[DAO:cd271ca] SDK7 Unity Editor Toolkit

Governance
1

by 0x4e8b48cbaf85d441281c3d40783bd4d9c643ce5f (PolygonalMind)

Should the following $170,000 grant in the Platform category be approved?

Abstract

Introducing an Unity Editor for the SDK7: Transforming the way Decentraland’s development works. Our Unity editor tool bridges design and deployment, making content creation effortless. Empower artists to overcome limitations and shape the future of virtual worlds. Support our transformative goal with this grant backing.

Grant size

170,000 USD in DAI

Project duration

4 months

Beneficiary address

0x4e54dA189F2eC8e3704051df5D694dd9500D88AB

Email address

info@polygonalmind.com

Description

Empowering Creativity in Decentraland: Changing How We Create Content

Decentraland aims to support 3D artists and unlock the platform’s potential through SDK distribution. However, a significant challenge lies in the differences between tools and creation languages. While GLTF is gaining traction, it’s not as widely supported as established formats like FBX.

GLTF’s incompatibility with popular engines like Unity, along with its technical complexity, presents a steep learning curve. This makes it hard for new users to begin, as they must learn a new format and workflow. While tools like Blender are useful for initial visual work, they have limitations when it comes to scene organization.

Creating a Smooth Path Ahead

Our project tackles this challenge directly, putting artists in the spotlight. Our goal is to remove obstacles and empower creators with a tool that follows industry standards used in gaming and film. This tool makes scene creation exceptionally easy from the start

Solving Development Challenges with Ease

We utilize Unity, a powerful 3D engine. Our tool simplifies design and seamlessly integrates with Decentraland SDK7, making it effortless to create Decentraland projects with 3D objects, materials, textures, and animations.

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Enhancing Developmental Value

To simplify the process, our scene translator creates reusable code fragments. These code pieces enable interactions like links, animations, and the addition of sounds, videos, and NFTs. As development continues, the code adapts to include new SDK features, providing a dynamic platform for innovation.

An Oasis of Expertise

With over three years of experience in Decentraland, Polygonal Mind has gained deep technical knowledge. Our portfolio includes projects like Doritos, Megacube, MtnDew, Boson Protocol, MOMUS Park, and Automatic Slims, among others. These projects show our ability to create immersive Metaverse experiences by blending art and code. We built them using a tool we developed for SDK6, showing our confidence in our work.

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Embracing Collaboration

As supporters of open-source principles, we aim to provide clear documentation and easy access to our project. Our goal is to encourage participation, making sure this tool remains a shared resource that can grow through both our efforts and community contributions. We aim to ensure the tool stays valuable as the platform evolves with new features.

A Vision for the Future

This grant is a big step in our journey to build a better editor. We hope the community likes our work as much as our team does. In simple terms, we want to make it easier to be creative in Decentraland. We’re working to remove obstacles, boost creativity, and change how virtual worlds are made. With your support, we’re opening the door to a future where imagination has no limits.

Roadmap and milestones

  • Milestone 1 (Reach after 4 weeks of development)
    Unity is able to assemble a SDK7 project and run basic commands like dcl install dcl start or install the npm packages and any other key dependencies for Decentraland development.
  • Milestone 2 (After 4 weeks from previous milestone)
    Unity is capable of exporting the gameObjects from the scene into the Decentraland project data. This includes the capability of exporting 3D data to GLTF packages as GLB+textures or GTLF+.bin
  • Milestone 3 (After 4 weeks from previous milestone)
    Unity is now completely operative when it comes on creating a scene, feeding base metadata and being able to quickly export game.ts data and iterate over the result.
  • Milestone 4 (After 4 weeks from previous milestone)
    This phase is about QA, ensuring UX is smooth and creating and onboarding process for the tool to act as an independent Toolkit that can be shared through Unity packages.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

Voting Yes, there is a big gap between Game Development and Decentraland Development that needs to be bridged.

Right now people with experience on gamedev can’t transfer that knowledge to Decentraland, because working directly with the SDK is too different.

Creating a middleware to make working with the SDK feel the same as working on any other game engine will help attract and retain more developers.

