As a company specializing in haptic technology, we wanted to offer an intuitive tool to facilitate the haptic design process to obtain fast and high-quality results in creating immersive experiences. And that's how the haptic design software Unitouch Studio was born. 

It's been a couple of months since we launched the first version of Studio, and we couldn't be happier with the response from users. We thank all who have given us feedback; thanks to you, we've had the opportunity to work on great ideas and improvements to the software and the workflow for integrating the experiences in the Skinetic vest. Today we want to announce the release of the updates of the Skinetic SDK, Plugins, and the major update of Unitouch Studio: Shape-based Spatialization. What does this mean? Stay with us to understand.

In addition to improving the responsiveness of the interface (yes, it's even faster than before) and fixing minor bugs, we've also thought big to give you a more satisfying experience. We'll divide the updates into Unitouch Studio, SDK, and Plugins to understand the new features.

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Unitouch Studio 

In this new version of Unitouch Studio, we have integrated two new major features to facilitate the comprehension and execution of the haptic design.

1. Shape-based Spatialization

We understand that creating immersive experiences can be confusing at times; after all, you must understand the body's sensitivity and the degree of expansion of the effects depending on the experience you want to create. For this reason, we have added a new option to visualize the Skinetic vest and its actuators in 3D. We introduce you to the Shape mode for spatialization! With this tool, users can optimize the workflow concerning spatialization by adding the notion of three-dimensionality. 

As you can see, now the Skinetic vest is represented by a capsule that allows a three-dimensional view of the 20 actuators of the vest. If the users prefer, they can select the previous spatialization mode (Actuator-based).

When working with the shape-based view, users can select a group of actuators with spheres (the shapes). The effects dragged from the library to the timeline are now applied through spheres in the spatialization workspace. Users can manage these shapes that actuator groups. You can move, rotate, mirror, change their size or field of action, and much more. 

Once you’re done with your design, with the SDK you’ll be able to apply transformations (translation, rotation, mirroring) on the pattern to adjust where it is applied in runtime according to what is happening in the game environment.

2. Boost

Since the release of the Skinetic vest, we have understood that even though you love the high-definition haptic effects far from a simple rumble, you are also looking for more power in the haptic sensations, and we've heard you! 

With the new release of Unitouch Studio, we have included a new feature called Boost. As you must have guessed, its function adds more power to all the haptic compositions for a stronger result. This feature is also available for the Skinetic SDK.

SDK

In the Skinetic SDK 1.3.0, three features have been included:

- Transformation: This feature allows to apply transformations (translation, rotation, mirroring) of the haptic pattern designed in Studio. Thus developers can manage and adjust the haptic feedback according to the events triggered in the productions.

- Boost: This feature offers to add more power to the haptic design. The user can add boost amplify the intensity of the whole pattern. 

- Effect Accumulation Strategy: When triggering complicated patterns, one after another, it can create confusion for the user since there are too many things happening at the same time with the same intensity.

The Effect Accumulation Strategy can avoid a haptic sensations overload and can lead to a more transparent experience. This tool allows to select which effect will have more protagonism and manages the intensity and duration of the secondary effect. For example, if we have two effects, a Fireball and a burning sensation, we would prefer the fireball to be the primary. In this case, the person would first feel the fireball's explosion, and the following burning effect will be less intense and play for a shorter time. 

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Unity & Unreal Plugins

Along with the Skinetic SDK 1.3.0, we bring you the Unity Plugin 1.2.0 & Unreal Plugin 1.2.0 (integrating Skinetic SDK 1.3.0). We have included more samples to show the new capabilities of the SDK.

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And that's the end of the updates; there are a lot of new tools to try, right? 

We invite you to download Unitouch Studio and the SDK to test its new features! What are you waiting for? This is the time to revolutionize and create incredibly immersive experiences! 

To learn more about how to use the Unitouch Studio software, we invite you to look at the tutorials - we'll teach you how to use the new interface in the coming weeks!

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