Which requires less coding- Unity or Unreal Engine?

Hi all,

first of all- my intention is not to start one of those "which is the better software" topics.

I was recently tasked by my company to look into several gaming engines of which so far I have chosen Unity and Unreal Engine. We will be using one of these two for our Arch Viz work in addition to VRay.

I read several topics here and there and checked what has been done so far with both and was very impressed. My concern is not which has more friendly UI or which one is more expensive (the company will be paying for it anyway) but which one requires less coding to achieve a fairly realistic interior and exterior videos with quality comparable to the Xoio's Berlin Flat and the Swedish Apartment (both made with UE4).

I realize coding will be absolutely necessary, I just need to find out which one of these two will achieve the goal with less coding. I won't have enough time to start learning both apps and want to just invest the little time into one of them.

Thank you very much for any help.

Both are free. However, Unity still has a Pro requirement if you make more than 100k a year using Unity. UE4 is free no matter what for architecture.

Unity will require a bit more hard coding, either in javascript or C#. UE4 is more of a node based scripting using blueprint or matinee.

If quality is the end goal, UE4 is the way to go. Just don't expect small deliverable packages or web/moblie apps using the a-typical highly unoptimized UE4 "magic" process. However, it's not just about the coding. It's about the asset prep and understand of what exactly is going on that most people fail to realize. You can't just shoehorn in your wildly terri-bad Revit geometry and expect UE4 to spit out anything other than a pile of garbage.

Both have really good asset stores that you might be able to purchase pre-made scripts to help in your process. Both have great online communities to help you.

To achieve the result you think you want, you'll need to invest proper time into it. This isn't something you pick up over a few minutes during lunch.

Blueprint is pretty powerful and doesn't seem so hard to learn. There are many tutorials online about it! If it's possible to make a game 100% from blueprint, I don't see why you couldn't easily make an arch viz project with it. What do you have to do? simple stuff like day/night cycles? opening/closing doors, changing furniture, etc... or more complex stuff?

which one requires less coding to achieve a fairly realistic interior and exterior videos with quality comparable to the Xoio's Berlin Flat and the Swedish Apartment (both made with UE4).

None of those use any coding, and no coding is required to achieve visual results. Coding has nothing to do with that.

I realize coding will be absolutely necessary

No, it won't. Coding is required if you require interaction from these scenes. In that, and that case only.

With that in mind, Unreal4 hands down. Not only has it recently picked heavy focus on visualization, the actual programming option for "non-coders" (that's not really correct though), Blueprints is visual nodal scripting, which, is always far easier than even easiest C# scripting.

But visual scripting doesn't mean it's exactly comprehensible and usable on regular basis by non-coder either. It's still scripting nonetheless with same logic and rules, just different fashion to operate with.

But when then, there is zero reason not to go with Unreal in any decision. Unreal right now, is bomb. It's free, the team is uber dedicated, the plugins option is amazing (with nVidia gameworks making slow integration, which, will benefit archviz as well).

Thanks for the replies, guys.

It's good that I asked since I kept thinking that Unity would be easier

I wouldn't even think that learning either of them is a walk in the park- if anything it would be like learning 3DS Max from scratch. For that reason I needed to know which one is more suitable for me. I have very little knowledge in coding but am willing to learn just as much as a project requires.

Proper asset preparation is actually much more preferable thing to learn than coding. I also realize getting into UE4/ Unity will take 3-6-12 months easily and don't mind the time scale.

Ultimately my goal will be to create navigable scenes (interior/ exterior) for our ArchViz projects. In other words- not just videos but also interactive

projects where the client will be able to navigate in the scene and interact with various objects in it. I have been given 6 months by my company to present a fairly simple but also fairly photo realistic project of a retailer superstore. My co-worker currently uses Unity for similar projects but so far we haven't produced anything amazing in terms of quality (and to be honest the clients haven't requested photo realistic results anyway).

My thinking is that with the new GPUs popping every year (NVidia will produce some Titan X cards with 24GB RAM when the base model comes with 12GB) and with the speed of software development in game engines it will be a shame not to explore that opportunity.

