Practical Differences between Unity and Unreal

Sorry if this is a dumb comment/question. My understanding from what I Was reading when researching which engine to subscribe to Is that basically the Graphical beauty of your product depends more On the graphics that you import rather than the engine itself, because both engines are quite capable of producing amazing graphics. So recently in the news as a lot of you might have noticed there is a video called unreal engine 4 rivalry demo running on the Tegra K-1 chip that unreal is showing off. So my question is, is in unity also capable of displaying such amazing graphics as long as the process is done correctly? Aren't these type of videos simply public relation stunts, or is there actually something to them? Thanks for reading this and I really hope I do not sound like a newbie or an ignoramus!

 

If you want to do most of the things that UE4 does out of the box, you'll either need to spend

1. A lot of time
2. A lot of money
3. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears

You can get some of the functionality that UE4 offers out of the box with assets like Shader Forge (VERY recommended), uScript, Playmaker, or Antares Universe. If you want CSG tools for rapid level design prototyping in-engine, you'll need something like Pro Builder.

That said, a lot of additional features are coming to Unity that will help bridge some of the graphical gulf, like the new lighting system and materials in Unity 5.

I still recommend Shader Forge though.

 

Unity needs to integrate Shader Forge functionality into the core product, preferably yesterday. I'm still flopping around between the two engines and the visual shader editor is by far the nicest thing UE offers over Unity. Pretty sure if one dude can make it as an addon they could add this with their 300+ employees...

 

Integrating Shader Forge and maybe a nice visual scripting system to complement what we have now would be fantastic, yeah. Shader Forge is probably responsible for 99% of my productivity, since it makes it so easy to quickly prototype games that actually look good for once.

 

Yeah I noticed that in playing around with Unreal. Its intimidating for someone like me who isn't an artist and not an advanced programmer. If Unity can open up a feature like that and make it easier to use for the masses it may tilt the market even further in favor of Unity.

 

Hmm let me think, things you'd need from the asset store.

With Unity 4.0:

Shaderforge $80.00
Marmoset (IBL) $125.00
Amplify Color $50.00
PlayMaker $95.00
Lux (Free)
Some sort of TOD system (usually about $60.00 on the asset store)
Cinematics (something like Usequencer) $40.00
Unity Pro obviously $1500.00
You'll need to buy some post, or do it yourself. Say $100.00 for tidbits..

So you'll be looking to spend around $2050.00, or you'll spend a lot of time making all this.

You won't have a 64-bit editor (Yet) There is a lot of new shiny stuff coming from Unity (with UT 5.0), Epic are on fire with there support and additions, CryTek have finally pricked their ears up now nearly everyone has left the building.

Let's say you're already a AAA artist, UE4 is hands down the best at indoors / sci fi corridors it's breathtaking, on the flipside I was seriously underwhelmed by anything outdoors they did I prefered Unity graphically. CryEngine is the undisputed king of gorgeous outdoor scenes, but if you want to do more than jaw dropping visualisations and make a game it's notoriously hard to use / underdocumented and buggy.

So in summary, CryEngine is the hot one with a serious personality disorder.

UE4 keeps you in the friend zone, never knowing which way it'll swing.

Unitys not the pretty one, but you know you're going to score.

 

Hey ShadowK thanks for that list. I could not find "Marmoset (IBL) $125.00", is there a different name for it? Thanks!

 

http://u3d.as/content/marmoset-co/skyshop-image-based-lighting-tools-shaders/4Jx

 

Very nice, thank you!

 

A lot of the reason UE4 looks good for sci-fi shiny scenes is because of the screen-space reflections and temporal AA. It does tracing for shiny surfaces and the temporal AA keeps those from looking too grainy.

This comes at a cost though, these reflections can be very expensive. In general, from a shader/art point of view, shiny surfaces are easier to get looking right and get a 'wow factor'. It's not a coincidence that the UE3 Samaritan demo was dark and sci-fi with lots of shiny reflections, and now with UE4, the Infiltrator demo and subway scene. Besides this one feature UE4 suffers in most other rendering areas.

The thing you really need to look out for (besides normal quality and getting that stuff synced with nice, clean assets) is the engine's approach to indirect lighting and lighting consistency. UE4 is currently pretty bad in this regard. Indirect lighting remains a static, baked approach and their baking system is inconsistent between assets. Getting the different lighting systems and techniques to play together nicely can also be difficult given UE4's a la carte mentality. The rendering is mostly deferred which can also be restrictive if you intend to set up a lot of custom shaders or use translucent materials (an ongoing problem in terms of quality). Most of that type of stuff has to be done additionally. With this in mind, at the end of the day your renders will only look as good as your assets, regardless of what your choose.

 

@firalt

Well I always found the best thing to do is buy the best assets you can get your hands on that you didn't make, try them in all three engines and see how they look. It's quite jarring how different CryEngine looks compared to Unity in many regards..

 

Unreal has more tools available right away. When you buy it, you get a lot more than you get with basic Unity Pro. Ie you get things with Unreal that you’ll have to pay extra for with Unity. So, you can make absolutely gorgeous things right away with Unreal, but to make those gorgeous things you need to learn more tools and you or your team need a higher grade of art-skills.

Unity lets you get things done faster and go further with fewer people. While you get a lot of stuff with Unreal, you also reach the limit of what you can practically do with a small team quicker. And since money is time, I think the monetary value of the two engines will be equal out of the box.

So, if you’re solo or part of a small team Unity will get in your way a lot less than Unreal. If you have a larger team with more experienced devs, then Unreal can carry you farther out of the box.

That’s how I understand things.

 

This isn't entirely fair because even out of the box, UDK looks a lot better than Unity does (and honestly it's still even a pain to try and match it) and UDK is built on UE3.

