One thing I cannot rate highly enough are assets that have great demos available right from the store.
Surprisingly few assets provide a demo straight from the store. Of course most assets will include demo scenes in the package itself, but that’s not what we’re interested in since by the time you download the asset to see that demo, it’s too late for a refund.
Demos vary huuuugely in quality, so I want to shout out a few that made me stop and say “Wow” after using them. This doesn’t necessarily mean I recommend the assets listed here (or even bought all of the assets) but if I appreciate the quality in a demo this much, it’s pretty certain I’ll end up buying some asset of that developer.
Note: These aren’t presented in any meaningful order – this was just the order I used the demos in.
O3n Stunner – Infinity PBR conversion
One big problem I have with unity assets, is finding humans that give me that wow-feeling. It’s not that they don’t exist, it’s that store pages make it very hard to determine how the model will *really* look once it’s in the game – especially for HDRP.
One mainstay in terms of customizable characters and creatures for Unity is Infinity PBR, so when I saw o3n’s conversion kit for their lovely ‘Jack and Jane’ models (Officially called o3n Stunner (HDRP) Conversion for Infinity PBR Human Package), I had to try their PC Demo.
Buying Jack and Jane means learning the UMA framework, but that’s a topic for another day.
Horse Animset Pro
Horse Animset Pro is badly named for what it has become. It’s now a full fledged humanoid controller and horse riding control, which is built on top of the awesome Animal Controller package by well-known Malbers Animations (AC is included in HAP).
The PC Demo shows you a world of possibilities, including a very smooth horse riding system (for which it is named)
KWS Water System
Ultimately I never actually used KWS (from well-known developer kripto289), since I also have Crest (which also gets an honorable mention here, but does not include a demo on the store).
At the time I found that KWS was nice but it wasn’t quite ready for what I needed. Since then, KWS has improved and improved and recently I noticed their new demo on the store – and it is something beautiful!
If you’re in the market for an ocean or lake, I recommend you try out the PC Demo for yourself, to see what Unity is capable of.
Ultimate Character Controller
UCC is the top-tier package of the Opsive offerings. It’s an expensive purchase, that’s not even a complete package (swimming + climbing are extra), but it’s a purchase that many people make, since [good] controller creation is truly hard to master.
I was blown away by how much was packed in to this single PC Demo (2.5d, top-down, 1st person, third person, abilities), but especially convincing was the pretty advanced camera clipping, compared to other options.
The Ancient Set – Dungeons
TAS – Dungeons is a pretty complete dungeons pack with some cool prefabs that I haven’t seen in alternate packs (such as floor grates). The pack is produced by Aquarius Max, the developer of a couple of other assets I also own.
The foliage didn’t convert to HDRP nicely for me (more about that another time) but using the premade PC Demo really made me feel like I was there, with a nicely polished and large area to explore without awkward clipping and dead ends.
Realistic Effects Pack 4
As the name implies, Realistic Effect Pack 4 is only one of several great particle packs kripto289 makes (YES – it’s the same Kripto that makes KWS which is also listed here). REP4 isn’t better or worse than the other packs in the series but it is the one I tried the PC Demo for and said “Wow”
Real Blood
I’ll start with a warning – Real Blood is Built-In Only. That means it is not going to work with HDRP or URP and converting it yourself is not really feasible (yes, I tried).
SRP aside, the PC Demo for Real Blood is awesome. It has everything you could want from a blood system – and even includes a demo of limb severance!
I was a little sad when I couldn’t use if for my HDRP project so I reached out to the developer Knife Entertainment about future plans for it, but unfortunately they never replied.
