Unity 6.6 lands, ArmorPaint hits 1.0, Inworld's directable voices go live

Unity's final release before its next long-term support version is out, the open-source texture painter ArmorPaint reached 1.0 after eight years, and Inworld's directable voice model went live. Plus a free tilemap editor that now generates pixel art, and a week of acquisitions around the edges.

Unity 6.6 makes fast Play Mode the default

Unity released Unity 6.6 on August 31, and Unity calls it the final release before 6.7 LTS (the long-term support version most teams settle on). The change you will feel every day: new projects now enter Play Mode without a domain reload (the step that resets your scripts), so pressing Play is faster. The catch is that static variables no longer reset between runs, which can trip up older code and tutorials. Web builds get production-ready WebGPU (the newer browser graphics API, now out of experimental) and 64-bit WebAssembly support, which matters if you ship browser games.

Smaller additions: the Inspector can edit dictionaries directly, a Build Analysis window shows build history and your heaviest assets, Content Directories offer a simpler alternative to AssetBundles (Unity's older way of packaging content), and 2D lights gain rendering layer masks. All of it is usable today.

ArmorPaint 1.0, an open-source Substance Painter alternative

After eight years in early access, ArmorPaint reached 1.0. It is a 3D texture painter: you paint color, roughness and other material layers directly onto a model, the job many studios use Substance 3D Painter for. Version 1.0 is a rewrite in C for speed and lower memory use, and adds basic sculpting, UV editing, timeline playback for skinned characters, and AI "Neural Nodes" for upscaling and turning photos into materials. Those sit alongside its node-based material editor, texture baking and a path-traced viewport. The source code is free under the zlib license if you compile it yourself; ready-made binaries cost $19. The iPad and Android editions are still experimental. For a small team that does not want another subscription, it is a low-cost way to texture game assets.

Inworld's directable voice model is generally available

Inworld's Realtime TTS-2, first shown in May, is now generally available. TTS means text-to-speech: you send a line of dialogue and get back audio. Instead of picking from preset emotions, you direct the voice in plain English, and Inworld says the model listens to the conversation audio to match the player's tone. It keeps one voice consistent across more than 100 languages and supports inline cues like [laugh] and [sigh]. Inworld says it ranks first on the Artificial Analysis leaderboard. Pricing is per character, at the same rate as TTS 1.5. If you want NPCs that answer players out loud in real time, this is one of the more expressive options you can use today.

Sprite Fusion adds an AI pixel art generator

Sprite Fusion, a free browser-based tilemap editor (a tool for painting levels out of grid tiles) that exports to Godot, Unity, Phaser, Tiled and other formats, is building its own pixel art model. It generates sprites at 16, 32 and 64 pixels plus idle, run and attack animations, and according to Phaser's coverage it aims for clean outlines, grid-aligned shapes and controlled palettes rather than filtered images. The generator is labeled a work in progress, but it is usable now on paid plans from $9 a month, with commercial use included. The tilemap editor itself stays free.

Also worth your time

• World Labs announced Atlas, a new world model it says will power future versions of Marble. It generates camera-controlled video up to a minute long, rebuilds scenes in 3D from a handful of photos, and outputs Gaussian splats (3D scenes built from millions of soft, colored points) like Marble does. Early access for select partners only, so it is not in Marble yet.
• FluidNinja Live 2 rebuilds the Unreal Engine fluid and smoke plugin to run on the GPU through Niagara, Unreal's effects system, with support for particles, mesh distance fields and Chaos destructibles. According to CG Channel it needs UE 5.6 or later, is Windows-only for now, and costs $149 for personal licenses under $100K revenue.
• Heos Cloth is a script for Aseprite that runs a fabric simulation on your pixel art and outputs frame-by-frame animation, with presets like Flag, Cape and Curtain. Pay what you want, from $4.99; it suits banners and simple garments more than complex cloth.
• Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1, a general AI model it says is about 25 percent cheaper on typical workloads and better at long, unattended coding tasks. Relevant if you build your game with a coding agent.
• NVIDIA agreed to buy Hugging Face, the site where most open AI models are shared, including many open 3D generators. NVIDIA says the brand stays and its hardware will not be required. Nothing has changed yet for the open models hosted there.
• ArtStation now applies its NoAI tag by default to all uploads and is working with Cloudflare to block AI scrapers, according to 80 Level.
• Chosen, the owner of Nexus Mods, bought SteamDB, the free Steam data site many small teams use to research prices, wishlists and competitors. 80 Level reports the site and its free features stay the same.

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