Unity Technologies has announced that the new Unity 4.0 is now available for download.

Unity 4, which was first announced in June, will now consist of a series of updates designed to improve the product via a widespread improvement of existing technology and the rollout of new features. This update is the first in the series for Unity 4, and includes important additions such as DirectX 11 support and Mecanim animation tools. Moreover, users will have access to a Linux deployment preview and the Adobe Flash Player deployment add-on.

“Unity 4 will see the addition of an incredible number of new, highly advanced, features and continuous improvement across the tech to be released in smaller, faster increments than Unity has seen in the past. It’s an exciting time for Unity and the 4.0 release marks the beginning of a great new era for our technology,” said David Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies.

Unity 4.0 is the company’s biggest release to date. It brings all new powerful features such as the Mecanim, the new animation system to animate any character or object, Real-time shadows for all platforms, DirectX 11 rendering, an updated Shuriken particle system with world collision functionality, Adobe Flash and Linux as two new platforms, and Cross-platform dynamic fonts.

Unity’s new Mecanim animation system release, which is a powerful and innovative animation technology, is offering new standardized tools in integrated development environments allowing the creation of complex state machines, blend trees, IK rigging, and auto retarget animations to characters of different sizes and shapes, and this all is happening inside the Unity editor.

"It’s going to change the way a lot of people make games by giving high class animation tools to a much wider range of developers than ever before. We’re also putting up free motion captured animation on the Asset Store so that you can start making your characters move with lifelike fluidity,” the company wrote in its blog.

“The wealth of new high-end visual features will level the playing field. DirectX 11 support is probably the biggest addition that will open up a huge range of possibilities for developers. Add to that mobile real-time shadows, normal maps when baking lightmaps, skinned mesh instancing and there’s a wealth of lush visual features.”

Check all the Unity 4.0 features here.