020, followed by the LTS release in early 2021. The full release of 2020.1 is scheduled for spring 2020 and 2020.2 is scheduled for fall 2020. We'll continue to ship minor updates with bug fixes just as often as we do now.
What's the difference between a Preview package and a Verified package?Many existing and upcoming Unity features are available as packages, which you can download via the Package Manager in the Editor.
Preview packages give you early access to new features and improvements. However, they aren't recommended for projects in production. They're still evolving and likely to contain bugs.
Verified packages have undergone additional testing and have been verified to work safely with a specific version of Unity, and with all the other packages that are verified for that version.
What is the TECH stream?TECH stream releases are for developers who want to access the latest features and capabilities. This year we're shipping three major TECH stream releases (2019.1, 2019.2, and 2019.3). We add updates and bug fixes to the current TECH stream release on a weekly basis until the next TECH release is officially launched, then the cycle begins again.
What's an LTS release?The last TECH stream release of the year becomes a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and receives continued support for another two years. In terms of versioning, we increment the final TECH stream release of the year by one and add 'LTS' (for example, TECH stream release 2018.3 became 2018.4 LTS).
Unlike the TECH stream, the LTS stream does not have any new features, API changes or enhancements. Instead, any updates address crashes, regressions, and issues that affect the wider community, console SDK/XDKs, or any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.
LTS releases receive bi-weekly updates. The LTS stream is for developers who want to continue to develop and ship their games/apps on the most-stable version for an extended period.
What version do you recommend for my project?If you are in production or close to release, we recommend the latest LTS release. If you want to use the latest Unity features in your project, or are just getting started with production, the TECH stream is recommended.
Alpha releases offer the earliest access to our latest features, which are added every week of the alpha cycle until the feature-cutoff date. As such, they come with a higher stability risk than beta releases. With both alphas and betas, you have an opportunity to influence our development process by using the new features and providing feedback via forums and bug reports.
Because there may be feature-stability issues with these early releases, we do not recommend them for projects in production, and we highly recommend that you make backups of any projects before you open them with an alpha or beta release.
Both our alpha and beta releases are open to everyone, so no signup is required. Get started by downloading them from the Unity Hub.
The LTS stream offers a stable version of Unity for those who want to lock in their productions on a specific version of Unity for maximum stability.
The latest long-term support release of Unity
With the LTS and the TECH stream releases to choose from, you can pick the release that best fits your needs, depending on where you are in your development cycle. For creators who are about to embark on projects that are past the prototyping phase, Unity 2019.4 LTS provides stable, high-quality features that are supported for two years. You can confidently create your projects with that version during development and release.
Unity 2019 LTS stream has the same feature set as the 2019.3 TECH stream release.
Explore Unity 2019 features
Since the release of 2018 LTS, we've added hundreds of improvements and new features. Unity 2019 LTS makes artists and designers more productive with better tools and a new Editor UI. Our Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) technology, now out of Preview, helps you achieve best-in-class graphics on all platforms. We've also optimized Unity under the hood to facilitate more immersive experiences at runtime and to accelerate your project iterations.
Graphics
If you need scalability for all supported platforms, high performance, and best-in-class visual quality, the Universal Render Pipeline is our recommended production-ready solution. To help you achieve stunning high-fidelity graphics on high-end hardware (PC, consoles, and future hardware), the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) is now out of Preview, which means those of you already working with it will have a consistent upgrade path.
Scripting
Our default code editor is now Visual Studio 2019, and IDE support has moved to packages. This LTS release also brings huge improvements to profiling, such as Player Deep Profiling and Call Stacks support. In Unity 2019 LTS, the Burst Compiler optimizes your output for the platform you're compiling for, which can lead to huge performance improvements. Burst Compiler 1.3 offers native debugging and improved scalability and usability. .NET 4.x is now the default scripting runtime. Incremental Garbage Collection minimizes garbage collection spikes. Also, several quality-of-life improvements to scripting workflows reduce iteration times and make you more productive.
