Unity or Unreal, and why!

[Thomas]

Unity vs Unreal Engine: which game engine is for you?​

By

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(

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) February 04, 2019
The 4 key considerations to make when choosing between these two leading game engines.



Unity vs Unreal Engine – it's been a debate between digital artists and game developers for years now. Arguably two of the most popular game engines available today, Unity and Unreal Engine are used by large studios and indie developers alike. But what, if anything, sets them apart? And which of the two best suits your needs?

Here, James Burrows, technical director at

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, reveals the four key things you need to consider when choosing between these two leading game engines.

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01. What level of visuals are you after?​

One of the main differentiators when considering

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vs

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is the quality of visuals. Unreal offers high-fidelity visuals straight out of the box, whereas Unity – while still able to produce high- quality visuals – takes a lot more work to get your assets looking close to the same level as Unreal. And even then, it won’t produce quite the same quality.
It’s for this reason that you’ll find Unreal used more on big games and productions from large studios. So, if you want as close to photorealistic assets as possible, it’s quicker and easier to achieve this with Unreal.
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02. What device is your project aimed at?​

If you’re looking to create a project to run on lower-powered devices, such as mobile phones, then the high processing power demanded by Unreal isn’t necessarily for you. This is where Unity really comes into its own. Originally designed to run on devices like consoles and phones, Unity enables you to create complex projects for low-end devices without requiring such a powerful PC setup as Unreal. If, on the other hand, you’re creating an experience for high-end devices, then either Unity or Unreal will set you right. But that also depends on...

03. What's your team size?​

The consensus amongst the collective experience of the Immersive dev team is that to get the very best out of Unreal, you need a large and specialist team that’s dedicated to different parts of the process – for example, someone dedicated just to particles or someone just to shaders.

Unity, on the other hand, is much easier for developers to get to grips with straight away – making it a good choice for one-man bands and smaller teams to create an effective experience. Its asset store is also significantly bigger, making it simpler to populate your game or experience if you don’t have a massive team.

04. Are you a developer or a visual artist?​

There’s no doubt about it, this seems to affect preference. Our developers prefer Unity, but our visual artists opt for Unreal – and this is purely down to the difference in visuals. Both game engines offer the same sort of functionality and capability, just packaged in different ways.

For a while now, the lines differentiating the two have started to blur as Unreal – starting out as an AAA game engine – aims to make itself more accessible for smaller teams and experiences, while Unity – originally preferred by indie studios for simple games and experiences – continues to work its way up to the top by adding pro-level features.

The main difference is visual quality and your target platform – but we think it won’t be long until both engines reach a similar level in both respects. In which case, soon it’ll simply be a case of personal preference."

 

[chinpasel]

Personally, I started on Unity. I then moved to godot, and a plethora of other popular and unpopular engines. All of these engines provided a great learning experience (mostly unity) but I love graphics. I hated the fact that unity has so many hurdles to jump through to get a good looking game/concept. Many built in system's would conflict with the simplest of my desires. For example (Adding trees to a unreal "hd" preset.. I forget what the new hd thing is called, but anyway if I added trees they would not look right and require a overhaul to the leaf textures. Or the day and night cycles conflicting with my terrain material. Besides that it wasn't too bad, I was just sick of wasting my time on tedious fixes. Another annoyance is the marketplace prices. The content is a big plus as it has many more assets than any other engine I know of, but the damn prices are insane. For a simple foot IK the price was $100 (it has since dropped tremendously).

Overall I love unity, but I think unity has more potential for team based devs, artists, and smaller titles. Unreal on the other hand, has some let downs, but it has everything I need (visually) right out of the box. The BP system is far superior to anything that unity uses. Plus I like cpp more than c#. Anyway I think it comes down to preference. I like creating concepts to see if a game will work rather than the usual approach of deciding in an idea and fully focusing on that. Unreal gives me and my adhd (that rhymed) a way to stay focused whilst also seeing progress at a pace I enjoy.

 

[fusky]

I had this conversation with a frined months ago. He ended up picking Unity, and I wasn't convinced, because I wanted to make things photorealistic. Then I tried unreal this week, and I'm in love.

 

[JesseJaneJameson]

My first video game was made in Unity. It was for android and a basic clicker game. Even though i didn't had much experience with programming and all it was difficult for me to code and make a stable video game. But i made in just a week or so by following tutorials and i started to grasp the basic concepts of Game Engines. I never really tried making a 3d or any other genre games using Unity but for android i will always say Unity is the best.

