Unity VS Unreal Engine in 2021 | What is the best Game Engine?

welcome back everybody so you want  to know what is the best game engine   unity or unreal well i can tell you i've done  a lot of research over the years and there's   only one thing that you need to know does  unreal have their own brand of playing cards   well after a quick five-second google search i can  tell you with 100% certainty that no they don't so   i think that about wraps it up i hope you  enjoyed my ted talk and you're welcome but in all seriousness both of these game  engines are incredible pieces of software and   there are dozens of game engines out there but  i'm just going to be talking about the big two   unity and unreal engine and in order to simplify  it a little bit i've gone ahead and broken it up   into these sections here so we're gonna go through  these one at a time talk about the pros and cons   unity versus unreal and at the end we'll have my  final thoughts on which engine i think you should   use so let's go ahead and talk about the first  topic graphics are a core part of any game and   a game engine that limits you graphically  is really going to limit your potential   however both are capable of driving amazing  graphical fidelity for your games and in 99 of   cases it's not going to matter which engine you  choose for your graphics out of the box unreal   has always had an edge on unity unreal also has  higher potential for photorealistic graphics than   unity does now that's not to say you can't get  photorealistic graphics in unity but you can   drive more with unreal in my honest opinion the  difference between them in 2021 is negligible   unity has been slowly closing the gap with unreal  on graphic fidelity and with a little bit of elbow   grease you can get something that is very very  close to the same visual fidelity as unreal   so much so you probably wouldn't be able to tell  the difference unreal does have a higher technical   potential for graphics but that level of graphic  fidelity is hardly ever seen in games made by   hobbyists or independent developers unity also has  a lot of things that help to increase the graphic   fidelity of your game like the post-processing  stack assets such as beautify which i'll go ahead   and link below unreal went ahead and bought quixel  because of that they got the mega scans library   which is this library of photorealistic materials  they all look absolutely gorgeous and they are   available for free another thing that we can look  at is past games made with these game engines   and the visual fidelity that other people other  developers were able to get out of them you know   when we look at unreal we're talking about gears  of war bioshock borderlands mass effect fortnite   rocket league all of these games have really good  graphical fidelity some may be stylized some might   be more photorealistic but they all look beautiful  but let's look at the other side now unity you've   got games like escape from tarkov inside the  forest hollow knight beat saber hearthstone   all of these games look absolutely stunning they  don't look like what you would consider a typical   unity game or a typical unreal game these games  all utilized a bunch of different things like   post-processing and custom shaders and materials  in order to get the look that they wanted the main   thing that i want to get across to you guys is  the difference in graphics between these engines   is not that important because the amount that you  can squeeze out of both of them is tremendous and   in order for it to even matter to you you would  probably have to be working at a aaa studio trying   to squeeze as much visual fidelity as you can out  of a game engine the only other instance where i   could see this mattering is if you are working in  art or cinema you're not actually building a game   but you're building maybe more of an experience a  short form experience where you can spend a lot of   time and focus a lot of your efforts on pushing  that graphical fidelity as much as you can then   in that case maybe you would want to just go with  unreal instead of unity because it's going to make   it a little bit easier for you to squeeze out that  extra bit of photorealism and really make your   short pop for more direct graphical comparisons  you can go over to sykoo's channel i'll post a   link down below and he does some direct graphical  comparisons between the unity game engine and the   unreal game engine just to give you an idea of  the different looks that you can get with them   at the end of the day when we're talking about  unity versus unreal and we have to pick a winner   then absolutely i give graphics to unreal but  again i want you to remember that graphics   should not really matter to you as an independent  developer or a small group of people that leads us   into our second topic the learning curve so the  first thing that i want to look at when talking   about the learning curve is these interfaces  immediately you can see that this unity interface   is much more scaled back minimal not very  intimidating and they wanted to make it easier for   somebody who is just starting out to jump in and  not feel overwhelmed unreal on the other hand has   many many more options available to you from the  start the interface is much harder to understand   especially if you don't have experience with 3d  programs even me as a professional unity developer   who had been working with 3d programs like maya  and 3ds max for years it was very hard for me to   understand the interface when i first jumped over  into unreal with unity they really made it easy   for users to just start experimenting with things  really working on the user experience and nailing   that down now code is the next topic that we're  going to talk about but we can also just talk   about this from a learning curve perspective  because the engines are different unity uses   c# and unreal uses c++ i wholeheartedly believe  that c# is much easier to understand