Artist and designer tools
Shader Graph is now our production-ready solution for building shaders visually. Visual Effect Graph empowers you to create beautiful VFX in real-time, without coding, and is now compatible with Shader Graph. Unity 2019 also helps artists achieve more, directly within the Unity Editor, with new and improved terrain tools, as well as ProBuilder, our unique hybrid of 3D modeling and level design tools.
Editor updates
We've given the Editor UI a new look and feel by updating icons, fonts, and user feedback systems. Unity 2019 LTS increases clarity in the Editor, so creators can focus more on their content. Since Unity 2018 LTS, we've also added loads of workflow improvements to make you more productive in the Editor, such as Prefab Asset Editing in Inspector, Quick Search, Presets and Shortcut Manager. Unity 2019 LTS uses Asset Import Pipeline V2 to provide you with asset-dependency tracking and many other improvements, laying the foundation of a more reliable, performant and scalable pipeline and speeding up your import times significantly.
Platforms
For mobile developers who aim to push mobile graphics and performance, Unity 2019 LTS brings improvements such as on-demand rendering, Adaptive Performance and improved OpenGL support.
Throughout 2019, we've also added and polished lots of tools for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) developers. AR Foundation, our framework for multiplatform AR development, gives you the power to build your app once and deploy across ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap and HoloLens platforms. With the High Definition Render Pipeline for VR, you can push your VR experiences to the next level of fidelity without sacrificing performance.
We now also offer support for approved developers to create and ship their games on Google's Stadia cloud gaming platform.
2D Tools
Unity now has the 2D feature sets and workflows you need for bone-based 2D animation, tile-based and organic world-building, and 2D physics, for projects of any scale on any platform.
Addressables
Efficiently manage complex live content. The new Addressable Asset System gives you an easy way to load assets by 'address,' while also handling asset management overhead by simplifying content pack creation and deployment.
Visual Effect Graph with Shader Graph integration
Visual Effect Graph now lets you use Shader Graph to create high-fidelity visual effects, so you can visually author your own pixel and fragment shaders and use them in VFX Graph to create custom looks.
Timeline Signals
Timeline Signals offers an easy way for Timeline to interact with objects in a scene. Timeline Signals lets relevant systems know that it's time to react to a specific event, for example, when a cutscene created with Timeline ends and you want to load a new scene and enable a physics system.
UI Toolkit
UI Toolkit(formerly UIElements), a retained-mode API, helps you create Editor tools. You build your UI hierarchy of objects while the system renders it optimally, for better overall performance. By decoupling hierarchy and styling from functionality, UI authoring is more approachable for both programmers and artists with UI Builder.
Unity as a Library
Unity as a Library lets you insert features powered by Unity directly into your native mobile applications, including 3D or 2D real-time rendering functions, such as augmented reality, 2D mini-games or 3D models, and more.
AR Foundation
AR Foundation combines the full power of the Unity platform with essential core features from ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap, and HoloLens for rich immersive AR applications that you can build once and deploy across platforms.
Incremental Garbage Collector
With incremental garbage collection, rather than processing garbage collection all at once, we split the operation over a number of frames. This helps reduce occasional spikes in CPU usage due to garbage collection.
We prepared a series of upgrade guides to help you go from Unity 2017 LTS or Unity 2018 LTS to Unity 2019 LTS. For complex productions with a high number of dependencies, find out how our Success Plans can ensure the upgrade process goes smoothly.
What to expect from Unity LTS
Making the current LTS stream the most stable version of Unity is our top priority. Biweekly updates are intended to address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their projects.
Unity release plans
We're committed to supporting 2019.4 LTS releases with biweekly fixes until mid-2021, and then monthly updates until mid-2022.
Unity 2018.4 is now the legacy LTS and will be updated once every month until it reaches the end of its support cycle in spring 2021.
Archive
Looking for a specific Unity LTS release? We've organized all LTS releases in one simple archive page. Or subscribe to our RSS feed and get access to the latest LTS as soon as it's released.
What's an LTS release?The last TECH stream release of the year becomes a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and receives continued support for another two years in the form of biweekly updates with bug fixes. In terms of versioning, we increment the final TECH stream release of the year by one and add 'LTS' (for example, TECH stream release 2018.3 became 2018.4 LTS).