As for Unreal. I think fusky and chinpasel explained it very well. It has the blueprint system and is much easier to use for people like me who can't code. I made a story adventure open world game using Unreal in just 4 months. As a beginner and no prior courses or knowledge of the engine. That might explain how user friendly and easy it is to use. The marketplace is awesome too. So many free stuff every month. Even now i am working on a project using only Unreal. The photorealism, the BP system, and overall friendly UI and it's mechanics are great in Unreal.

 

[rarvdiyeoturaguvu]

Unreal. Because it's cheaper - you don't have to pay royalties up to 1 million dollars in revenue. You also get tonns of free monthly assets + have access megascans for free. This is a killer deal.

 

[Slobo]

A big advantage of UE4 is that it's open source. This is esp. needed for making it work with DAZ3d characters, which use a special method for body deformations. (posing, animations).

And the second big point going for UE4 is that it is written in C++, what makes it as fast as you can get.

I'm wondering why other programming languages are still being used as foundation for any game engine at all as they are some kind of "dead end". Maybe for historic reasons or because the people behind it would need to start over again with the whole engine. (economic reasons)

With the coming UE5 it will be even easier to make an open world without caring about polycount of static meshes (no more lods needed) and the real time lighting will be much better.

 

[rarvdiyeoturaguvu]

And the second big point going for UE4 is that it is written in C++, what makes it as fast as you can get.

It's not an advantage if you use only blueprints though. C++is harder than C# - I use only blueprints with UE4 due to this fact. Plus UE4 compile times... Anyway Unreal Engine is much easier to use than Unity, look better, has more options, has better developers, blueprints are easier than c#, it's open source which making adding a lot of 3rd party libraries possible, it's cheaper to use for indie developers, and they make give aways which shows them from a good side.

 

[YeetStudio]

Ue4+ is so much fun, even from a developer background, the blender -> ue4 workflow, the quixel megascan is truly godsend, it's very very easy to make the make look good.
Look up ultra dynamic sky and the new water stuff in the 4.26 version

 

[necron]

I'm on unity, for a single developer i think its the best.

 

[rarvdiyeoturaguvu]

I'm on unity, for a single developer i think its the best.

You clearly are a newbie and have no idea what you are talking about

 

[notaclown]

You clearly are a newbie and have no idea what you are talking about

Instead of saying they have no idea what they're talking about why don't you enlighten us on why they're wrong?

I use Unreal for not only personal projects, but at my job. C++ is too nice to not work with. C++20 is going to be pretty nice so maybe after a few years we'll get support in Unreal. Then again C++17 isn't exactly supported fully.

 

[rarvdiyeoturaguvu]

Instead of saying they have no idea what they're talking about why don't you enlighten us on why they're wrong?

I use Unreal for not only personal projects, but at my job. C++ is too nice to not work with. C++20 is going to be pretty nice so maybe after a few years we'll get support in Unreal. Then again C++17 isn't exactly supported fully.

Or maybe why not THEY explain why unity is the best?

 

[troy420]

Unreal Engine was my choice after unsuccessfully downloading unity projects and getting error after error from every project. While this Frustrated me allot I decided to download Unreal Engine 4 and was hooked instantly not only is the User Interface allot cleaner than unity's but I feel while working in unreal my workflow is smooth, fast and I don't constantly have my face in the palm of my hand. After almost a year of diddling around with Unreal Engine I finally feel like I understand basics like interfaces and animations the learning is endless in Unreal Engine 4 and I love it.

 

[rarvdiyeoturaguvu]

Unreal is the best due:

-0 royalties till 1 million dollars in revenue
-Free Quixel Megascans. Megascans license is pretty expensive, and you get unlimited access for free.
-Integration with Iclone which Unity doesn't have. Basically Icone is the only convinient way to have quality characters with face animations in your project.
-Free library of hundreds AAA quality assets + every month you get ~$300 worth of great assets
-Superb blueprint system which is fast and almost capable of everything. If it's not capable of something - you expose that feature to blueprints and it becomes capable.
-Being open source. This allows tonns of plugins and 3rd party libraries to be created/connected. I modified engine to my needs and added a lot of featurues.
-Editor scripting with python. This helps in automating tasks like multi-remaining objects, as well as more complex usages.
-Built-in cloud&sky system
-Built-in water system
-Built in landscape&foliage generation system
-Visual material editor
-Support for 3rd party languages like scookum script and c#
-Niagara VFX solution
-Apex desctruction
-Cloth simulation
-In-engine geometry modification of 3d models
-In-engine animation creation. This is how I make most of my animations.
-Convinient UI creation solution.
-Understandable object ortiended programming
-BSP brushes
-Superb and easy post-processing
-Very easy to create a good looking scene
-Perfect cut-scene creation tool
-Ability to host over 100,000 AI agents with plugins & tricks
-Built-in netcode, multiplayer ready
-Plugins allow even such things like text to speech, gesture recognition, and all kinds of exotic needs for your projects
-Unreal Engine is generally easier to use and has more attractive UI
-Community. Unreal Engine has game jams with expensive prizes.

