So my company is evaluating both Unity and UE4 as our next platform engine. So far people really like Unity for engineering. I need to know which is best for Artist (both 2D and 3D) as far as ease of use and built in features. Can you help me decide?
Thanks
Neither - For 2D and 3D development - that will all be done externally. Plugging in 2D/3D content into either engine isnât difficult - just have to learn the process, and âhowâ different set ups work in each engine.
Iâve read Unity is better for 2D development - but I have no hands on experience so I canât confirm that.
Generic rigging for characters in Unity is utterly simple. Humanoid isnât terrible - but guidelines have to be followed.
Legacy - not for artists.
Environment stuff - simple importing and setting.
In engine lighting and particles (lighting I havenât messed with extensively) but particle editor is very similar to any other particle editor in 3D packages.
Depending on how much the artist needs to work in each engine - depends on how much more the artist needs to know about the engine. Without knowing how much the artist has to do (in engine) a definitive answer is not available.
Regardless of UE built in blue prints - which is a replacement to code - but thats what your engineers will be doing.
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2D â Unity.
3D â Unity or Unreal.
Unreal has better out of the box settings for shaders, but is less suitable for non-photorealistic graphics and increases animation workflow (because it does not have an alternative to unityâs mecanim)
You should evaluate both.
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I agree with both above. Ultimately the art is handled externally, I would evaluate both for engineering and deployment needs. I would add that unity editor side tooling gives you a lot power and flexibility in building an powerful asset pipeline. Iâm sure ue has similar capabilities, Iâm just not very familiar with them.
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UE has persona which can do animation montages / retargeting etc. just like mecanim and yes it works fine for me (probably because Iâm using Maya with ART). Canât say I had much luck with Blender⌠So thatâs one thing to consider, itâs very âMayaâ friendly.
Unity doesnât really seem to care what you use on the DCC side, as for âgraphicsâ what makes the real difference is lightmass which can be very difficult to get good results out of and for non-static / openworld games IMO canât compete with Unity + Enlighten. Even a bit of semi-realtime GI makes all the differenceâŚ
As for shaders Unity has things like Amplify shaders which is filling the gap.
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At the time I was working with persona it was unable to handle root-motion-based locomotion, and had a a LOT of trouble retargeting animations in situation which unity handled effortlessly.
Basically, I had a models torn into half (due to differences in spine bone structure) with upper body dancing on the floor next to models legs, and attempts to retarget animation previously used in unity project onto blender skeleton failed miserably (I think I posted about it before â âunsheath swordâ turned into âslice my own throatâ animations).
So the retargeting feature was clearly inferior.
On top of that mecanim sorta allows you to swap animation controllers at runtime between any two huamnoids, while Unreal expected you to prepare animations for specific character, retargeting or not.
It is possible that Iâm overlooking something or things had improved since (I havenât worked with unreal engine for months), but experience was highly negative.
I did like that default unreal skeleton came with weapon bones and ik target bones (why unity doesnât do the same is something I donât understand), but my impression was that in Unreal animation is a property of the character OR youâre supposed map characters onto the same skeleton when animations are reused. So, it was less flexible than Unityâs mecanim.
Once again, it was quite some time ago, and I wouldnât be surprised if something changed.
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Unreal has a reputation for a better artist centric workflow. Unity has a better reputation for a programmer centric workflow. Reputations tend to lie.
In a large corporation you are going to heavily customize both to meet your needs anyway. And as pointed out, artists spend a lot of their time outside of the engine. So it really comes down to how good is your engineering team, and which one they can customize to match your workflow better.
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Sorry to giggle neg - but that is hilarious!
Thank you - made my evening!
with good Tech Artists and a good Pipeline i find the artists rarely care what the engine is. They spend most of there time in ZBrush, Maya and Photoshop anyways, and in large studios the pipeline to the engine is genrally heavily automated with tools the Tech Artists create, for that studio and project.
They few artists that really dig into the engine would be the FX, TAâs and LDâs/Env Artists.
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Depends on your needs and goals.
Unity has unparalleled support and runs on everything, and has a quicker turn around.
Unreal has lots of out of the box solutions and looks pretty in a very specific âUnrealâ way. But it is a beast for specs and had a much longer Dev time.
If you are starting out, I recommend Unity with small games with clear scope and goals.
If your team is savvy and skilled, and you want to make a big budget game, Unreal.
Short answer: try them both.
Long answer: try them both for a good while. You might find that default workflows bias you one way, but then with some customization and extensions youâll find you prefer the other. The issue here is that their differences arenât so great that they canât be overcome.