The LTS releases do not include any new features or breaking API changes compared to the TECH stream releases that they are based on. Their updates address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.
Unity 2019.4.2f1
The LTS stream is for developers who want to develop and ship their projects on the most-stable version and remain on this version for an extended period.
What is a TECH stream release?TECH stream releases are for developers who want to access the latest features and capabilities. The 2019 TECH stream had three releases (2019.1, 2019.2, and 2019.3). We add updates and bug fixes to the current TECH stream release on a weekly basis until the next TECH release is officially launched; then the cycle begins again.
What new features does Unity 2019.4 have?
The Heretic is a short film by Unity's award-winning Demo team, who also created Adam and Book of the Dead. The first part of the project premiered at GDC 2019 running at 30 fps at 1440p on a consumer-class desktop PC. We shared an early preview of the second part at Unite Copenhagen 2019.
The Heretic runs on Unity 2019.3, leveraging a broad range of graphics features, including every possible aspect of HDRP and the Visual Effect Graph. See the reveal of a new, entirely VFX-based character in the full film.
About to ship? Consider using Unity 2018.4 LTS.
The Long-Term Support (LTS) version of Unity is for projects about to ship. If you wish to lock in your production on a specific version of Unity for maximum stability, we recommend you use Unity 2018.4 LTS.
The LTS release doesn't have any new features, API changes or enhancements. It's simply a continuation of the 2018 TECH stream, with updates and fixes. That's why we call it 2018.4, while this year's TECH stream began with 2019.1, followed by 2019.2, and has now become 2019.3. With the release of 2020.1, which is targeted for spring 2020, 2019.4 LTS will be made available as well.
Two 2020 TECH stream releases
With the last release of the Unity 2019 TECH stream, we're excited to announce the plans for 2020. With more new features being continuously distributed as packages, we're changing our core updates to two TECH stream releases in 2020, followed by the LTS release in early 2021. The full release of 2020.1 is scheduled for spring 2020 and 2020.2 is scheduled for fall 2020. We'll continue to ship minor updates with bug fixes just as often as we do now.
What's the difference between a Preview package and a Verified package?Many existing and upcoming Unity features are available as packages, which you can download via the Package Manager in the Editor.
Preview packages give you early access to new features and improvements. However, they aren't recommended for projects in production. They're still evolving and likely to contain bugs.
Verified packages have undergone additional testing and have been verified to work safely with a specific version of Unity, and with all the other packages that are verified for that version.
What is the TECH stream?TECH stream releases are for developers who want to access the latest features and capabilities. This year we're shipping three major TECH stream releases (2019.1, 2019.2, and 2019.3). We add updates and bug fixes to the current TECH stream release on a weekly basis until the next TECH release is officially launched, then the cycle begins again.
What's an LTS release?The last TECH stream release of the year becomes a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and receives continued support for another two years. In terms of versioning, we increment the final TECH stream release of the year by one and add 'LTS' (for example, TECH stream release 2018.3 became 2018.4 LTS).
Unlike the TECH stream, the LTS stream does not have any new features, API changes or enhancements. Instead, any updates address crashes, regressions, and issues that affect the wider community, console SDK/XDKs, or any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.
LTS releases receive bi-weekly updates. The LTS stream is for developers who want to continue to develop and ship their games/apps on the most-stable version for an extended period.
What version do you recommend for my project?If you are in production or close to release, we recommend the latest LTS release. If you want to use the latest Unity features in your project, or are just getting started with production, the TECH stream is recommended.
Alpha releases offer the earliest access to our latest features, which are added every week of the alpha cycle until the feature-cutoff date. As such, they come with a higher stability risk than beta releases. With both alphas and betas, you have an opportunity to influence our development process by using the new features and providing feedback via forums and bug reports.
Because there may be feature-stability issues with these early releases, we do not recommend them for projects in production, and we highly recommend that you make backups of any projects before you open them with an alpha or beta release.
Both our alpha and beta releases are open to everyone, so no signup is required. Get started by downloading them from the Unity Hub.
The LTS stream offers a stable version of Unity for those who want to lock in their productions on a specific version of Unity for maximum stability.
