Very well then, virtual handshake.
I’ve seen that breakdown before, which part of it are you referring to? I’m not really seeing anything there that isn’t available in Unity (assuming that crush shadows is another name for ambient occlusion).
By the way your current sci-fi project is in Unreal? I remember you working on a fantasy project some time ago but it seems you’re working on a different one now or is that one still in development?
Sort of all of it, crush shadows refers to HDR ranges. You have Shadows, Midtones and Highlights in general colour grading which can add “depth”… In all fairness you can download GIMP and do the same, or maybe chromatica in the asset store? (Not sure about that). Colour grading is a big part of it, but of course you can do either in Unity and / or Unreal it’s just that Unreal has it built in.
A lot of the other post stuff you can get a pretty good one in SCION (like fringe (or chromatic abberation)…
One of the main differences, Unity uses irradiance lighting where as UE uses Photon Mapping and every type including raytracing has it’s up’s and downs. Some of the benefits I noticed of UE is the quality is much higher, lightmapping takes less time and the GI cache is much smaller compared to Enlighten. The downsides are there’s no option for geometry based computations, so you can’t change colours and / or move lights…
LPV is worse than both of them, anything voxel based is decent quality but heavy… I’ve not a clue how CryTek have done it (they just addes a Voxel based GI system into CE not long ago and apparently it’s blazing).
Along with that the type of shadows, whilst heavier of course look better (Cascade shadow maps and ray traced distance shadows):
P.S I love the way VXGI looks, it’s just amazing but extremely heavy:
As I said before, I tried Enlighten in UE and it looked a bit “odd”. Well overtly saturated and un-realistic TBH… But it’s far from bad and it is getting better…
Add in cascade particles:
To me UE4 just looks beautiful, it’s almost like magic LOL! (Says me after all the techie talk)… Although it’s so hard to get to grips with and there’s so many challenges you do sit there thinking whether or not it’s worth it.
The other one got dumped, in short we bit off more than we could chew and at the time the game was so large that Unity 4.X wouldn’t even load it and Unreal was chugging at around 20FPS with the amount of foliage etc. on a GTX 780. With streaming issues, amount of content this that and the other it started to become a fruitless chore everyone had enough of. It would of got “done” eventually, I’m not sure it would of been a quality release.
So I’d rather it take us a decade and do it right, or don’t bother at all. We downsized the scope of the game massively, now it’s probably only bigger than Mass Effect 2 
…
I don’t think it was so much a lack of effort, but more overthinking it. Like a lot of modern FPSs, they add in so much extra “engagement” stuff, and try it make it more palatable to a wider audience (so noobs don’t get frustrated by get pwnd all the time). It’s gorgeous and all, but really lacks the joy of the originals. The first Battlefronts were great because they were pretty much just Unreal Tournament set in the SW universe. Run around and shoot each other. I miss those types of games. 
Well color grading is another one of the effects in the Unity cinematic package I mentioned, it’s part of the filmic tonemapping complete with shadow/midtone/highlight so along with the other stuff I’ve mentioned (SSRR, temporal AA, etc.) it basically is included now. Chromatic Aberration has been in Unity since forever too, it’s part of the vignetting image effect. Granted it’s the purple/green type (I prefer orange/blue) but it’s there just the same. One of the main image effects Unity is actually lacking is a good motion blur solution but Amplify Motion comes to the rescue.
But about the gif though, other than the crush shadows there isn’t really much to it as far as I can see that isn’t in Unity/asset store unless I’m missing something. Unity has Enlighten for the GI like you’ve mentioned which is different than Unreal’s of course but it’s GI none the less
Real-time shadows are definitely better in Unreal, no argument there (although it hasn’t been a dealbreaker for me so far). For the particles though, there are solutions on the asset store that can give similar results to the elemental video like TC Particles or Popcorn FX.
Hopefully your project doesn’t actually end up taking 10 years though! Releasing is a feature too
It’s pretty clear to me that Unreal has an advantage in out-of-box graphics. A plane with a cube on it just looks better somehow. And there is a lot built-in that comes on by default (maybe too much, as you end up spending a decent amount of time just disabling all the glitz to get performance up). Though a lot can be done with Unity, and I bet you can make a comparable looking game (maybe just with some extra effort).
