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