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Unity or UDK or CryEngine or...?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Not_Sure, Dec 14, 2011.

  1. goat

    goat

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    Better would be if they enabled a forum filter for threads exceeding a certain number of posts or allow one to hide certain threads (after playing minesweeper and several others) but we are in the gossip section after all. Let them rise fall.
     
  2. Deleted User

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    I've got to admit each engine has a certain "Look" to them..
     
  3. lazygunn

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    Yes because each engine comes with a set of supplied shaders and if not the devs, te publishers are shady skinflints

    Unity can look as good as unreal 4. Fact. It can look as good as cryengine whatever, fact

    If you have the manpowerr and the skills, you can make unity whatever you want it to be

    but seriousy WHO F***ING CARES, why dont you go and make a game, just one game, use libgdx, use anything, actually make something, then make ten more things, make ten more things then start talking to experienced game developers about game development. not enough hours in a day-i-tis and such like

    None of these 'engines' have a 'make my game awesome' button, if you cant get past it assume your destined place in retail or macdonalds or something, every time you talk about your engine instead of your progress on your game youre one step closer to the chip fryer
     
  4. HeadClot88

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    Unreal Engine 4 is going to blow Unity out of the Water in terms of Level design and Aesthetics.

    As for License we will have to see. I know that there are people using UE4 right now and are sharing their experiences just not the tools.

    Here is one -

     
  5. lazygunn

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    This is the most stupid thread ive seen all week, im out
     
  6. Toasttify

    Toasttify

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    After a long drawn out thought process I have come to an answer.

    Use what you enjoy to use, and should some massive problem in the engine appear perhaps try another.
     
  7. Deleted User

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    Prove it, if you think it's just down to shaders you have a shock coming your way.

    I have the required manpower and some very talented people working for me thanks for the tip though.

    Really? They should print that on the manual!!.. But being serious for a second, I'm not sure exactly how that's helpful..

    You seem to care for whatever reason, not sure why such an emotional response is needed? Work in retail? I think a reality check is in order as you're making assumptions, I'm far from an eighteen year old start out with no financial capacity or previous career, luckily enough the company I sold is funding this project.

    I've spent 14 hours today working on it today but thanks for the concern, it's just a discussion. Nothing more or less..
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2013
  8. nipoco

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    I would really love to see the same.
    But after looking at tons of UE 4 videos (like this one) and reading different threads at the UDK forum the last couple of days, I gotta say the difference in terms of graphics is not as big as I thought. Most of the fancy stuff has Unity also to offer. At least as third-party plugins. The only thing UE 4 has that Unity does not, is a better particle system with lighting and shadowing and better physics.
    Ok and you get stuff like Speedtree and Simplygon for free.
    But the licensing of UDK is still a absolut turn-off for me. I don't want do give Epic 25% of my earnings each quarter of the year. There is also some other stuff that bugs me, like the scrapped realtime GI (you can get that in Unity for a cheap price, compared to enlighten etc.) or that you have to compile everytime you did some changes.

    And here is a comparsion between a Unity game and a UE4 driven game. I'll leave the judgement to you. My opinion is, it's more up to the artist these days. The technical gap between the engines get's smaller.


     
  9. lazygunn

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    REALLY? THAT ALL SOUNDS INCREDIBLY CONVINCING I HOPE YOU DO TERRIBLY WELL I DO HOPE YOUR PUBLISHER IS CHECKING YOURE NOT BREACHING THE NDA BY THE WAY OR YOUR TEAM MIGHT HATE YOU AFTER THAT POST, CHAMP YES IM TALKING ABOUT SHADERS AND A BUNCH OF STUFF YOU UNDERSTAND, FOURTEEEN HOURS? YOU MEAN YOU DID A TYPICAL LIGHT CRUNCH DAY, GRATS

    youre just funny, carry on talking
     
  10. Deleted User

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    Not a clue what you're talking about, but thanks for the support.
     