and digest   than c++ especially for people without programming  experience then we can talk about documentation a   big part of learning any engine is documentation  api documentation online resources and i do want   to say that there are two different things with  documentation there is quality and then there is   quantity and when we're talking about quantity  unity has a whole lot more stuff out there   they released their engine for free very early on  and so many many developers switched over to unity   and they started using that learning resources  came from that a lot of community stuff came from   that they do have a lot of really good quality  learning resources their online documentation   is very good it gives you code samples with c# and  really helps you understand what a function call   or property is actually doing unreal on the other  hand as far as their engine documentation goes   they have good documentation but especially the  coding stuff is a little bit lackluster in my   opinion it's not as flushed out there's not as  much information there and it's a lot harder   for people that are not actually programmers to  get in and learn how to program with the engine   unreal kind of assumes that you're a proficient  programmer already and that you'll understand what   they're talking about when they throw a bunch of  programming jargon at you another awesome thing to   do when you're learning one of these game engines  is to use a demo project this gives you something   to work with that is not just a blank slate you  can start tweaking things messing around with   things clicking different buttons experimenting  seeing what does what and really beginning to   understand and digest the engines this way i feel  that both engines demos are done really well i do   feel that unitys is slightly better and that it's  a lot easier to understand what's going on and   pick it apart but they both have really good demos  another thing to note is that unity just gives you   the tools and no other direction really i would  consider it a sandbox engine and that it's just   a blank slate for the most part and you create  whatever it is you want to create and this does   make it hard to learn the best way to do something  in unity unreal on the other hand is much more   focused on making a certain kind of game if you're  trying to make a first person or third person   shooter then unreal is the engine for you like  that is what that engine was built for all of the   demos have to do with that kind of gameplay and  they have already set up a bunch of stuff for you   in the right way so you know that it's going to be  good this is a bit of a double-edged sword however   because if you're trying to make an unconventional  game let's say something like subnautica   then it's going to be a lot harder for you to  do that in the unreal game engine you're going   to be fighting the game engine a lot of the way  there's going to be a lot of pain points that you   wouldn't otherwise have if you went with unity  unreal does a much better job of teaching you   how to structure game mechanics and features so  for this one i think because of the focus on user   experience the fact that it's not intimidating  and the documentation is just slightly better   i have to give this one to unity now we can move  on to the next topic my personal favorite coding   so the first thing that i want to say on coding is  that a lot of people find this very intimidating   they find it impossible they just think that  coding is this thing that either you got it or   you don't and that's not true at all i think it's  like most things in life where if you practice if   you continue to learn you get better and before  you know it you're a programmer if you fall into   that group of people you might also be asking hey  can i make a game without knowing how to program   and if you're making a game by yourself the answer  is no you have to know how to program in order to   make a game and i want to be very clear about what  i'm talking about here i do not mean the syntax of   a coding language i am talking about code logic  game logic but visual scripting there's all these   tools out there that make it so you don't have to  program yes that's true and you can make a game   with those without touching a line of code even  with those visual scripting solutions you're still   going to need to understand the fundamentals  of programming and game logic in order to make   a game really visual scripting is just pictures  replacing words these boxes are replacing code so   we established earlier unity equals c# and unreal  equals c++ and in my opinion c# is much easier to   learn much easier to jump into than c ++ there's a  lot of things like memory allocation header files   pointers just a lot of things that you don't have  to worry about when you're talking about c# so if   you're just jumping into this and you're trying to  learn how to code i highly suggest using c sharp   and unity i think that if you jump into unreal  and you're trying to learn actually how to code   it's going to become even more overwhelming than  it already is to learn the engine and it's much   more likely to lead to you giving up or burning  out and nobody wants that okay let's take a second   to talk about the tools that these engines give  you in order to basically cheat the system and   not have to actually program everything visual  scripting solutions first off unreal blueprints   beautiful amazing been around for a long time does  a great job i remember me as a programmer learning   it was actually kind of difficult because it  was the first visual scripting solution that   i had ever used and my brain was still in this  coding mindset of i know what i want to do in code   but how do i make it do that in visual scripting  so i ended up having to learn the intricacies of   blueprints and it ended up being a great exercise  for me when it comes to blueprints a little bit   of programming knowledge will go a