Unity is commonly used by creators on virtual worlds like VRChat and Somnium Space, and a tool like this one will help those creators make the jump to Decentraland.

2 Likes
3

PolygonalMind has without a doubt contributed a lot of awesome experiences to DCL, not to mention Vipes, which I think were an excellent case study in giving NFTs utility and interoperability in the Metaverse. I think it’s safe to say this team can pull off whatever they put their minds to.

I’ll just ask a few questions, not out of skepticism, but rather to get the conversation going and help everyone understand what kind of learning curve they’ll be looking at to use this toolkit.

  • What’s the workflow like? Does this allow building in-world, through some third-party interface, or some combination of both? How is deployment carried out once building is finalized?

  • If it’s used out-of-world, will this be a native application or web-based application?

  • What pre-requisite knowledge will be needed to use it? (For example, using the SDK requires someone to download Node.js, Visual Studio Code, and the SDK extension, or be comfortable using the command line interface)

Lastly, it seems like we’ve thrown a lot of money at builder tools recently. I fear that too many competing options could become confusing and overwhelming for people. (And I say this having partially contributed to the problem with Virtual Land Manager)

We have DCL’s legacy builder, the new builder they’re developing, DCL-Edit, DCL-Connect (coming soon?), Virtual Land Manager, the In-World Builder that Last Slice will be developing, and now this toolkit. Which brings me to my last question:

  • What will set this tool apart from the other building and content management options out there?
1 Like
4

Great tool, Unity is undoubtedly one of the most well-used software that could potentially onboard tons of new creators, also, PM is one of the most trustworthy and professional teams in the Meta, i believe it is more likely for them to make this tool more financially sustainable in the long term.

1 Like
5

Hey there Unknower, thanks a lot for your patience. I like to arrange my words and properly display the value this proposal has and how it differentiates from other past proposals like yours with VLM.

I’m kourtin, Head of Ops and Project Manager at Polygonal Mind. I’ve been one of the first developers here to use and expand the in-house tool we have for Decentraland SDK6. Basically, all the developments here at Polygonal Mind have been done with this tool and we have always preferred this workflow against any other as it was closer to our base knowledge: game development.

I understand rising concerns on the DAO on bad managed resources and how other teams have been coming up with other proposals that aim for similar objectives. I’m here to clear them up or at least give a proper answer to any doubt that may rise close to your points.

Where this proposal stands out from other proposals is that puts this tool use before getting to the Decentraland development itself, being a useful bridge between current development pipelines and dedicated Decentraland pipelines. I’ve been carefully reviewing all the projects you mentioned and they all do the same, we don’t want to add another customization layer on top of the current running platform like the rest of plug-ins and development enhancers. They are all great proposals don’t get me wrong, but we are not here to add more complex layers to an already complicated platform for newcomers.

Our proposal aim is not to invent the wheel but the string that connects two pipelines into one. As this toolkit is relying on Unity engine, we make it work in the same version Decentraland is using and we extract key visual features so editing in engine and playing on deploy looks the same.

It’s not only about translating, it’s also about giving the opportunity to level designers, 3D artists and game developers to use tools that are more friendly, basically, making Decentraland industry compatible. Pretty much, a similarity would be the Spatial.io SDK and under my view it’s our true competitor to surpass, not the parallel grants like yours that add customization and editing features on top of the deployed land.

To summarize and get to your bulletpoint statements:

  • The tool is a step before developing in Decentraland, being by definition a exporter. Pretty much a project builder that anyone with Unity knowledge can use with all the common features the engine has with the platform. This includes and is not limited to 3D and texture file formats; animation handling and accurate level design. The deployment is carried out by a handy panel that installs, maintains and executes npm commands; no terminal knowledge required.

  • It’s relying on Unity, we use as a base the same version the unity-renderer is using so we make visual compatibility and tool maintenance easy. The project is capable of hot-reloading content that you are editing in Unity and see the changes immediately in the local realm.

  • The whole thing will be distributed via GitHub, where you will be able to clone the whole starter project or download a Unity package that includes all the dependencies. Artists will not require additional tools and programmers will use Visual Studio (or any other tool of choice) as usual. We plan on keep the repository fed with updates as the platform gets upgrades.

