Future-Proof Decentraland Projects: Unity Scene Importer & SDK Migration Tool

by 0xb7ee502c4dadcc9a62934b02c5f8decbbfa32c48 (kourtin)

Should the following $80,000 grant in the Platform category be approved?

Abstract

An easy to use, industry-compatible and major update to the Unity Editor Toolkit. This will allow the import of already made scenes in the Decentraland Builder into the Unity editor pipeline and level up your creations.

Grant size

80,000 USD in DAI

Project duration

3 months

Beneficiary address

0x4e54dA189F2eC8e3704051df5D694dd9500D88AB

Email address

info@polygonalmind.com

Description

Background

We are Polygonal Mind, a widely known creator that focuses on beautiful aesthetics and optimization and for over 5 years we have been building content in Decentraland and the rest of the Metaverse.

We have made one of the alternatives to the Decentraland Builder that has allowed us to build experiences like Megacube, Doritos and the recent 100Avatars Garden. You can start right away building Decentraland content with the Unity Editor here.

Vision

With this update to the Unity Exporter Toolkit for Decentraland we aim to establish a pipeline that allows creators to future-proof their creations no matter if they built directly with a cmd-SDK pipeline or they used the Decentraland Builder.

The problem we found, explained

There is a general issue when it comes to maintaining or developing projects in Decentraland, either you are an artist and the builder lacks advanced tools to add gamification and custom code or you are a developer and the compiled SDK7 project lacks a visual editor to quickly check and upgrade the scene.

The current state of the exporter allows anyone to build Decentraland scenes directly in the Unity editor and export them as SDK7 projects ready to deploy but doesn’t work the other way around.

Furthermore solutions like the Decentraland builder or the IWB force a creator to be connected constantly to the network, with no possibility to work offline or keep the work backed in a repository or version controlled at all.

Solution

Create a bridge that allows any SDK6 and SDK7 to be compatible with the Unity Editor Toolkit, enhancing development and content creation and establishing a robust way to preserve and update previous and future Decentraland content.

Through the editor:

• You can import already made Decentraland scenes into Unity and deploy them back with enhancements.
• Upgrade SDK6 projects to the SDK7 and preserve base components to keep building under the new framework.
• Combine the power of a detailed and industry standard editor to take your creations to the next level.

In the abstract you can find a rough demo we have made as a proof of concept of what we want to achieve and grant to all creators. With a default scene from the Builder, we imported it back into the Unity Toolkit, where we would, as creators, keep building and expanding with more models, components and scene behaviours.

Roadmap and milestones

Goals

• Ensure there is a way to preserve content from Decentraland SDK6 and SDK7 scenes and preserve them in a more industry-compatible way.
• Revive stuck or zombie projects. Make use of a friendly pipeline by migrating it into the editor.
• Give a way to already made scenes to expand in complexity and get all the benefits the Unity Editor Toolkit for Decentraland has.
• Keep lowering the barriers of access to create content in the platform thanks to the great file format flexibility Unity has.
• Make SDK7 development flexible and SDK6 migrations easier. We will be adding a painless process of deployment that will be run in Unity, the same way you can preview your work you will be able to roll it out in any scene you operate or world you own.

The tool will have now two options to import any SDK7 or SDK6 .zip files, allowing creators to keep building detailed scenes directly in the Unity editor and export them back as ready-to-deploy.

Furthermore

• The tool will be properly updated to contain any component update from the SDK7 and clean up the road (and code) for any future update of content and editor possibilities.

We feel confident on delivering all the defined features in 3 months, divided in regular milestones as it follows:

• Milestone 1
  • SDK7 Project Import
• Milestone 2
  • SDK7 Components Import
  • SDK6 Project Import
• Milestone 3
  • SDK6 Components Import
  • QA and Debug

This proposal is summarized due to technical limitations. To view it complete and vote on it, visit the DCL DAO Governance dApp