long way it's  going to help you understand every little piece of   blueprints and how you can use it to maximize  the performance of your game logic another   thing to note is that unreal says themselves  that you really shouldn't use blueprints for   heavier game logic stuff so if there's some really  complicated things happening you probably want to   use code for that another awesome thing about  blueprints is that it's been around for a long   time it's one of the original visual scripting  solutions and because of that it's really flushed   out professional and polished then we jump over to  the other side we've got unity solutions so unity   actually has two things that you can use they  have playmaker and they have bolt and playmaker's   been around a little bit longer it's what a lot  of people think of when they think of unity's   visual scripting tools i don't think it's as good  as blueprints but it's pretty good it gets most of   the things right bolt on the other hand is much  more viable to me i think that this is a much   more fleshed out system it just feels good to use  and when compared to blueprints it's at about the   same level and really if you want to use visual  scripting i suggest that you try out all these   solutions there's a lot more that i'm not going to  go into detail on and hopefully after a while you   get comfortable enough where you can start diving  more into the code and learning to be a better   programmer then you can do all this stuff without  having to worry about these visual scripting   tools at all another really good reason to use  visual scripting is if you have people that are   not programmers working in your code base you can  build nodes that they can use and they can then   add visual scripting to your game in order  to get a mechanic or piece of functionality   that otherwise would have to be done  by a programmer which is very useful   there are some games even like first tree and  this minecraft clone that used nothing but visual   scripting they did not touch any code they only  use visual scripting you can see that games are   being made with purely visual scripting and this  is really exciting to see just a few games that   are really popular that utilize visual scripting  they weren't made completely with visual scripting   but they do use it in some way hearthstone  hollow knight and inside and many many more use   visual scripting in order to supplement  their programming at the end of the day as   a programmer myself i would say i'm much more  drawn to c# it just makes things a lot easier   in conclusion i would say unity wins this one just  because c# is a is a much more friendly language   and with the addition of bolt as a free tool  within unity to compete with unreal's blueprints   i really think that unity is just a little bit  ahead in this category next let's talk about tools so the first thing i want to talk about with  tools is deployment one of the really cool things   about both of these engines you can deploy to a  bunch of different platforms and they make it as   easy as humanly possible to do this i'm  talking about pc mac linux playstation xbox   switch iphone android ar devices vr devices  and so much more when it comes to deployment   and platforms that you can deploy to either of  these engines is going to work just fine unity was   the biggest engine in the mobile space they were  the first to support it they continue to support   it and flush it out and the speed of adoption  whenever they have updates with the software or   updates with the hardware of these phones and  mobile devices unity is right there it wasn't   until infinity blade i think that unreal really  stepped into the mobile space but they've done   a good job of keeping up with unity and it is a  viable engine for mobile development when talking   about built-in tools meant for development i  think it's pretty universal that unreal wins here   unreal has so many built-in tools that are just  polished and clean and just feel good to use it's   almost like if you think hey i need this thing  then there's probably a tool for it in unreal   unity on the other hand that's not necessarily the  case i know for a lot of the stuff that i do and i   develop i end up needing to get third party assets  in order to get the functionality that i need   but you might be saying why is that a bad thing  i mean maybe it costs you a little bit more sure   money is a problem that's not really a problem  because these assets are really cheap compared   to what you're getting the bigger issue is that  you're now relying on third-party developers not   just relying on unity to support those features  in unreal they make sure that all of their stuff   works with all their platforms and it's just a  lot more polished that way and you don't have to   worry about a third-party developer losing funds  or running out of business or just not having the   support that you need and that asset now is just  dead in the water another thing is that unity has   been moving at such breakneck speed building  new tools for the engine that it really feels   like a lot of the newer features are hacked on or  they're halfway done almost like a beta version   even in the release versions of those not flow  very well with the rest of the engine or you have   to kind of fight it to get it to do what you want  it to do another thing to consider is 2d games or   web games unity is a really good 2d game engine  unreal has actually dropped support for their   2d games they did have this thing called their  paper engine but they stopped supporting that   and as far as i know there's not really a great  way to get a webgl build out of unreal so if you   want to make a 2d game or if you want to make web  games then unity is going to be your engine unreal   does allow you to do this thing called 2.5d which  is a 3d models and assets but it's like a 2d plane   so it kind of mimics this idea that it's a 2d game  but it's not really a 2d game it's a 3d game