Overview
Agenda


Classroom Agenda

On Tuesday, October 27th we're offering a limited attendance lead-in day of classes that is broken up into two separate tracks, one for new users transitioning over from Flash and another for existing Unity users. The goal of this day is to provide attendees a chance to learn the basics of Unity, or alternatively to dig deeper and learn about a few advanced tips, tricks and techniques.

Unity for Flash Developers
We will have five sessions that will introduce Flash developers to Unity as well as offer some insight into the transition from Flash to Unity from a few notable members of the Flash and Unity communities.

Welcome to Unity
The day will start with a basic introduction to Unity that will include an overview of the tool itself as well as the capabilities and publishing options that it offers.

Speaker: Tom Higgins
Flash Speaker - John Grden
John Grden, from infrared5 and a core engineer behind Papervision3D, shares his thoughts about having recently picked up Unity as part of his toolset.

Speaker: John Grden
Flash Speaker - Paul Tondeur
Paul Tondeur, co-author of Papervision3D Essentials, shares his thoughts as a long-time Flash developer and author about having recently picked up Unity as part of his toolset.

Speaker: Paul Tondeur
Unity Speaker - Mauricio Longoni
Mauricio Longoni, from Aquiris, will discuss the u3dobject and how they've gone about integrating Flash and Unity content together to create great web experiences.

Speaker: Mauricio Longoni
Flash Speaker - John Grden
John Grden, from infrared5 and a core engineer behind Papervision3D, continues sharing his thoughts about Unity and how he's using it to develop a game for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Speaker: John Grden

Unity for Unity Developers

We will offer existing Unity developers a chance to learn more and dig deeper into the product by offering three in-depth classes to help users get even more out of Unity.

GUI Development
Unity's lead GUI developer will take you on a tour-de-force of Unity's GUI system. We will go behind the scenes of Unity's GUI system - by making our own control from scratch (for ingame or editor usage), then going over on how to extend the Unity Editor from UnityGUI. Along the way, you'll get to write code and get all the dirty details explained.

Speaker: Nicholas Francis
Learning Image Effects
Unity's lead graphics developer will teach you how to create your own image post-processing effects. You will work hands-on during the class so you'll be coding and creating your own effects along the way.

Speaker: Aras Pranckevičius
Performance Optimization
No-one knows the Unity Engine like Joachim. In this 2-hour session, he will go over all the details of how to get the most performance out of your games. Using an example project, Joachim will run it through our shiny new profiler, using that to find easy optimizations and tie that in with his unique understanding of the inner workings of Unity.

Speaker: Joachim Ante
 

This extra classes day is sold out!


 

Conference Agenda

On Wednesday, October 28th through Friday, October 30th, we're offering three days of technical sessions and presentations that will cover a variety of topics and skill levels, there will be something for everyone.

Keynote, Road Map & Wish List and the Unity Awards
We will kick off each day of the conference with a major presentation delivered by one important guest speaker as well as Unity Technologies staff members.

Keynote
Richard Hilleman and John Sousa of Electronic Arts will join the Unity Technologies founders to offer attendees some words of wisdom as well as some inspiration as they talk about Unity's always expanding role within the games industry.

Speakers: Richard Hilleman, David Helgason, Joachim Ante and Nicholas Francis

Session Video
Road Map & Wish List
Key members of Unity's engineering team will discuss what the future holds for Unity in an open two-way discussion with conference attendees. This is your chance to not only hear more about the product road map but also provide your own input, it's not to be missed.

Speakers: Aras Pranckevičius, Joachim Ante and Nicholas Francis
Unity Awards
We will start the last day of the conference by showcasing the finalists and announcing the winners for this year's Unity Awards.

Speakers: Thomas Grové, Tom Higgins

 

Other Events
This year's conference will again offer attendees a chance to work with our staff and each other, as well as offer plenty of time for us all to socialize together.

Conference Party
No conference is complete without a conference party so of course Unite '09 will have one as well! This year's party will be held at the Heights Lounge here in San Francisco:

Heights Lounge
2080 Van Ness Avenue at Pacific
8:00pm to Midnight

Please note that the party is restricted to those 21 years of age or older and your conference name badge and a proper ID will be required in order to attend. We'll see you there for a great time!
Hands-On Lab
Once again we're going to be ending each day of the conference with hands-on lab time. This is a chance for attendees to sign-up for one-on-one slots with Unity Technologies staff members to ask questions and get top-end help with Unity. We will allow you to sign-up for your hands-on lab session upon arrival and registration, look for that and make use of this great opportunity!
Open Mic
During each day of the conference we break for an hour and a half for lunch, rather than let the microphone sit idle during that time we invite attendees to sign up and present during our open mic time. These are brief time slots for you to get up and show-off the work you're doing or talk about your experience with Unity! We will allow you to sign-up for open-mic presenting upon arrival and registration, look for that and let folks know what you're working on!
Technical Sessions
Each of the three standard conference days will be filled with a number of technical sessions that will educate users about how they can get the most out of Unity.

Asset Pipelines by Example
This session will discuss different solutions to common challenges people run into when bringing assets into Unity. By taking the problem of Character Customization as an example, topics such as using AssetBundles to distribute assets, custom material generation and asset postprocessing are among the topics that will be discussed.

Speakers: Bas Smit, Lucas Meijer
Character Animation
This session will discuss various techniques for improving and optimizing character animations within Unity.