  11. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    The hippo sits smug and sure on his chair, illuminated by the glare of his monitor at night. Of course, it's always night, because he is a programmer that cannot the sun long endure; and it's in these night moments when he stumbles grimly upon a thread, accessing idly, as if it might illuminate his drear tranquility. And illuminate it does, for the hippo reaches for his popcorn, a sly grin crosses his face as he munches, knowing that surely it can only become more amusing.
     
  12. lazygunn

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    really? you dont know about ndas or crunch periods, what a blessed world gamedevs live in these days
     
  13. HeadClot88

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    I think that the UDK licensing agreement is well a bit archaic... So I agree with you on that part :)

    However - I do think that the work smarter not harder philosophy applies to any dev (Pro or Indie) if you have a set of tools that allow you to work smart and use your time in a fast fashion. For example - Creating a series of shaders with nodes or Programming a door to open with a visual programming tool. Things that save time and can help you get the project out the door. Unity has this in the form of 3rd Party add-ons which makes me sad because Unity could take these addons as well as their creators bring them in-house and have a kick ass game engine that tramples Epic and Crytek.

    But until that happens I will be developing my games.
     
  14. nipoco

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    I also which Unity had that unified workflow like UDK, or Cryengine, where you get all the fancy stuff out of the box.

    Don't like Unity's patchwork-engine approach either. Unfortunately, I don't see they will change that anytime soon. So you'll have to rely on those third-party add-ons until Unity get's it natively.

    And as long UDK, or Cryengine have these licenses and strict art pipelines, I don't see a valid alternative to Unity. At least for me.

    So yeah, I develop my games and care less about engine choices, as long Unity serves me good, the shortcomings aside.
     
  15. lazygunn

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    Considering the mettle, dedication, sheer amount of hours and tenacity needed to put a finished game out to the real world, if youre bitching about engines youre not cut out for this
     
  16. tatoforever

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    I'm currently using UE4.. Too bad I cannot discuss tools and features, all I can say is that it's really awesome, gazillions times better than UE3!!! :rolleyes:
     
  17. nipoco

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    You don't need to discuss the features but one question.

    Would you dismiss Unity for UE4?
     
  18. tatoforever

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    That's a hard question to answer. We have a project in the works using Unity and prototyping something new with UE4. So, short version, possibly. Longer version, not yet (at least not now). I still want to see the future of Unity. Unreal Engine is getting into the workflow and easy/fast way of creating games (aka the Unity way) which people will like and enjoy. Unity is however going the other way around, reaching areas previously not quite covered (example new graphical features). You'll probably have to wait a bit more and do the comparisons yourself. :rolleyes:
     
  19. jeffmorris1956

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  20. nipoco

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    Thanks Tato for your opinion!

    Once UDK 4 is out, I'll definitely try it myself.
     
  21. nipoco

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    That looks not like a professional game engine. More like a game kit for hobbyists, which isn't necessarily bad. But it's not the same league as UDK.
     
  22. lazygunn

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    I think the engine thing is getting (even more than it has been) like those inane feuds like canon vs nikon cameras, or using maya instead of max, and any number of internet darling arguments that just seem ridiculous under any analysis or education. Theyre diferent, but the same? A good photographer will tell you, if you ask him what brand of camera is better, that the best camera is the one that feels best in your hands, and you should think more about your photos than irrelevant comparisons between prospective tools. The graphical prowess of very well funded middleware has obviously been the call by whch people have disregarded things like unity but i'm not even seeing it like unity just needs more money and men so they can write the stuff that udk or cryengine comes packaged with, you can make things look absolutely amazing with unity, you dont even need a pile of money and phd owners, you just need talented artists, and through my own work with unity it gets constantly more apparent, the differences with the engines are how they suit your workflow, no empirical easily quantifiable equation will deliver you a winning choice, it all justy depends! But ive absolutely had enough of people talking S*** about unity's graphics flex in comparison to its competitors, its not unity's fault, its that either you, or your employees, or co-workers, need to become better artists, or in alternative yu already hopefully know that the best mileage from a middleware comes from talent and good old hard work