unity   also has what's called unity services so this  includes like analytics it includes cloud builds   continuous integration a lot of different things  that you will probably want once you get closer to   releasing your game i use them all the time in my  development and i think that they're really useful   they're actually accessed through a web portal  which i don't really enjoy using it is kind   of buggy and doesn't always work for me but the  services do help me out a lot with my professional   development an example of a tool that unity added  kind of recently that competes with unreal is the   shader graph so before you had to get this thing  called shaderforge it was an asset i use it all   the time to create custom shaders in unity it was  a node-based shader program unreal has a built-in   node-based shader program that is really really  good shader forge was also really good and   shadergraph in unity has grown a lot and it's come  a long way i still think unreals is better also   unity is working on DOTS it's really going to push  them to the next level and could be a huge selling   point when compared to unreal however there's no  way of knowing when this is actually going to be   fleshed out so i don't really want to go into too  much detail about it this leads into something   that i did want to include in this video which  is the ability to build non-game applications   with a game engine this is what i've been doing  professionally for the last six or seven years   and i've used unity for almost all of them because  unity is such a sandbox it makes it very easy   for me to build something that's not a game but is  still an interactive 3d application that works for   some businesses needs and i don't have to fight  the engine to get the kind of experience that   i'm looking for unity also lends itself to fast  iteration and prototyping you can just come up   with an idea or mechanic and just bang it out a  really simple version of that and iterate on it   it's a little bit harder to do that with unreal  because unreal is based around bigger systems that   are part of an entire game and then there's the  development cycle i do think this is one of the   most important pieces to talk about unity has a  really fast development cycle and build times you   can import assets very quickly import whatever  you want you can make a change compile start   playing and just see the change very very quickly  as opposed to unreal where whenever you compile it   takes a very long time i'm talking about four or  five times longer than unity and when you do this   over and over when you're iterating very  quickly all that time adds up even trying   to import a model or some asset is going to take  much much longer in unreal than it would in unity   so as a whole i think when talking about tools  unreal wins because of their tight integration   their polished tools inside of the engine you  don't have to look for third-party applications   to do something that you want to do with a caveat  if you're trying to make a 2d game or a web game   100% use unity there's almost no support for it  in unreal you again could get away with that 2.5d   but it's just not the same and our next topic is  one that i know most people are very interested in   pricing so great news for you both engines are  free kind of let me explain for almost every   single person that's watching this video both  these engines are going to be free for you to   use for unity it's completely free to use while  you're making less than one hundred thousand   dollars a year and if you make over a hundred  thousand dollars a year you only have to upgrade   to the next tier up which is the plus which right  now is forty dollars a month so if you're making   over 100k dollars i don't think forty dollars a  month is a whole lot to ask now if you're making   over 200k a year you end up having to go up to  the pro plan which unfortunately this price was   increased to 150 a month recently but again if  you're making over 200k a year that is not a huge   ask unreal on the other hand is very interesting  and there have been a lot of changes recently   that are starting to make me very interested  in unreal as a professional development tool   unreal is free out of the box just like unity  and originally they had five percent royalties on   every amount that you've made assuming that you  were making over three thousand dollars every   quarter that's not a lot of money and five percent  ends up being a whole lot when you talk about   also having to pay a bunch in taxes and also  having to pay marketplaces a big fee a lot   of marketplaces like steam take 30% but unreal  recently changed it so if you make less than one   million dollars gross revenue you don't have  to pay those five percent royalties which is   huge this means that unreal is now cheaper to  use than unity just hands down it's cheaper   unless you're making over a million dollars and  if you're making over a million dollars you're   probably a big business and not somebody  watching this video another amazing thing   to me i learned while doing research for this  video is that if you release a game on the epic   game store you completely waive that five  percent royalty fee you do not have to pay   that in addition if you release a game on the  epic game store you only have to pay them 12%   of what you make this is such a low number  compared to almost every other marketplace   out there it blows my mind as somebody who's been  making these 3d applications for years now the   fact that the epic game store marketplace takes  less than half of what most other marketplaces   take is insane and honestly it makes me want to  use unreal to make a game and put it out on the   epic game store you know what else is cool about  that 12% from the epic game store you can build a   game in unity and release it on the epic game  store and you still only have to pay that 12%   so great job on epic's part i think that they made  a great decision