 

Shader Forge.

I know I'm singing its praises a lot, but it took me from using what was little more than the TF2 shader on the wiki to actually having full on rainfall material shaders, toon shaders that don't look like a pile of ass, flow map shaders, lava shaders, and shaders that allow me to basically infinitely scale things up or down without losing texel density. It's probably worth at least ten times what it costs in the asset store for the amount of time and effort it's saved me.

 

It's a little bit hard to do, if rendering technology wasn't important there would be no need for Marmoset Toolbag / V-ray / Mental ray / OpenCL and so on..

We have the ability now to make everything pretty much as physically accurate as possible and re-create real life scenarios, the trick is keeping everything looking as good as possible whilst attending to your lowest target market. You need a benchmark and the only other benchmarks in the game engine sector is other engines.

 

It's kind a ludicrous to recommend UE4 or Unity assets like Marmoset or ShaderForge to somebody, who describes himself as beginner on coding, asset creation and project management.

I assume that you will be far better off with Unity, BECAUSE IT HAS AN ASSET STORE. Using UE4, where will you get art assets, code snippets etc from, while you are occupied with learning scripting? Use UE4 and once you get a hang on scripting, suddenly you will throw hours upon creating some simple explosion sprites or user interface elements, whereas in Unity you can use your credit card to buy them instantly.

And let's not forget that Unity Free can get you very, very far, whereas using UE4 you basically spend 19€ a month (and don't give me this buy once, than cancel nonsense) for reading their documentation for six months.

 

Unreal is working towards its own asset store. So eventually this will be a moot point.

As for your statement regarding art assets, the various sample projects provided by Epic such as the "Effects Cave" have quite an assortment of assets. If you had read their FAQ, you would know you are free to use these assets in your own projects. Both commercial and non-commercial.

 

Unity having an asset store is its biggest downfall a lot of the time because it means that Unity is basically the F2P game of game engines. Sure, you can use the asset store, but you're looking at spending hundreds of dollars to recreate the functionality of an engine you can get for $20

 

It's been done to death. You should pick the engine you're actually able to perform well in, not the engine with the best screenshots. Because if you can't do it, it doesn't matter if the engine can.

In any case, with some care, Unity 4 can, and we welcome discussions like this so that users who DO want to use Unity, can get the best from it.

I'm being diplomatic since I'd rather just hoover your threads up and drop kick the lock button but I'm in a good mood today.

 

Yeah I've spent tons of money in the asset store, and honestly I don't regret it. It has saved me tons of time, especially when a client wants a quick preview of a potential project. Its true I am not an advanced coder, but you don't need to be advanced in this aspect to achieve great things in Unity. There is alot of code out there available for reuse even if you don't understand every line of code, and there is alot of features that can be "bought" from the asset store that will save you tons of coding. I think the asset store is honestly a HUGE plus for Unity and definitely makes up for things that may be lacking.

 

You don't need to be an advanced coder or shader writer to do something like PBR. A lot of the purpose behind PBR in game engines is to unify the shading under one shader with a physical basis, so it's less about writing custom shaders for everything and more about understanding the model and what values are appropriate for what you want. There are tools and libraries that help with this. Both the quixel suite and substance designer/painter are excellent for focusing more on your materials (quixel suite is currently in a free beta I believe and has a lot of great presets, so as long as you have photoshop it's a great option).
If you're new to coding then Unity is relatively very friendly as far as scripting goes. It works out of the box with little setup needed, even coming with its own ide, and it's fast to make changes. There's already a lot of good documentation and tutorials as well. I would say to give it a chance before spending money on assets like playmaker, the grass is rarely ever greener.

 

I like your analogy.

 

Despite what is said here, at the end of the day, Unity is so much easier to learn and alot more straightforward. I know this is subjective, but I challenge anyone here to put 20 bucks down, and try to do the same project in both programs, and you will see how much less trouble Unity will give you!!

 

I've made a quick list for myself a while ago. It's incomplete and biased towards things that matter for me, so please take it with a grain of salt:

Unity 5
> Fully realtime lighting via dynamic radiosity calculated on low-res lightmaps
> Semi-realtime lighting via realtime primary and prebaked secondary lights
+ Asset store - shaders, props, effects and scripts (saves a lot of time, but requires additional money)
+ Sophisticated networking with BOLT + built-in headless dedicated server
+ Interactive lightmap preview for static GI lighting (huge time saver when you want it just to look 'right')
+ HUD and UI are easy to implement
+ 2D games are a blast with Unity
+ SpeedTree integration (+ SpeedTree editor for $19/mo, see their website for details)
+ New advanced sound system
- Default terrain and foliage editor are outdated. Asset Store to the resque.
- Current Unity 5 demos still look a few steps behind UE4 ones.
(!) Compute shaders available only in DX11, which means no support for Mac?

Unreal 4
> Fully realtime lighting via propagation volumes
> Semi-realtime lighting via realtime primary and prebaked secondary lights
> Visual scripting is the key, but some people prefer old-school scripting instead
> Has its own marketplace, but it's a bit empty as of now
+++ GPU particles (for rain, fire, etc.). Explosions and fire look awesome out of box (seriously, check out youtube demos!)
+ Well-implemented volumetric lighting, transulency and self-shadowing.
+ BSP creating tools
+ Heavily Multithreaded
+ SpeedTree integration (+ SpeedTree editor for $19/mo, see their website for details)
+ Internal networking implementaion, headless dedicated server available
+ Terrain engine is much better than default Unity one
- 2D games workflow is cumbersome
- Still rough in some areas (requires additional 6 months of polish)
- HUD and UI creation is complicated, but solution is coming soon

 

Since the thread didn't go in a different direction, and it's the same information covered in 10+ other threads, it's locked.