    These threads are always made by children, who talk like autistics who cant talk about anything but linux (i know such a person, very nice guy but i have to put him on ignore in a chat for weeks at a time because theres only so many times i can hear the same 5 irrelevant things about linux), always seems to get everyone fired up though! I dont really get it. Where's your game? Youve been talking about game engines for months, maybe you just like the word 'engine', it sounds powerful to your dweeby mind, you coulda actually achieved something awesome with libgdx in that time, or even processing or like.. rpgmaker 2000, something that actually exists, something that makes anything you say relevant, rather than comparing feature tick lists when you dont know what 'API' means, nevermind how the features have one and how youre meant to use it and wether its a big pile of crap painted lavishly with popular buzzwords

    I'd like everyone to read something like this and go and make a game with unity, since a unity download is less clicks away from here than a udk download is, for example. When they make serious career defining decisions about technology i'd assume they wouldnt be gibbering loudly on the unity gossip forum about it with a bunch of adolescent boys, youd hope they grow up and talk about their games, their visions, not advertise they have nothing to say at all, but i'll probably end up waxing lyrical yet again when i end up on this forum in a few months time yet again, on the same tpic, in the same way, and proving no better than the people i'm trying to appeal to

    Oh well

    Gonna go makes me some WoW clone with cryengine 3 now cause area lights
     
  23. Deleted User

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    I fully understand what an "NDA" and a crunch period is, the way you presented the paragraph were difficult to read in context. Apologies is English isn't your first language. P.S you need to get 8 hours rest, otherwise it can become harmful to your health.

    But instead of arguing, we could have a constructive debate about it. I have my engine chosen and can't look back, so it's not a case of what's "better" any more it's a case of get on with it.

    I am highly surprised that if you have used all three engines for a certain amount of time, you can't tell the major advantages and disadvantages of the three. Especially in terms of graphics and performance, Unity even with a lot of shader work and post processing effect's just can't compete with CryEngine as it is, right this moment. But I'm pretty sure if you had access to the source code and a large enough team you could make it better than anything out there..

    Where Unity excels like no other without extensive heavy modification is workflow and 2D / Mobile market. It's more about what you're trying to do as opposed to what engine to choose.

    I'd like to see some of your work, if you're this confident about it doesn't matter what we use then show us :). I have some pictures up on page 19 of this thread..
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2013
  24. lazygunn

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    I'm glad you changed your tone, i'll respectfully change mine. I'm a hobbyist with an unnatural amount of free time, and i tend to work around 16-18 hours a day on any project thats interesting me at a time, and i just generally dont sleep if im doing something that needs finishing pronto, so thats why i found your working hours comment a bit funny, but i do retract any disrespect implied.

    Ive used Cryengine, UDK and Unity essentially over lil epochs, ive been using these kinda engines since 1999 so i do have a knack for picking up on the important things, the impressive things and whats actually in it for me. You nailed it with Unity - workflow, but the 2D cliche i think is well past its sell by date, unity can offer some really impressive things.

    I'm not going to have a little war over who is the bestest artist (oh, a comment on your questioning my first language, your grammar made no sense, luckily english is my first language and i could understand what you were trying to say, bit of respect there) - i'm a hobbyist and i chiefly work on my own and my projects tend to be directed by a particular style that may or may not aim for any sense of realism. IT's all pet projects anyways, but since you asked, i will link, and no doubt i will be criticised and no doubt i'll completely ignore then cause rlly, RLLY, Unity can do some pretty snazzy jiggery pokery

    This isnt an art war, if your stuff looks lovely, good on you, i'm just going to display work that was done by myself, usually coded by myself and done in quite a short period of time - so could be considered an interactive concept sketch (i was told by some guy at guerilla i should be actually doing talks regarding that idea with such teams, maybe a money maker! plan is whatever middleware youre using for your next gen blockbuster, you got your room full of concept artists, now you get another room, put 6 powerful networked pcs in it with unity pro on them, throw 6 very brainy enthusiastic folk in there who like each other and essentially lock the door, offer direction and food in the form of cheese slices, microserfs style under the door