there so after looking at the   different pricing structures and all the changes  that have been made even in the last year i really   have to say that unreal wins this hands down i am  amazed by the changes that they're making and i'm   really excited to see where things go this leads  us into the last topic that i have for this video   which is community and support when you're looking  to jump into a game engine and learn it you really   want to know that there is a community backing it  a lot of resources that you can use in order to   learn it and continue to learn it and grow so  first i'm going to talk about unity unity was   the first free engine which means that there's  a lot more content out there there are a ton of   other unity developers out there because of their  free approach early on they have huge communities   because of this whether you're looking for people  to talk to you're looking for answers to questions   or if you're looking to hire somebody or work with  somebody there's a lot of really great networking   events because of this it's easier to hire for to  get certification or training but i also have to   mention that there's no source code access to the  engine so if you want to change something yourself   about the unity engine you're not really able  to do that without spending a whole lot of money   they also have great forums and unity answers is  a great place if you're stuck if you have an issue   somebody else has probably had that issue before  and they posted on unity answers it's very much   like stack overflow and there's even a lot of  stuff about unity on stack overflow as well   there's books on unity for just about everything  you can imagine there's youtube channels like mine   and online tutorials and other guides that you can  follow there's lots of courses on udemy and other   websites i'll go ahead and link a couple of those  that i think are really good now we can shift over   to unreal one of the really awesome things about  unreal is that the entire engine source code is   available on github for you right now you can  go ahead and just make unreal if you want like   you can look at the github and you can build it  yourself also they're giving away free assets all   the time it's very similar to the epic game store  where they're giving away free games all the time   they love to do this their marketplace compared  to unity's is much much smaller i do think that   a lot of the assets are more polished and  more professional on there they're also   not as necessary to be honest as unity's asset  store now if you're an unreal engine developer   and you want to make assets for the asset store  that means that your audience is going to be a lot   smaller and it's going to be a lot harder for you  to get an asset on the store than if you were a   unity developer putting assets on the unity asset  store i've put several assets on the asset store   and it's been very easy and they've gotten a lot  of attention as well i believe unreal has a much   smaller development community which means there's  not as many books not as many courses online   not as many resources that you can use  in order to get your questions answered   what i will say is that all the resources that are  out there for unreal are really high quality so   with unity you can find really high quality stuff  but you're going to have to sift through some   things probably with unreal just about everything  that's out there is very high quality and i know   some people are gonna disagree with me on  this but as far as community and support goes   i think because of the sheer amount of stuff  out there unity wins i do think that there's a   lot of low quality stuff out there might have to  sift through but you're gonna find the answer to   your question and that may not be the case  with unreal so in summary we have graphics   going to unreal the learning curve going to unity  coding going to unity the tools going to unreal   pricing going to unreal and community and support  going to unity so we have a tie basically and it's   true neither engine is better than the other for  literally everything so it really depends on your   situation what you're trying to build and what  you're looking for out of an engine there are some   things to keep in mind if you're trying to make  a 2d or a web game go with unity both of these   pieces of software are absolutely incredible  entire worlds are being built with them every   single day and you really just need to figure out  what is going to work for you hopefully this helps   you understand what you need out of an engine and  what you want to go with i do suggest that you   open up both of them and just try them out  give each one about 30 days see what resonates   with you what you really enjoy working with and  then move forward from there also check out the   other game engines there's game engines like godot  cryengine lumberyard a bunch of other game engines   that i have not touched at all could very well  be better suited to what you're trying to build   than unity or unreal to end it off i just want  to say thank you for watching this video i really   appreciate all the support that people are showing  me if you have anything that you'd like to add   please go ahead leave a comment down below i love  to hear other people's perspectives and try to   learn and grow myself as a professional so stay  warm stay healthy and i'll see you next time

Channel: Brendan Dickinson

Views: 162,002

Keywords: unity vs unreal, what is the best game engine, unity vs unreal engine, unity vs unreal engine graphics, unity vs unreal engine 4, how to make a game, unity in 2021, unreal in 2021, game engine, unity game engine, unreal engine 4, unity, unreal, game development, game engines, brendan dickinson, game dev, video games, unity3d, unity tutorial, unreal tutorial, unity beginner tutorial, unreal beginner tutorial

Id: jjUsSL4T3ig

Length: 29min 38sec (1778 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021