Why all 3d games made in unity allways have the same rendering feeling. One can tell if it’s a unity game even by an in game screenshot. Because I a mostly an artist and then anything beyond that, I cant actually tell what is missing from unity technical wise, but my asset allways look and feel better in other engines like Leadwerks, GameStart3d, GameCore, Unreal. So please don’t take this as a Unreal vs Unity rendering, cause this is not about Unreal and I actually dont like it better than the other. It is just that I don’t know what is lacking in the Unity rendering system from the technical perspective.
This post is a bit of a rant, but also ment for elaboration, so please do so if you will.
If you spend few months with any other engine you will notice that models in any engine look the same or at least you can easily recognise them becouse not due to one feature but rather many features that are implemented in engine. Image effects, lighting, shader quallity are usually the most important things where you can determine if model is rendered in one or other engine.
And to answer question why assets look better in other engines is usually due to GI, better posteffects or lighting. This are the things that are still better in UDK, CE or Leadwerks, probably even with Unity 4. My advice would be if you want to use engine just to render your assets, or make showcase scenes use UDK, if you want to make games use Unity.
Without an image you want to improve I can’t really help, but it is possible to change your results.
I will agree that if you are used to an engine you will eventually be able to tell if something is rendered in that engine like I do now with Unity.
Well, GI is only in the Unreal4, but lets forget about Unreal and look at the rest, which yes I would agree it’s mostly due to lighting, while I can’t tell those technical specifics about it.
I must admit that I was kinda let down with the Unity 4 DX 11 implementation at least from the video. The video itslef may be nice and good work to the guys who made it, but damn, even that DX 11 video “smelled” unity rendering especially at the outdoor scenes.
They said that in Unity 4, they are opening the rendering to low level changes. Might that mean that people (not me for sure :-), will be able to provide better rendering solutions?
And finaly, no I am not after rendering my stuff, but rather after making games and eitherway I use Unity at work, so…
A big easily recognizable thing in most Unity games is that you find a lot of people using default skin on the built in GUI.
Second is using the default mouse look controller, or any of the standard package controllers.
Third is using standard lighting (throw a couple directionals in and your done).
What this all comes down to is that you can tell when people have not sank the time into working with customization and specialization. Unity is a great and easy to use tool, as evidenced by the glut of games that are shoved out wherein devs and designers have not taken the time to completely customize their game. If you don’t want to spend the time to specialize and customize your game, you don’t have to, and you can instead focus on getting your game mechanics and play done. Sadly this is the point where most of the hoard of developers stop.
As an example, without being told (and even with being told), would you have pegged The Other Brothers as a game built in Unity? I do see that you said all 3D games, so what about Basket Dudes?
When looking into the games developed with the most popular game engines it becomes quite clear that Unity games have the most diversity in terms of graphical looks. This isn’t to say that the rendering engine in Unity is without issues, but in terms of configurability and flexibility you can do an amazing amount of things if you understand and know how to use the rendering pipeline in Unity.
At Unite this week Kuba and I presented a talk on the rendering pipeline, it can be found here: is.gd - Shortened URL
When looking at the rendering portion of game engines it’s important to consider many things, what kind of content are you running, what kind of hardware are you targeting, how ‘custom’ do you need your materials to be. Different engines offer different features and you may find that for your specific use case UDK or crytek is better. Personally I believe that Unity offers a better rendering value proposition then other engines because it is immensely reconfigurable, sure it takes work, but you will have a distinct and intentional style in your game.
Hey Koyima.
It’s not about a specific image, but rather a global understanding after fidling with unity for quite a while now as well as other engines, using same assets, lighting and post-processing capabilities provided by each respectively.
Show me the assets and the desired result and let’s see if it’s possible to replicate it in Unity.
Thanks for the links and elaboration. @democre, I wasnt refering to the whole game look so GUI is out of the question for example. regarding the 3D game you are refering to, I was talking for abit more…high end stuff (visual wise), but thanks for elaboration as well.
@koyima, I’ll do some kind of comparison with same assets on different engines tomorrow or the day after, since we both know that its very late in Greece now.
Like what for example. How can you get a solution if you don’t elaborate on the issue?
Sorry, but I didn’t get your kinda offensive point here. :-?
My point is not offensive, your hypothesis is that games in Unity “look alike” and you also mention that other engines “look better”.
I ask you to provide me with said assets and desired look to test your hypothesis.
De ginetai na milame ston aera oli tin ora.
You’re welcome.
I know you didn’t mention GUI, but you did say you can tell from screenshots that a game was made with Unity. All the default stuff adds to a common look and feel. I would proffer this as an answer to your question, that the lacking thing that you’re looking for, that which you cannot put a finger on, is not a technical lack from Unity, but more a lack of complete (or even major) customization from the majority of user developers.
Unity makes it easy for user developers to focus on the aspects of the game development that they want to, by providing either directly (standard packages) or indirectly (asset store) a plethora of assets for a user developer to use so that they don’t have to specialize in that manner. Other engines may or may not offer the same level of scaffolding, which can explain any greater variance in games from other platforms by supposing that user developers of other engines must begin to master many other areas of game development that the scaffolding does not provide.
Any how, in my previous example, can you tell that the basketball game was made with Unity just from the screenshots, if you hadn’t been told it was made with Unity?
Then it was just me I guess.
I can’t actually give the assets koyima, but as I said earlier I will do some kind of comparison between Unity and some other engines in terms of rendering for this thread and elaborate on those further if you want then.
thanks
Screenshots then?
+1
I think that its normal to recognize engine’s rendering when u’ve worked with one for years or even month.
But be assured, 95% of the customers will have no idea.
Personally, if the art and lighting is setup correctly, i wouldnt agree that other engines give better representation of the assets.
So here they are. A simple sample scene for elaboration.A screenshot for a better view and a video just for the shake of it.
For this thread, disregard the flat emmisive green helmet glass, as this is mostly done so for gameplay purposes.
The thing is that the same assets with relatively same scene setup in some other engine provides a better visual or the engine provide the possibility for better visuals that like for example emmisive glow, which i truly havent found a descent way of doing this in unity, and no bloom just doesnt cut it. Again, that was just an example. The lack of a descent motion blur is another (aka vector motion blur)
Another important thing is that while this might look good ( at least I hope so. Im not the one to judge it), the setting are prety much cranked up which from what I’ve seen till now, it won’t be playable and obviously the most important thing about a game is that one. But being an artist, I want to enchance my game design with such visuals.