    This little gang is your concept code team and they job is to come up with crazy ideas quickly, Unity's your man there, of course, upon review good ideas get merged into the main project. Thought it might be a nice idea

    I digress, here is a video of an island terrain i used Tom's RTP shader to apply texture coverage too, i was feeling decadent so the pixel errors at smething silly like one. No lightmap, no global colourmap, one days work. The longer task was getting the ocean looking as it does, its actually a hybrid of scrawks more tech-focussed but freely available work in the wip forum and the suimono 2 beta that im elligible for. The goal was very well performing ocean that had some strong, if not realistic, artistic control. Sea lighting is influenced by atmospheric scattering supplied by the physically accurate sky model



    I dont think its an awful effort for 3-4 days work

    Little bits an bobs can be found here http://pourfoi.co.uk/ but those projects tend to be more stylised and following a bit more developed an art concept than 'make it real area lights woo'
     
  25. Deleted User

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    That's not bad at all looks pretty nice, I'm not sure if it's the recording software or the output but it seems very laggy. We started our concept in Unity because you can't you just "whip" up a concept in CryEngine, it has IMO a very obstructive slow workflow. Apologies for my grammar, I'm doing three things at once and not paying too much attention :)..

    There's a difference between people with experience of all three engines discussing pro's and cons as opposed to the generic what engine do I use? I have no experience in coding / modelling / level design / physics / no budget and all the rest but I want to improve on Skyrim or Battlefield.

    Reason why I personally switched from Unity wasn't anything to do with graphics originally, at the start our concept was a top down hack and slash. We moved to a highly detailed front view (shoulder view) concept and the engine started struggling no end, even after baking and occlusion culling / finding ways to stream ( I spent months and fair few Unity support tickets trying to get around this). There were other issues like constant Z-Buffer flicker issues (Which is highly apparent in Unreal Engine as well, Batman Arkham Origins is a good example). HDR with DFL just exacerbated the issue ten fold, especially random light flicker issues and funnily enough we never had issues with shadows? So with lack of shaders, real time GI, irradiance volume, 64-bit editor, pre-render buffers, Dynamic lighting and soft shadows (Real-time), LPV, TOD, RLR etc. which we would have to sort out pretty much doubled the development time and became an issue (that's even if I could get my hands on the source code).

    Do the issues I described happen in full title released games? Yes very much so, do I want this to happen in my game? No and that was the defining reason to use CryEngine, because none of this happened. Maybe I'm OCD about the whole thing?

    We say it's all in the hands of the artist, but you look a pre-process and post process rendered environments and all the little things add up to a huge change.

    People are doing amazing things with Unity, no-one can deny.. But ultimately what you're going to create defines what engine you're going to use in my experience. If you're a huge fan of water, then CryEngine without a doubt :).
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2013
  26. hippocoder

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    Since we're being all sensible I might as well point out that replicating a lot of the effects in one engine isn't possible in another without source level access.

    The reason for this is - yes you'll be able to reproduce a similar level of quality in a box room, but unless there's some architectural changes, certain games are too far beyond Unity's reach. For instance UE4 and CE3 offer streaming at a lower level in the engine. Unity doesn't offer this, so to get the same visuals across the 3, Unity will have to offer this. Otherwise, depending on your game style, you'll find you are limited by ram and performance.

    Yes you can slap streaming on top of Unity and do it yourself, but this will not be efficient nor quick without a source license and some substantial work involved. While it is a little tricky in some engines (it's a tricky subject), it is implemented and used.

    So if you're pushing a lot of data through Unity, it may be that Unity can't do it. In any case I hold a current license for UE4 and cannot disclose any information about that, but what I can say is that streaming is a fairly essential feature for larger games, regardless of how much ram you have. This is Unity's main weakness that Cry and UE do not have.