 

[notaclown]

Unreal is the best due:

-0 royalties till 1 million dollars in revenue
-Free Quixel Megascans. Megascans license is pretty expensive, and you get unlimited access for free.
-Integration with Iclone which Unity doesn't have. Basically Icone is the only convinient way to have quality characters with face animations in your project.
-Free library of hundreds AAA quality assets + every month you get ~$300 worth of great assets
-Superb blueprint system which is fast and almost capable of everything. If it's not capable of something - you expose that feature to blueprints and it becomes capable.
-Being open source. This allows tonns of plugins and 3rd party libraries to be created/connected. I modified engine to my needs and added a lot of featurues.
-Editor scripting with python. This helps in automating tasks like multi-remaining objects, as well as more complex usages.
-Built-in cloud&sky system
-Built-in water system
-Built in landscape&foliage generation system
-Visual material editor
-Support for 3rd party languages like scookum script and c#
-Niagara VFX solution
-Apex desctruction
-Cloth simulation
-In-engine geometry modification of 3d models
-In-engine animation creation. This is how I make most of my animations.
-Convinient UI creation solution.
-Understandable object ortiended programming
-BSP brushes
-Superb and easy post-processing
-Very easy to create a good looking scene
-Perfect cut-scene creation tool
-Ability to host over 100,000 AI agents with plugins & tricks
-Built-in netcode, multiplayer ready
-Plugins allow even such things like text to speech, gesture recognition, and all kinds of exotic needs for your projects
-Unreal Engine is generally easier to use and has more attractive UI
-Community. Unreal Engine has game jams with expensive prizes.

Or maybe why not THEY explain why unity is the best?

Sure, but regardless it's going to be opinion based which it seems you'll disagree with so there's not point in them explaining.

You make some good points for Unreal being one of the best engines out there. From my understanding pretty much all of those features are in most engines.
However, at the end of the day those features are useless to someone that's brand new to said engine. It's good to learn new tech, but if you're wanting to release a game then really just stick with what you already know. (like everything I work on is Unreal based, but in my spare time I work on my own engine and read/tinker with other engines)

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Read about choosing the game engine.

Believe me, I'm a huge Unreal fanboy, but saying Unreal is the best just isn't true. Saying Unreal is the best when some amazing games have been the product of Unity is like saying memory management is pointless since modern computers are fast.

 

[heaps]

Sure, but regardless it's going to be opinion based which it seems you'll disagree with so there's not point in them explaining.

You make some good points for Unreal being one of the best engines out there. From my understanding pretty much all of those features are in most engines.
However, at the end of the day those features are useless to someone that's brand new to said engine. It's good to learn new tech, but if you're wanting to release a game then really just stick with what you already know. (like everything I work on is Unreal based, but in my spare time I work on my own engine and read/tinker with other engines)

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Read about choosing the game engine.

Believe me, I'm a huge Unreal fanboy, but saying Unreal is the best just isn't true. Saying Unreal is the best when some amazing games have been the product of Unity is like saying memory management is pointless since modern computers are fast.

Unreal can be the best while good games are produced in Unity...

 

[Wnb]

I started out with UE4 recently and just found it way more comfortable to look at.
Of course its important that the Engine you use is good at what it does, but UE4 just felt nice and comfy at first glance.

Seeing Unity Tutorials feels like watching some relict from 2015.

 

[CookieMonster1980]

I started out with UE4 recently and just found it way more comfortable to look at.
Of course its important that the Engine you use is good at what it does, but UE4 just felt nice and comfy at first glance.

Seeing Unity Tutorials feels like watching some relict from 2015.

I actually agree with you, having used both Unity just feels ancient. Also I find UE4 intellectually stimulating, it really challenges my brain.

 

[notaclown]

Unreal can be the best while good games are produced in Unity...

That's entirely opinion based.

 

[heaps]

That's entirely opinion based.

No this is actually fact.

"Unreal can be the best" is not mutually exclusive to "good games are produced in Unity"