What is pros&cons doing a CG Animation in Unity compared to 3DMax/Maya?

News & General Discussion
1

After watching the “Butterfly Effect” CG Animation demo, I have been wondering is it practicable to use Unity doing a CG Animation movie in future.

The standard way of doing CG Animation is using 3DMax,Maya,Lightwave, if I’m not wrong.

Unity has a lot of powerful features like physics system, Shuriken Particles, rendering etc. which should give it a lot of advantages that might reduce the production time.

So what are the major pros&cons doing a CG Animation in Unity compared to current standard way of using 3DMax/Maya/Lightware? (Of course, the models are still developed from those tools)

2

There is no advantage unless you want/need interaction. Production time is isn’t reduced, it is increased.

The reason for doing things like this is to show the power of an engine, not the practicality of the application. It would be like building a real house out of Lego. Shows how awesome Lego is and an incredible feat, but not practical in any real sense.

3

Like zombiegorilla said, there is no advantage, unless it needs to be interactive.

For a CG animation, I still prefer pre-rendered movies.
As much as engines like Unity, CE evolving, they still suck compared to path/raytracing. Not to mention the advanced physics, cloth, softbodies, hair and water simulations that none of the game engines can offer.

4

The only advantage I can see is that it’s awesome. No render times. You can change things on the movie, make it interactive at any point, at no cost!

But besides that, you’ll only bring limitations to yourself, especially if you want something to air on tv.

5

Not to mention you would need a fairly powerful machine to be able to run it at a decent frame rate.