    I've mentioned streaming a while now, and it's only when you actually go to make games of any significant detail that you encounter this problem. You'll find 4 gb ram not really enough, and enough people have 4gb or significantly less on some platforms - even new ones - as a budget. Even using 1.5 gb of ram is a large problem for 32 bit windows.

    To add to this, you cannot efficiently stream navmesh, occlusion data, lightmaps without considerable work involved. You will need to change something in your game's design to work with these limitations. Every engine has limitations, but too many features of Unity aren't designed for streaming.

    Unity really is very good at small and medium world sized games, or large world not very populated. It's workflows are so good, that it's preferable to use Unity for smaller or medium sized projects. AAA do check out Unity quite often, but I suspect Unity has a little way to go yet. Given that there isn't any understanding or call for this from the vast majority of Unity customers, it is little surprise that it isn't the main focal point. It's a also a massive undertaking (much more so with multiple platforms) so I would expect these features in Unity 5.x.

    For the majority of games, you'll be great with any of the 3, but you'll need to properly examine the strengths and weaknesses of each for an open world game. Hint: this isn't about post fx or shaders.
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2013
  27. Deleted User

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    Very much what I've been talking about, in conclusion I'd say every engine has what the other one needs. Although it seems Epic have been taking note of Unity as of late (I know you can't release any details) but from the features list. It shows Epic are very much moving in the right direction.

    Also on a side note, if you are working on a large project which spans three or four years. You really have to take into account (or predict) how it will stack up to your competition in X amount of years. What's decent now may look like a throwback at the end of development.
     
  28. tatoforever

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    UE4 have gazillions improvements over UE3. One of those areas is the workflow department. And to be honest that's the only thing that care to us, workflow and Iteration. After all that's what makes Unity so popular right? But yeah, UE4 is really really awesome and it's completely different from it's predecessors (in all good sense). :rolleyes:

    [EDIT] Forgot to say:
    The next thing Unity should do is to open their APIs to C++ programmers. This will solve gazillions frustrations (specially for those having GC issues) and will let others guys integrate their own streaming system (yeah we also need streaming very badly). Also Unity do really need to become fully multi-threaded.
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2013
  29. Deleted User

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    It does sound very interesting, I've submitted a request for feedback from Epic. If it cost's more than 250K (USD) or a royalty scheme isn't available yet then it's out of the question.

    How did you and HippoCoder get early access to UE4 if you don't mind me asking? If you're not allowed to tell that's fine.
     
  30. tatoforever

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    I cannot discuss any of that (neither Hippo btw). We are under heavy NDA. :rolleyes:
     
  31. hippocoder

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    We can't discuss it :) but you probably would get started by having a next gen console NDA.
     
  32. Deleted User

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    Aha thanks guys, anything that can speed up development at this early stage is a benefit so I'll see what they say.

    One thing Tato, what's with the rolleyes smiley? :p :rolleyes:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2013
  33. GIJoeMyGoodness

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    This last page or two has been a great discussion. Thank you all for sharing your input. Until I can get my hands on something like UE4 in the future, the workflow system and affordability in Unity makes it the best starting point for me right now. I like knowing what to expect though, so thank you all.
     
  34. tatoforever

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    Dunno why I like it. Probably cause it's by far the best smiley available in this forum . ^^
     
  35. Deleted User

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    Yes and I will note this as another negative of CryEngine, the import pipeline.. You need flash CS5 or 6 for UI / HUD, you can't use Flash CC due to lack of AS2. So I bought it for three engineers at a not so nice price of $2300.00 there abouts, then you really need 3DSmax. So some may say why not use CryBlend? Well trying to get around some other import issues like degenerative faces for masses of meshes you really could do with Max for quick work flow. So three licences of Max for our artists (even though I'm experienced in lightwave and that's where I wanted to go) that's around 12 - 15K USD.

    It's not cheap at all, I suppose it's good to learn multiple tools that are used in larger companies. UDK is simple to get things imported..