Speaker: Rune Skovbo Johansen
Facebook/Social Network Integration
This session will feature the guys from CMUNE showing attendees how they can integrate their content seamlessly with social networking sites like Facebook and others.

Speakers: Ludovic Bodin, Shaun Le Lacheur Sales
Get Your Cocoa On
This session will talk about ways in which developers can incorporate custom Objective-C code into their Unity iPhone projects to deliver richer and more robust experiences than ever before.

Speaker: Brian Robbins
Introduction to iPhone Development: Star Wars Trench Run
This session will introduce you to the Unity iPhone development process, using infrared5's Star Wars Trench Run game as an example.

Speaker: John Grden
Introduction to Unity 2.6
This session will introduce everyone to Unity 2.6, including an overview of the awesome new features that are to be found in this release.

Speakers: Joachim Ante
Introduction to UnityGUI
This session will introduce you to UnityGUI, the GUI development API set found in Unity, all to be delivered by the engineer responsible for the creation of this flexible and powerful system.

Speaker: Nicholas Francis
Lego Star Wars: Quest for R2-D2, a Post-Mortem Review
Developers from Three Melons will use this session to provide a post-mortem review of the effort behind their recent web-based game, Lego Star Wars: Quest for R2-D2. They will talk about the obstacles they faced and the successes and failures they experienced while using Unity.

Speakers: Diego Ruiz, Patricio Jutard
Making Money on the iPhone
This session will have a moderated panel of speakers, all of whom have released games via the AppStore for use on an iPhone or iPod touch. The panel will discuss the various issues lurking on the "business side" of iPhone development and offer their advice based on first-hand experience.

Speakers: Adam Mechtley, Matt Mechtley, Martin Schultz (more on the way!)
Rapid Game Development With Unity
Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink of Blurst.com (Flashbang Studios) discuss how it is possible to create games like Minotaur China Shop and Off-Road Velociraptor Safari in an 8-week production cycle. It’s AAA game development in microcosm; each game is an experiment, both in production and design. Come reap the intellectual benefits of the results of Blurst.com’s rapid fire approach.

Speakers: Steve Swink, Matthew Wegner
Shader Tricks in Game Production
This session will cover various shader tricks that you can employ in order to improve the visual quality of your content in ways you might not have known about.

Speakers: Aras Pranckevičius
TouchKO, a Post-Mortem Review
The Mechtley Brothers will use this session to provide a post-mortem review of their iPhone game, TouchKO, and share with others the lesson learned while using Unity iPhone.

Speakers: Adam Mechtley, Matt Mechtley
Unity iPhone 1.5 Optimizations
This session will offer you some insight into the new changes found in the recent release of Unity iPhone 1.5, including automatic built-in optimizations as well as ones you can manually take advantage of to make your games run faster and smoother than ever.

Speakers: Renaldas Zioma
Unity Optimization
This session will provide attendees with various techniques to optimize their content in order to create faster running and better looking content on the desktop or the web using Unity.

Speakers: Joachim Ante

 

Daily Schedule

Here is the daily schedule for this year's conference. Please know that the doors to the Conference Center will open at 9:00am each day for arrival and registration, the doors to the Cowell Theater will open at 9:30am for folks to begin taking their seats.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Conference Center
09:00-10:00 - Arrival and Registration
10:00-12:00 - Learning Image Effects
13:00-15:00 - GUI Development
15:30-17:30 - Performance Optimization
Cowell Theater
10:00-11:00 - Welcome to Unity
11:00-12:00 - Flash Speaker: John Grden
12:00-13:00 - Lunch
13:00-14:00 - Flash Speaker: Paul Tondeur
14:00-15:00 - Unity Speaker: Mauricio Longoni
15:15-16:15 - Flash Speaker: John Grden

 

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Conference Center
09:00-10:00 - Arrival and Registration
12:15-13:30 - Lunch
13:30-14:30 - Intro to iPhone Development: Star Wars Trench Run
14:45-15:45 - Shader Tricks in Game Production
16:00-18:00 - Hands-On Lab
Cowell Theater
10:00-11:00 - Keynote
11:15-12:15 - Introduction to Unity 2.6
13:30-14:30 - Rapid Game Development With Unity
14:45-15:45 - Making Money on the iPhone

 

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Conference Center
09:00-10:00 - Arrival and Registration
12:15-13:30 - Lunch
13:30-14:30 - Introduction to UnityGUI
14:45-18:00 - Hands-On Lab
Cowell Theater
10:00-11:00 - Road Map & Wish List
11:15-12:15 - Facebook/Social Network Integration
13:30-14:30 - Asset Pipelines by Example
14:45-15:45 - TouchKO, a Post-Mortem Review

 

Conference Party
The official conference party will be held on Thursday evening from 8:00pm to Midnight at the Heights Lounge at 2080 Van Ness Avenue (at Pacific). Please note that the party is restricted to those 21 years of age or older and your conference name badge and a proper ID will be required in order to attend. We'll see you there for a great time!

 

Friday, October 30, 2009

Conference Center
09:00-10:00 - Arrival and Registration
12:15-13:30 - Lunch
13:30-14:30 - Get Your Cocoa On
14:45-17:00 - Hands-On Lab
Cowell Theater
10:00-11:00 - Unity Awards
11:15-12:15 - Lego Star Wars: ..., a Post-Mortem Review
13:30-14:30 - Character Animation
14:45-15:45 - Unity iPhone 1.5 Optimizations