The latest long-term support release of Unity
With the LTS and the TECH stream releases to choose from, you can pick the release that best fits your needs, depending on where you are in your development cycle. For creators who are about to embark on projects that are past the prototyping phase, Unity 2019.4 LTS provides stable, high-quality features that are supported for two years. You can confidently create your projects with that version during development and release.
Unity 2019 LTS stream has the same feature set as the 2019.3 TECH stream release.
Explore Unity 2019 features
Since the release of 2018 LTS, we've added hundreds of improvements and new features. Unity 2019 LTS makes artists and designers more productive with better tools and a new Editor UI. Our Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) technology, now out of Preview, helps you achieve best-in-class graphics on all platforms. We've also optimized Unity under the hood to facilitate more immersive experiences at runtime and to accelerate your project iterations.
Graphics
If you need scalability for all supported platforms, high performance, and best-in-class visual quality, the Universal Render Pipeline is our recommended production-ready solution. To help you achieve stunning high-fidelity graphics on high-end hardware (PC, consoles, and future hardware), the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) is now out of Preview, which means those of you already working with it will have a consistent upgrade path.
Scripting
Our default code editor is now Visual Studio 2019, and IDE support has moved to packages. This LTS release also brings huge improvements to profiling, such as Player Deep Profiling and Call Stacks support. In Unity 2019 LTS, the Burst Compiler optimizes your output for the platform you're compiling for, which can lead to huge performance improvements. Burst Compiler 1.3 offers native debugging and improved scalability and usability. .NET 4.x is now the default scripting runtime. Incremental Garbage Collection minimizes garbage collection spikes. Also, several quality-of-life improvements to scripting workflows reduce iteration times and make you more productive.
Artist and designer tools
Shader Graph is now our production-ready solution for building shaders visually. Visual Effect Graph empowers you to create beautiful VFX in real-time, without coding, and is now compatible with Shader Graph. Unity 2019 also helps artists achieve more, directly within the Unity Editor, with new and improved terrain tools, as well as ProBuilder, our unique hybrid of 3D modeling and level design tools.
Editor updates
We've given the Editor UI a new look and feel by updating icons, fonts, and user feedback systems. Unity 2019 LTS increases clarity in the Editor, so creators can focus more on their content. Since Unity 2018 LTS, we've also added loads of workflow improvements to make you more productive in the Editor, such as Prefab Asset Editing in Inspector, Quick Search, Presets and Shortcut Manager. Unity 2019 LTS uses Asset Import Pipeline V2 to provide you with asset-dependency tracking and many other improvements, laying the foundation of a more reliable, performant and scalable pipeline and speeding up your import times significantly.
Platforms
For mobile developers who aim to push mobile graphics and performance, Unity 2019 LTS brings improvements such as on-demand rendering, Adaptive Performance and improved OpenGL support.
Throughout 2019, we've also added and polished lots of tools for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) developers. AR Foundation, our framework for multiplatform AR development, gives you the power to build your app once and deploy across ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap and HoloLens platforms. With the High Definition Render Pipeline for VR, you can push your VR experiences to the next level of fidelity without sacrificing performance.
We now also offer support for approved developers to create and ship their games on Google's Stadia cloud gaming platform.
2D Tools
Unity now has the 2D feature sets and workflows you need for bone-based 2D animation, tile-based and organic world-building, and 2D physics, for projects of any scale on any platform.
Addressables
Efficiently manage complex live content. The new Addressable Asset System gives you an easy way to load assets by 'address,' while also handling asset management overhead by simplifying content pack creation and deployment.
Visual Effect Graph with Shader Graph integration
Visual Effect Graph now lets you use Shader Graph to create high-fidelity visual effects, so you can visually author your own pixel and fragment shaders and use them in VFX Graph to create custom looks.
Timeline Signals
Timeline Signals offers an easy way for Timeline to interact with objects in a scene. Timeline Signals lets relevant systems know that it's time to react to a specific event, for example, when a cutscene created with Timeline ends and you want to load a new scene and enable a physics system.