    On top of that there's time, you have to import meshes with no materials attached then re-assign them. Not an issue when there's not many asset's, when there's a ton of them then it get's time consuming. Importing characters and rigging can be very tricky and time consuming, but there is something you can do in CryEngine which is very cool.. Add limbs as attachment's which you can swap out with different materials at will, so let's say you have different armour / cloth materials you can swap them out very simply.

    Whilst I don't need people taking me by the hand, some more intuitive examples and tutorials would be nice. Luckily enough the CryDev guys are doing a fantastic job of it so far.

    So adding all this up, I do miss Unity in a lot of respects.. It's just simple and elegant in terms of workflow.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2013
  36. Vaupell

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    Unity Pros..

    $0 to start selling a game, until you reach $100000 then you just buy the PRo or go licensed as you go.
    However by 100k I'm sure most people allready have moved up to pro edition.
     
  37. Woodlauncher

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    The $0 is a pro, compared to the $100 for UDK but the second one is not always a positive.

    If you make $100,000 with UDK you pay 30% of $50,000, so $15,000. If you need pro and licenses to Ios and Android with Unity you pay $4500 per seat, so if you are 3 people working on a game you're up to almost the same amount as UDK, and Epic says to contact them about a different license at this point.

    So it's not quite as black and white.
     
  38. lazygunn

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    Thankyou! Very glad the mood changed ahaha, i should add its basically the recording software, the ocean is gpu based and runs very very quickly (300fps unfettered by any other heavy effect), the terrain shader is very flexible and powerful which is another little bonus to Unity, the enormous 3rd party support - although this support sadly can vary in quality and usefulness a great deal

    I would not begin to say Unity can match cryengine and ue4 in some technical ways (or many?) but my point was simply that Unity's often made the underdog because of bad art, with absolute ignorance to the fact that if your art team is talented, Unity can very quickly change ones perspective, and that's often popped up when I was doing things that i cant show cause i didnt save it, but i admired it for a little while. The island terrain is just the start of a one man initiative of mine to prove that point!

    I'm glad the thread is becoming very informative for one - dirty secret - if i had a pie of money and an amazing team, i'd probably plump for cryengine too as my main technology! But there would still be quite a few Unity licenses bought, for reasons discussed above, it would be a pretty vital concepting/prototyping tool that could well have a dedicated team of staff somewhat paid to do whatever the hell they want (kept in the context of the project). Unfortunately i'm a one man show - and Unity just.. i see no alternative in these circumstances

    p.s! The water in cryengine is freaking beautiful, my own little water ambitions are to provide a little addon to suimono that brings some affordable awesome water to Unity too - im relying on a lot of help with it really but it would be pretty sweet. Tangentially - GTA 5's water was out of this world
     
  39. Deleted User

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    LazyGunn, I never meant any offence (Sorry if I came across that way) and I agree with most of what you say but we can't jump down people's throats for what is essentially as bit of a silly question, what's the best engine or this engine vs. that engine. We know there's only one way to find out, use them :).. for people like us, it's not a hobby or a job it's a passion and I'm sat here watching tutorials on my only day off. Because we live and breath it, what engine is a null question. I just give a couple of thought's on the subject then a large portion of the time I'll never hear from them again. The few that do survive the initial pain go on to generally do wonderful things, regardless of what's put in front of them.

    But yes, very much agree.. Prototype's are a strong point and I actually believe Unity is a big money maker, it's easy and fast which enables you to get games out the door quickly which enables revenue for bigger projects. We still have Unity Pro and use it for other side projects when we have the time..

    The asset store is a massive benefit within itself, I've bought thousands of asset's on top of ours and plan to use them..

    I much agree that people have blamed Unity graphically for bad artwork, which is silly. The same asset's we have look the exact same in Unity and UDK, if there is any difference I can't really tell. CryEngine re-appropriates textures from the RC pipeline, have you ever noticed the difference when importing a texture between the non converted and converted image screen? Then the shaders are fantastic, the water has little performance impact and looks amazing.