BTW, I read the main thread on CGArchitect about Unity/UE4 with your comments there, guys. Very helpful stuff.

Thank you for the help, I think I will take the UE4 route.

Cheers and have a good weekend.

P.S. If I am not wrong Octane renderer has developed a plug-in for UE4. I might have to update my old version to the new one.

(NVidia will produce some Titan X cards with 24GB RAM when the base model comes with 12GB)

That was a joke from Overclockers.co.uk . Of course there will be no 24GB ram version, not any soon, and not with Titan-X model.

The next generation ? Could it be, would be nice, the possibility is already there with new memory modules.

Anyway, the asset preparation is to not hard to learn at all, you will learn it in 2 days. But it's labour intensive process so it will require different approach and mindset to create commercial works in it.

All that is easier anyway than scripting. I knew how to code "ok-ish" in school, but after 4 years of creating 3D scenes and doing stuff in Photoshop neither of which is requires rocket-science mental proves I feel far too dumb to be able to script if my life depended on it.

But the archviz kind of scripting (change red sofa to blue sofa), yes, that' easy enough for grandma to learn. But not scripting in its entirety, 6 months there wouldn't let you scratch the surface.

That Octane thingy is kind of interesting, but it's supposed to come with 3rd iteration, I don't think it's available at the moment.

Edited: I actually found the 24GB BFG GeForce Titan XXX OC2 24576MB listed on the OCUK website for 1666.00 GBP. It is expected to arrive on the 01/04/15.

Edited: I actually found the 24GB BFG GeForce Titan XXX OC2 24576MB listed on the OCUK website for 1666.00 GBP. It is expected to arrive on the 01/04/15.

Titan BFG XXX OC2 with this description:

4k, 5k, 8k or even 12k gaming is possible on this powerhouse, though we do advice a minimum of two in SLI for above 4k gaming.

... I'll just leave this here and wish you luck with scripting :- )

Hehe, I fell for it like a sucker

Sorry about that and thanks for clarifying, Juraj.

Now I wish such card would be made. 1700 pounds would be pretty ok price given circumstances.

It's also going to be lots of fun when those 10 "lucky" buyers get announced on 1st April.

I installed the gameswork VXGI and remade a evermotion scene. It's hard when it comes to get reflections and refractions...that's a bummer. Shadow draw distance is a problem too even with tweaked ini. We'll see where it goes but yeah... lightmass...meh. lol

So far I have the geo imported and temporary materials. Trying to have reflections. Tweaking the GI so it doesn't look fake. Not easy stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag9Yp6niXYk

Just tested VXGI with a large model (2.7million verts), and 200+ materials in one asset, and detailed collision (complex as simple sollution).

Fps is not to bad considered no LOD´s/culling at all, straight from import, and only ticked VXGI on the materials.

are you able to get nice reflections/refractions?

are you able to get nice reflections/refractions?

I´ve not had time to test that yet, hopefully next VXGI branch will improve on reflections/refractions and if lucky give us 2 GI bounces.

Was surprised it worked with a large outdoor scene like this, with hundreds of large buildings/streets.

You guys are fast, I think last week I asked my brother to compile the VXGI build and it didn't work for him :- ).

Well it looks strange indeed (even given current single bounce limitation). Much better than LPV but still...probably won't be easy to tweak.

If use DFGI from 4.8 branch the fps more then doubles at epic settings compared to VXGI, so for outdoor it seems faster, not tested with landscape/trees yet though.

Looks better then LPV too.

Some more opinions on the topic from I thread I posted about a month or so ago. Especially the discussion on if you want to wide release your project on either mobile or web or if you are targeting more of a "sales center" or single point release.

Though the thread hilariously derails is it so often does on forums: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150008

@Juraj.

Tell your brother there's a guy that merged ue 4.7.3 with VXGI from Nvidia. Here's his git hub and explanation. Post 824 in this thread : https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?53735-NVIDIA-GameWorks-Integration/page21

This is the version I'm working with. I think he plans to keep it up-to-date!