That said, I think 90% of the look of a game is driven from good art and good art direction. And you can make good art with practically any engine on the market (to varying levels of difficulty). Of course, the choice of engine can help, not arguing that, but I think the focus should be on your artistic skill level, or the skill level of your team, not picking a different engine cause you think your art is going to instantly look better.
This is the same for quality bloom , dof , tone maping, eye adaptation, vegetation shaders, terrain RTP 3 , alloy etc … all quality effects and shaders are only available on the asset store , this is always a matter of beeing able to have the money to buy all plugins you need.
While UE4 has them available out of the box in engine and editor for any user 
Unity could propose project templates and options quality like UE4, when you create a project you choose mobile/PC basic quality with no post effects or a PC/Console hight quality project with high quality post effects.
Ha, the colour grading wheels look exactly like the one in GIMP … I did say you could do all of that already though, just export via amplify colour, everything but TAA has been available for ages via the asset store (at various quality’s and stability may I add).
“It has GI none the less :)”, well there’s a fair difference between any games lighting technology and Brigade. The sheer impact a GI solution has on your game is unreal (no pun intended). Hippo posted a video on the other page.
Once everyone uses systems like Brigade as a realtime pathtracing solution then any differences in rendering pipelines will be none existent.
I checked out TC and Popcorn, TC particles looks a decade out of date but Popcorn looks ok although at $250.00 it’s a bit on the hefty side to say you still get a better looking solution in UE for nothing.
Y’know I could go through all the tech, show what it does. But the ultimate point is an engine rendering and lighting pipeline is made for the type of market they’re aiming at. Epic don’t seem to care too much about mobile lets face it, they are forever finding ways to not only increase graphics quality for PC / Console but also simplify ways of achieving it. Whereas Unity have to care for many more platforms…
P.S When I mentioned HDR lighting being an unfair comparison because every engine can do it, it’s because you drop a single model in with HDR lighting and you’re essentially bypassing the GI system, not really using any in-built lighting systems either. So you can’t really compare engines on that merit, the arch viz example showed the flaws in a game based lighting solution.
Well you said Unreal has the color grading stuff built in, the implication being that Unity does not when in reality it now does. But I suppose its understandable since its a new addition and still being developed so fair enough.
But ignoring that, again taking things back to the gif you posted, which part is it that you can’t do in Unity? I don’t mean whether this or that technique gives better results, like whether Unreal’s GI or chromatic aberration is better than Unity’s or stuff like that. I mean which part or pass in that gif Unity simply can’t do in any way? This is the part I’m intrigued by because I really do want to know what I’m missing, you’re obviously seeing something I’m not and it could potentially help me make my art better.
About the HDR though…uhh I think you may have misinterpreted those screenshots I posted
Those screenshots I posted are stills from a live cutscene animation with actual real-time lights and shadows, multiple moving characters, and the background is actual level geo. It’s not simply a single model with HDR lighting + background. It’s the real deal. I’ve been working on this game for several years now…
No, nothings “missing” well I could say things like DFAO but it’s impact isn’t going to change the world as we know it. In fact out of all engines I’ve ever used, they’ve never really had anything “missing” even though they might look like a baboons back side.
I was messing around with UDK nearly a decade ago now, which had pretty much what UE4 has… But there’s a distinct increase in graphical ability between the two.
On a side note, well done you.!
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love it if Unity included more of this stuff too and they’re gradually getting there (you should definitely try out the package I linked earlier). But at some point in game development you’ll have to spend money, whether it’s to buy a computer, or the asset store, or hire an artist, or 3ds Max/Maya/Zbrush (Zbrush alone is $800), or paying the Greenlight entrance fee, or even paying Epic royalties after release. At least if you want to make something remotely graphics intensive, something’s gotta give.
That being said, a lot of people underestimate what you can do with Unity vanilla…
This is from my own Greeble Kit R2 on the asset store, in the old version of the Unity PBR callibration scene. It was back in the Unity 5 beta or early 5.0, can’t remember. It’s 100% vanilla Unity (although screenshot is supersampled).
@
I agree, I think if a scene in either engine doesn’t look good its usually more because of the art direction/assets/lighting is crappy, as opposed to necessarily the engine itself (which I think is why threads like this can often end up going in circles, because it can be hard to know which).
And thanks!