    If Unity could just add a small hand of features, mainly 64-Bit editor, streaming and a couple of additional lighting options like real time GI / lighting and shadows with a pre-render buffer, TOD and RLR plus a CryEngine style water then it would be a go to for anything I could think of from small games to AAA. I think Epic says the only people there concerned about is Unity.. It has the potential to be everything to nearly everyone.

    Unity actually seem to care about their Indie customers, not something to be taken lightly.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2013
  40. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    It is also possible for it to run 60fps on any medium quality mobile phone. Not all effects require a great engine :)
     
  41. TylerPerry

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    Why doesn't someone make it for Unity then? Everyone and there dog is after some fancy water it seems, but none are on the level of GTA 5 or Assassins Creed 4.
     
  42. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Because they're barking up the wrong tree.
     
  43. tatoforever

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    If you have the skills you can re-create CE water in Unity. There's no magic trick there, it's just a bunch of shaders with passes... :rolleyes:
    Though, could be very time consuming trying to make it as perfect as CE one. ^^
     
  44. lazygunn

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    I've been working with an ocean shader the last few weeks, the last few days have been moving my focus from research to implementation, theres a video of it earlier in this thread but i can repost. Its based on the art-based shading that really is lovely that the very nice fellow who makes suimono supplied with the v2 beta (hes ok with me reappropriating it), and on a very accurate and actually somewhat of a beast ocean implementation by scrawk - see the ocean renderer thread in wip. Generates dazzlingly realistic broiling foam as part of quite a bunch of fft calculations that make up the ocean code. I have to disagree on water being a trivial task, it is not at all a trivial task, realistic 3d waves take some very heavy mathematics based on spectrum analysis using an fast fourier transform algorithmn, its very heavy and its only really thanks to gpu computing that we can feasibly have highly realistic very well performing ocean effects. I'm very proud of what 've achieved so far with my frankensteins ocean but i hadnt really done any sort of the meat of it at all - hat goes off to chingwa and scrawk who have obviously spent a lot of time on getting their oceans working right, scrawks code for the foamy oceans really is an absolute beast

    Ive got a lot to do on that ocean still, that could take months, but i hope eventually everyone will get to use it and it'll have some great features, look beautiful and hopefully rake in suimono 2 some extra dough! as im using suimono shaders and scrawk has a very generous attitude to his contributions, i guess i'll appeal to suimono guy to distribute my remix to anyone with a suimono licence

    I think i'll probably be doing a hell of a lot of analysis of water systems like crysis' and gta 5's (i just like messing around in the water in gta 5 anyways) and hopefully its gonna be lovely, but it is a pity i find unity's water quite unsatisfying. I don't really like the gerstner wave generation at all.

    Do need to say, hippo, i am absolutely in awe of gt5's engine too haha, just peerless. Probably too specialised towards gta 5's needs to reappropriate but jeez, you know where all that money went. Really excited about a rerun through the upcoming pc version, lastgen consoles looked spookily 'next gen' running that thing, feels like a dialed up pc version will explode my graphics nerd brain
     
  45. Deleted User

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    Probably easier than getting a tree into CryEngine, I've already crashed the sandbox editor twice after resetting scale in max.. Uhh!! Give me strength.

    Odd thing is there all set up the same, some work and some don't.. It's all backwards some times, the difficult stuff is easy and the easiest thing in the world like importing's a nightmare..
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 8, 2013
  46. NutellaDaddy

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    All I think is that UDK naturally looks beautiful without a ton of work. Unity looks okay ,but it takes a little bit more work to make things look AAA. I love the Unity Community and I wouldn't use a new game creation suite if it meant changing communities. :)
     
  47. hippocoder

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    If you're interested in some optimisations as used in GTA 5's water:

    1. you can't see under deep water at the same time as being over deep water. It's rendered Opaque and very fast. Only the transition to shallow is transparent.

