Hi, Unity forum =)
I am looking at all free engines for the best choose. I am wondering, is unity able to make game look like this,
With the free license?
If not, what about this?
Thanks, this will help in choosing the best suitable engine for the project!
Yes, all of that is possible in Unity free.
The only thing is instead of using post processing effects to make the glow of the engines more soft, you will have to put some extra effort into the textures to fake it. Also, it is important to note that in Unity Free you do not have the ability for objects to cast shadows on anything but themselves. So a spaceship would not be able to cast a shadow on a passing spaceship, but only itself. But judging from those screens, it does not look like that would matter much.
Not exactly; those horizontal lens flares on the top screenshot couldn’t be a post-processing effect; you’d have to use Unity’s Lens Flare system.
The bottom one is perfectly doable.
The limitations won’t be with Unity, but rather the skill of your team in modelling, texturing, and lighting.
And @MakerOfGames, self-shadowing in Unity Free? I did not know this… care to explain?
Edit: Oh, I see, you’re talking about render baking. Well, as long as we’re talking about shadowing tricks, you can also use Projectors to cast simulated shadows on other objects.
The effects would be LineRenderers and particle effects, both can be done with the free version of Unity.
You can’t do shadows with Unity free, baked or realtime (unless you make the baked shadows using a 3d tool and importing it as a lightmap). (You can fake it with blob shadows as DallonF mentioned.) You can however do baked ambient occlusion. Ambient occlusion is darkening on corners and intersections of objects. They are not shadows as their properties are not dependent on lights like shadows are. They should help give a good effect nevertheless.
The free version of Unity can bake shadows into lightmaps. What is missing in the free version for Beast lightmapping is Global Illumination.
By self shadowing I mean that individual objects can shade themselves according to light sources. They cannot cast shadows and will not cast a true shadow on themselves. Basic lighting is what I mean. I should have worded that better.
Looks like the shadows are the baked into an ambient occulsion map and then over-layed onto the diffuse texture. Simple and effective way of getting nice shadows in crevices without the real-time lighting overhead. All possible in Unity Basic and a decent 3D modelling package (Modo 501 for instance)
Well my free version can’t bake shadows but can bake simple ambient occlusion. Do you live in an alternate dimension or something?
Yes what you mean is shade, not shadow
Actually, the Beast lightmapping tool can bake lightmaps for Unity free, minus Global Illumination which is a Pro only feature. You can check the UNITY License Comparisons matrix.
Or you can just bake them in 3rd party app with GI and all other stuff 
Yes, you can do that in Unity.
To summarize, yes, all of that is possible in Unity Free. You are just at the mercy of the level of talent your artists have.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: It depends on your artistic talent first, and not much on the license you use.
Well - MINE can. Nah-nah 
seriously: shadows both hard and soft are supported for beast baking. Just no GI.
Try it - set the shadows to either hard or soft in the beast settings and bake your scene. It works.
Sounds like a bug, but I swear to you I can bake simple ambient occlusion in the lightmap with non Pro
You have to turn the shadows on first, then bake. It should work then.
I´m not sure if AO-Bakeing available in Unity free, but GI is not AO so it could be.
Ambient Occlusion is one approximate way to achieve a Global Illumination effect.
And yeah, ambient occlusion comes with non Pro, but with limited settings compared to the Pro version