Indeed you can do shiny metal like majority of PBR shaders, but on other materails types like rubber ,plastic, dielectric and other surfaces Unity standard shader at beginning was looking bad with too much specular , far from UE4 ready PBR.
I don’t know if Unity will really get here ? How long ?
UE4 is bringing more advanced tech and tools , they have also big games they make bringing new features also, Unity can’t catch the same train because they are not targetting the same people and hardware.
Do you remember the terrain survey , there is still no new terrain and tools able to stay on par with UE4 for example.What about cinematic tool , shader editor ? I baught the best on the store but it costed me money and i won’t buy RTP3 or many others because it will be too much money until i would have a game that would sell well.
I could list lot more features not out of the box in Unity that makes the difference.All this is are out of the box with UE4, while Unity users will must buy all on the store. This is a choice depending on the user side.
If i would be making some Skyrim like game on a smaller scale targetting realistic like graphics and effects i would be using UE4 without any hesitation because i know i would have zero investment and have all advanced features and tools and small things that makes the difference.
While other users trying to make skyrim would use Unity and would buy many plugins to try to achieve the same result while not paying attention to some UE4 advanced features, they could target a larger hardware range players , they would not pay any royalties if their game get some good success.
If you are not making a Skyrim game but a smaller game , mobile or 2D game than UE4 is no more relevant in many situations.
As you see the choice is really a matter of user preferences, plugins investment , project scale , hardware platforms and choices.
That actually looks quite bad, in my opinion.
@zenGarden
If somebody needs those features for free and Unity doesn’t have them then maybe they probably should switch to Unreal. You really should be using the best tool for the job anyways and if Unreal meets more of your needs it’s silly to hold yourself back, especially since both are free. Not much different from switching between 3ds Max and Maya.
oh by the way, we now have this awesome post effects from amplify creations.
You misunderstood , i am not making Skyrim , and no realistic game , today only stylized game and mobile game.
But if Unity woud have such amazing terrain and some features of UE4, i would use them and perhaps would try something different or enhance visuals of a stylized simple game.
For example a stylized game on UE4 can look gorgeous (motion blurr , eye adapatation, gorgeous particles etc … out of the box), UE4 really enhances the game visuals and has some unique features.
But UE4 is not as easy to use, Blueprints are still not optimised and not really intuitive, and i don’t want to deal with royalties and it’s income reporting today. Still Unity is better on 2D and mobile.
When you will target PC games and high realistic quality, this is when you will have a choice to make to buy Unity plugins or move ot another 3D engine for that project.
I prefer Natural Bloom 
Well you’re entitled to your opinion of course. I’ve gotten freelance gigs and job offers from that screenshot in the past though so not everyone feels the same way.
Well there’s an easy way to test that, I always use someone else’s assets that I know are good and try them in all engines… If you noticed, you’ll of never seen our artwork before… It’s not that we don’t have any, cause we have tons it’s a matter of keeping things consistant.
In Unity back in 4.6, we setup our own shaders with GGX. Changed lighting / shadows and made our own GI solution… Replaced standard post effects and this is how it came out (just a prototype but whatever), someone in the team did something with particle shaders…
Umm there was a little snag though, performance was RUBBISH! Never figured out how to get it running smoothly… So can Unity look as good as Unreal? Maybe, is it worth the effort? Hell no!.
Literally when we first downloaded Unity, stuck in some asset packs and started building scripts to test functionality this is what it looked like (all Unity stock):
Then of course I went off an a crusade to change all the tech, which turns out wasn’t as easy as I thought without access to the core…
See the impact changing tech made?
Clarification:
I wasn’t talking about geometry or texture job.
I don’t like the highlights, especially on cylindrical thing in the middle. It doesn’t look right and resembles “polished plastic”. THAT is why I said it doesn’t look good.
I agree, I think it looks like plastic, like something from a modelling kit - great modelling work though.
I’m having trouble at the moment getting my metals to look right on some models too. Even stock metal substance materials I’ve imported into Unity don’t look great, maybe I’m doing something wrong but…
IMO Unity looks “Good Enough” we are at that point in graphics today.
Most games really fail to deliver fun and value for money. Infact my favorite game to this day is SSF2 HD Remix. And thats still 2D sprites, no amount of graphics could ever replace the brilliance of that game for, certainly not ugly SF5 and mega butt ugly SF4.
