Impressions and opinions about Unity Sentis

Well, these new AI tools for Unity seem to greatly simplify some tasks. Let’s talk about Muse before Sentis. Muse is capable of creating textures from a single prompt. Nothing too extraordinary, any texture artist can confirm that a bit of proceduralism is the foundation of DCC (Digital Content Creation) with designer and painter. Muse also possesses other superpowers, such as generating animations through prompts.

However, I must admit that the quality shown in the demo didn’t amaze me. Then there’s Muse Chat, essentially a chatbot like ChatGPT but tailored for Unity. Will it manage to achieve something? Could muse move a cube for me?

Sentis is more intriguing; it’s an AI designed to be an AI and finds its place in its magical world, a dedicated space where it seems to fit perfectly. Here, it’s free from the chains of being a mere support tool and becomes a being in search of its own singularity. An entity we could interact with inside a video game, an entity we could program to respect the context in which we immerse it, making it a tangible element in the creation of our video game worlds.

Now, for those less familiar with this concept, it might not be immediately clear, so let’s shed a little light. Machine learning is a more mathematical concept compared to the generic definition of Artificial Intelligence, but what does it mean? It means that Unity has provided more advanced tools that are capable of learning from their own algorithms, enabling the creation of really cool stuff. Sentis is certainly a product that’s more accessible to everyone, of course, but I strongly doubt it can stray too far from the context of interaction simulation for which it seems to be designed. If you want to learn more, the tutorial below is fantastic.

Into the official Sentis presentation page, in the last section, Unity showcases some third-party solutions that have been available on the asset store for a while. One of these solutions is Replica. A few days ago, they announced that they’re working on an AI for NPCs. In this demo, we can see an integration in Unreal 5 within the Matrix scenario, which has become quite famous.

These innovations are certainly exciting,specially unity Sentis. Will they change the way we populate our digital worlds? Will they make them more believable? Certainly, the scope of application could lead to another revolution, as there are many these days, especially outside the gaming and experimental context that we enjoy so much. We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, I recommend this video where a young man tries to convince an NPC that his life is in the Matrix.