    2. For foam, this is done with vertex colour, much like terrain shaders, where you can specify a different texture for each vertex colour. This enables them to have foam placement calculated per vertex rather than per pixel - it is very fast done like this. Very versatile too for example a chopper hovering over an area of water.

    3. The waveform appears to be standard perlin with perhaps a texture lookup for the choppy waves. It can easily be calculated outside of the shader.

    4. The reflection is a bog standard re-use of the render texture for the scene from what I can see.

    5. The tessellation is distance based - they just move around a higher res mesh near the camera.

    Don't get me wrong, its really nice, but its fast because its well designed, limited in the right places and well-tweaked. It's not a heavy shader or technique, its just designed for high performance yet looks good. It's a proper bit of decent engineering. People who make stuff in unity make the most abysmally wasteful shaders and rendering techniques which would bring any xbox or ps3 to it's knees. They do this making it look lousy and no where near as good as last gen games. I am critical because I've done a lot of R&D in fast good looking techniques, and I think people keep searching for a magic bullet when really it's just common sense and doing less where it matters.
     
  48. TylerPerry

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    What I think is that if someone made assets like these they would sell lots, like a AAA water asset, skin shader etc. I think the issue is that people assume that people would only use them in a game of that quality when there are loads of people who would buy it for their dream game that ends up a failure and lots of people would buy it just for a scene or to play around with as well as legit people making some decent looking game.

    Why doesn't Unity fund this kind of stuff for a showcase project? Angry bots is old now, we need Crysis! (On mobile 60fps)
     
  49. Deleted User

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    Well it's something I have looked into to add more funds, there's little techniques to it that doesn't seem apparently obvious until you see it first hand like adding fog to water in segments. It darkens out the deeper part's whilst keeping it naturally opaque at the top.. But you really need tech like RLR (Real-time local reflections). Then it start's spiralling as real-time lighting and FFT based noise bump / gradient is needed for the likes of ambient waves . But yes Hippo is right, when I was trying to build my own engine at some point we used vertex displacement..

    I don't think you could do CE3 water in Unity Tato, A) Because you'd need access to source code ideally and B) I think by default water in CE3 takes up nearly 200K polygons which would wreak havoc without streaming functionality.

    Edit: Nope I was wrong 355,000 Polys..
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 8, 2013
  50. lazygunn

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    @Hippo, im really guilty of that crime, just using no optimisation, heavy non-considered shaders and my code is just trash (i do whatever makes something work as fast as possible), but ive thus far had no real commercial considerations, i guess i'd change my tune if i had to cater to lesser devices

    My comps an i7 with a gtx 580, i get very indulgent

    That spec also says something else though, which is directx 11, or in a general sense, gpu computing, and much like faster cpus have resulted in code getting increasingly less stringently optimised since, compared to other demands, theres no need, compute cores are making certain things incredibly fast and with gta 5's water as a perfect example, the design and brains that went into such good water running so well on those older consoles starts becoming less relevant when your target is now, say, a 470+ for your super swanky new game and your all singing all dancing badly optimised fft ocean is zooming along at 300 frames per second.

    Engine choice is getting less polarised, i think, because of things like these, the adoption and application of gpu computing has had some surprising results and there are issues, like the bottleneck between gpu and cpu and so on, but i think the things that separate engines are going to get less contingent on the shiny things. Which obv is good because when the next kid comes along saying ignorant things cause of how gears of war 8 looks they'll be very quickly dismissed and the convo turns back t real issues - i'll say now i lack enough specialisation in any area to know some stuff and this threads a great education, so cheers! Esp the streaming thing, i thought all that asyncadditiveloading stuff approximated streaming but how wrong i am! Seems like a bit of an odd weakness in Unity, and i'd certainly assume they had something in mind

    And yeah, the gta 5 water was lovely and i shoulda just assumed the way they did foam had some proper brains behind it, but now i'm used to scrawks foam, which is unbelievable (i literally couldnt believe my eyes when i had it first running in a more 'arty' environment), so you'd pry fft from my cold dead fingers, i just wish i understood it haha i want to put that foam in other places too