Unity or Unreal Engine? Which one to choose? — It’s been a matter of debate among designers, digital artists and game developers for recent many years. Beginners and even experienced game developers are often found struggling to choose which one of these programs will best fit their needs while creating the games of their dreams.
What are they actually?
Unity (released in 2005 by at Apple Inc’s WDC) and Unreal Engine (introduced in 1998 by Tim Sweeney- founder & CEO of Epic Games) are two major game engines. A game engine, also known as game architecture or “game frame,” is a significant component in game development. It combines different game elements such as sound, graphics, 3D and AI into the framework of the game in making. It provides a software development environment that helps designers and developers to build their video games. Both engines allow developing games for PC, consoles as Xbox, Wii, PS4 along with mobile games easily. It allows you to develop games for Android and iOS as well as Windows, Mac, Linux and any other systems.
Which factors make the difference between the two?
Though they both are Game Engines, their application is for specific purposes. Apart from these common facilities mentioned above, both the game engines have some unique features that make them different and help in choosing the right game for the right person as per the requirement. Here we have tried to jot down those features that will help you in finding the right one for your particular field of interest in the game design & development sector.
- Usage of Device: Unity is originally designed to run on devices like consoles and phones. It enables you to create complex projects for low-end devices and does not require a powerful PC setup. Unreal, on the other hand, has been created for high-end devices.
- Visual Effects: Both the engines are able to produce high-quality VFX. But Unreal engine performs slightly better than Unity, as experts say. With excellent photorealistic visualization, the Unreal engine easily plunges gamers into another world of imagination and that’s why developers prefer this more often for high definition game making.
- Team size: Statistically, developers mostly use Unity than the Unreal engine. Unity is a great choice for one-man team or smaller group developers where unreal requires a comparatively larger number of specialist people who are engaged in different parts of the whole project.
- Pricing: As Unity directly doesn’t cost amount, many indie or independent developers may
choose that over a royalty-based plan because of the unpredictability in the profits of the indie game (although the upgraded version costs $75 per month). However, there are a few other developers who prefer the 5% royalty in exchange for Unreal Engine’s extra ordinary features and performance.
Those searching for a career in Gaming can create games and run them on these engines, create realistic – looking environments to stage them inside the games, define custom inputs and movements to control characters, learn to script logic for games to define gameplay without the knowledge of coding and builds an entire demo game from scratch using these Engines.
Having the native C# language and a massive community of other designers and developers, Unity is a great platform, especially for indie designers that want to start creating without ado. On another end, Unreal Engine is all about the fine-tuned graphics and lightning-fast render speeds which make it perfect for enterprise-level game developers or indie developers who want that extra-fine quality on their games.
Arena Animation has Game Design & Development courses in Unity & Unreal
The Unity program comprises of :
- Unity Game Engine
- Game Design Essentials
- Creating Game Environments using the Unity asset store
- Implementing & Testing Player & Non- Player Characters
- Game Production processes
- Prototyping
- Designing In-game characters
- Adding HUD & scripting systems for scoring points, victory & defeat
- Game Audio & Visual effects
- Game Optimisation
- Unity VR Gaming
- Game Mechanics
- Game Level Design
- Game Ux & UI Design
Whereas the Unity program comprises of :
- Introduction to Unreal Engine
- Game Development – Level editor
- Game Development – Actors
- Game Development – Blueprints
- Game Development – Players and Input
- Game Development – Collisions
- Game Development – User Interfaces
- Game Development – Working with Audio
- Game Development – Packaging & Exporting
- Demo Game
The following job profiles are available after doing these courses :
- Game Designer
- Mobile Game Designer
- Game UI Designer
- Game UI Artist
- Game UX Designer
- Game Artist
- Game Concept Designer
- Game Concept Artist
- Game Animator
- Mobile Game Developer
- AR Game Developer
So, do your research and then do your course in Game Design & Development – whether you choose Unity or Unreal Game Engine or both.