To the last point:

  • This tool is not an extension for deployed content or to make land management easier, this tool it’s the bridge between game development and Decentraland deployment; filling a gap that no one has made during this three years of Decentraland public development. This, in the end, allows anyone from the 3D world or coming from other developments and platforms to create content with industry standardized tools.

All the power from an engine editor like Unity for the good of Decentraland developments

Best,
kourtin

6

I know Polygonal Mind has done great work on their experiences and scenes without a doubt. Maybe I am not understanding because I am not as technical when it comes to this. How many sprints is this going to take? Is it 16 weeks total? And will we see a return in value of over $170k?

$10,625 per week (if it is 16 weeks). I see 11 personnel. Anyway you can give a breakdown of the costs? Also why do we need marketing positions for this? Isn’t this just development? Any clarity will help thank you!

7

love it, just curious, as you brought out the spatial SDK, just quickly went through their doc, it is interesting to see that creators can create quests and add rewards to be claimable by the players with it, and i also found out that there are many interactive features that we can add like “trigger event” “teleporter” etc, plus, creators can do the visual scripting by utilising unity’s tool. Would Polygonal Minds’ SDK7 Editor Toolkit be able to do the things above as well? If it can do that, i think it will be very useful and might provide a perfect development pathway for designers , modelers, and architects, and enabling them to onboard new brands and projects more easily.

8

That’s a lot of money for something that already exist for SDK6 (I believe from you to?).
Isn’t it possible to edit the SDK6 version to output SDK7 code?

9

Hey there HPrivakos, thanks a lot for taking the time to review and provide feedback on our proposal.

Over the past three years, we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with you, and your insights have been invaluable. We acknowledge that our SDK6 in-house tool may not have been made widely available to the public, but it has received extensive dedication and support during this time. Basically all the cost we have put on the team to understand the Decentraland code and development of the tool has lead us to a high level of expertise that now we want to use to bring creators to the SDK7 via a similar but more product-packaged toolkit.

During these years, we have been refining our pipeline, making significant strides in streamlining our processes so developments of projects like MVMF, Oktoberfest or MVFW could reach their release state in 2 months with no hassle. However, we have encountered a challenge with SDK7, which we believe may hinder its adoption. The shift in data structure and coding conventions within SDK7 has posed a learning curve for developers like myself that struggle with code that is not oriented to objects.

It’s essential to clarify that transitioning from SDK6 to SDK7 isn’t as straightforward as a simple find-and-replace operation, such as changing ‘value_v1’ to ‘value_v2.’ There is a hidden workload associated with transforming the entire toolkit into a comprehensive solution comparable to other platforms like Spatial, Needle, or VRChat, which I have been mentioned in previous discussions.

In addition to the coding aspect, there’s a need to enhance the user experience, improve the distribution process, and provide comprehensive documentation. These efforts are crucial to promote our toolkit as a user-friendly and accessible tool for content creation, eliminating the necessity for users to delve into complex coding, terminals, or server setup just to test their work.

1 Like
10

It would be able to get to that stage as what we are creating are the foundations for a Unity Toolkit under SDK7. On the SDK6 inhouse tool we managed to create simple interactions based on player entering areas or interacting with specific objectives. This, combined with the upcoming quest features by Decentraland could lead to very interesting gamifications around the space.

It would be interesting though to create a translator between Unity’s Visual Graph and Decentraland SDK7, which, despite the promising progress, makes more difficult the value translation as it abandons a lot of similarities it’s wording had with Unity C#.

1 Like
11

Thank you for your support, seeing opportunity for improving the process that we are able to implement is another way to continue contribution to the platform development and the community.

12

Hey there Tudamoon, thanks a lot for passing by this proposal and taking your time to comment and raise questions that are on our side to reply in a proper way.

Project Timeline and Budget: Our project spans 16 weeks, organized into four core sprints. The budget primarily focuses on development, covering team compensation and software licenses. We’ve assigned our most senior team members to ensure a flawless UX/UI design.