UI Toolkit
UI Toolkit(formerly UIElements), a retained-mode API, helps you create Editor tools. You build your UI hierarchy of objects while the system renders it optimally, for better overall performance. By decoupling hierarchy and styling from functionality, UI authoring is more approachable for both programmers and artists with UI Builder.
Unity as a Library
Unity as a Library lets you insert features powered by Unity directly into your native mobile applications, including 3D or 2D real-time rendering functions, such as augmented reality, 2D mini-games or 3D models, and more.
AR Foundation
AR Foundation combines the full power of the Unity platform with essential core features from ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap, and HoloLens for rich immersive AR applications that you can build once and deploy across platforms.
Incremental Garbage Collector
With incremental garbage collection, rather than processing garbage collection all at once, we split the operation over a number of frames. This helps reduce occasional spikes in CPU usage due to garbage collection.
We prepared a series of upgrade guides to help you go from Unity 2017 LTS or Unity 2018 LTS to Unity 2019 LTS. For complex productions with a high number of dependencies, find out how our Success Plans can ensure the upgrade process goes smoothly.
What to expect from Unity LTS
Making the current LTS stream the most stable version of Unity is our top priority. Biweekly updates are intended to address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their projects.
Unity release plans
We're committed to supporting 2019.4 LTS releases with biweekly fixes until mid-2021, and then monthly updates until mid-2022.
Unity 2018.4 is now the legacy LTS and will be updated once every month until it reaches the end of its support cycle in spring 2021.
Archive
Looking for a specific Unity LTS release? We've organized all LTS releases in one simple archive page. Or subscribe to our RSS feed and get access to the latest LTS as soon as it's released.
What's an LTS release?The last TECH stream release of the year becomes a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and receives continued support for another two years in the form of biweekly updates with bug fixes. In terms of versioning, we increment the final TECH stream release of the year by one and add 'LTS' (for example, TECH stream release 2018.3 became 2018.4 LTS).
The LTS releases do not include any new features or breaking API changes compared to the TECH stream releases that they are based on. Their updates address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.
Unity 2019.4.2f1
The LTS stream is for developers who want to develop and ship their projects on the most-stable version and remain on this version for an extended period.
What is a TECH stream release?TECH stream releases are for developers who want to access the latest features and capabilities. The 2019 TECH stream had three releases (2019.1, 2019.2, and 2019.3). We add updates and bug fixes to the current TECH stream release on a weekly basis until the next TECH release is officially launched; then the cycle begins again.
What new features does Unity 2019.4 have?Unity 2019.4, which we also refer to as Unity 2019 LTS, doesn't have any new features, compared to Unity 2019.3. Updates to Unity 2019.4 include only fixes for crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.
Which version of Unity should I use?If you are in production or close to release, we recommend the latest LTS release. If you want to use the latest Unity features in your project or are just getting started with production, the TECH stream is recommended.
How often is Unity 2019 updated?The 2019.4 LTS releases will receive biweekly fixes until mid-2021, and then monthly updates until mid-2022.
Are you going to backport fixes from Unity 2020.1 and 2020.2 to Unity 2019 LTS?Yes. Generally, our process is to fix bugs in the next release of Unity, and then backport the fixes to current TECH streams and LTS branches. The exact mechanics for doing that depend on the nature of the bug, the dependencies it may have to other components, and other factors. We have a team fully engaged to backport fixes to Unity 2019 LTS.
What's in your alpha and beta releases, and how do I get them?Latest Version Of Unity
Alphas are the first public releases of a new TECH stream version of Unity. During the alpha phase, we're progressively adding all the new features that are scheduled to be part of the final release. At the same time, the features get tested collectively for the first time. While a TECH stream version is in alpha, we release updates with new features on a weekly basis until we reach feature completeness. As such, alphas come with a higher stability risk than beta releases, which are feature-complete and receive only stabilizing updates. With both alphas and betas, you have an opportunity to influence our development process by using the new features and providing feedback via forums and bug reports.
Because there may be feature-stability issues with these early releases, we do not recommend them for projects in production; we highly recommend that you back up any project before you open it with an alpha or beta release.
Both our alpha and beta releases are open to everyone – no signup is required. Get started by downloading them from the Unity Hub.