Sprint-Based Approach: We follow a sprint-based workweek, with Mondays to Thursdays for work and Fridays for reviews and progress evaluations. We’re committed to transparency and will provide a public page to track weekly progress and solutions.

Documentation and Marketing: We place great emphasis on documentation, not only to meet grant requirements but also for transparency. Marketing efforts are vital to expand beyond our current community. This budget also includes creating tutorials and learning materials.

Project Value: Our toolkit is the result of over three years of investment and involvement from 30+ experienced team members. It has been instrumental in Polygonal Mind’s growth alongside Decentraland releases so we clearly see the investment return it can have to the community.

13

Thank you! My main concern is the price tag. I know you guys do good work, but it seems like a lot.

14

thanks for the clarification, these interactions i think is the most attractive things for creators. If the visual graph is too hard, then maybe putting it into the next stage.

15

This tool seems to cater to a very niche audience within the community, seasoned Unity developers. Most DCL builders may not be familiar with using Unity or be looking to learn a new software at this time.

The current builder tools (existing and in development) are designed to be more user-friendly for a broader audience. I think those tools are more relevant to our current user base. As Unknower mentioned, there’s the legacy builder, the new builder, DCL-Edit, DCL-Connect, VLM, the In-World Builder and the AI SDK7 builder.

As the community continues to grow and we see more unity developers face the challenges outlined in this proposal, it could be a good idea to integrate this tool with the AI builder.

Given the size of the target user base and the existence of similar and more user-friendly tools, I don’t think the cost is justified or a good expenditure of DAO funds.

While it’s clearly an excellent tool and the proposal has vision, it may not be what the majority of the community needs at this time.

16

I hear your point Kat, there are many other tools that allows you to build on Decentraland, yet all of those force you to become familiar with DCL development from scratch, making the learning curve quite slow for newcomers. Or they allow you build very limited experiences in DCL.

None of those tools allow you to manage, iterate and update efficiently when developing larger complex scenes.

Unity is the one of the most used game engines in the world and a large range of metaverse platforms already have Unity tools to develop scenes.
This tool will help to onboard already existing metaverse creators to transfer their know how without having to invest a huge a amount of time into learning a whole new development environment as they might be already familiar with Unity.

I believe this based on our own experience, this tool has definitely helped new artist and developers in our studio to become familiar with DCL way faster.

It is indeed a professional tool for people looking to do more complex things and an alternative to all the user-friendly tools. DCL has been around for over 3 years now and there is already a good base of seasoned creators who might need something more.

17

I think my feedback has been misinterpreted to some degree. My comment was that there aren’t many seasoned Unity developers in Decentraland, as most builders rely on other tools.

Unity is a widely used game engine, but it has just a high a learning curve as the tools you are trying to improve. So I can see the benefit for it, but it currently applies to a very small number of people. If the goal is to make building in DCL easier for existing metaverse creators, as you mention, then an AI tool such as the one already being developed would likely be more efficient for everyone.

18

There are already enacted grants with improved SDK editor functionality such as “DCL-Edit V3- A No Code Editor for the Decentraland SDK 7”

I’m not too sure if we need another one at this point.

How does yours differ enough to be valuable to DCL?

19

I think this is an important project. If Decentraland wants to attract the best talent from the world of game development then professionals need to be able to use their preferred tool set. It is a risk for a seasoned Unity developer to jump out of the world in which they have based their career to work with a fringe set of tools that are less powerful.

Whereas if they do not need to change their tool chain then Decentraland poses less of a risk to their own career development and as a result working in Decentraland can be an attractive chapter in any game development career.

One of the biggest talents I think the Decentraland community has ever seen left this eco system because he wanted to work entirely with Unity as his career choice.

20

Unity is an incredibly important source for high quality scene development, having a good SDK7 library for Unity is a must. On top of this, our entire metaverse runs on .gltf extensions and is a roadblock to development for every single Unity developer if it is not supported natively.

While I have not seen or used Polygonal Minds sdk6 version, I do have faith based on the quality of the projects they create both inside and outside of DCL that these tools would eliminate this stepping stone to create fully extended model solutions.

Voting yes.

P.s. it would be really cool if the system also supported OMI standards for a potential future vehicle/seating implementation: