Hi Guys Thanks for all the amazing viewpoints. off to go make some tough decisions.
Kind regards Angus -- Angus Davidson ICT Project Leader - Digital Arts University of the Witwatersrand On 20 January 2015 at 10:28:43 AM, Juhani Karlsson ([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>) wrote: I`m always in awe that people who actually like ICE are not willing to take on scripting! I mean its so small step to take from there. I do feel that Unity is more tested on the mobile front so if your aim is toward more advanced games maybe UE4 is better for you. Anyway the students need to be able to learn new things after they graduate so I think that only strong foundations are needed! Its not the software that makes the game. (unless its game of life) - J On 20 January 2015 at 10:14, Nicolas Esposito <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: @Eric Truman: I considered a different approach and did a bit of RnD in order to check which was the best solution, and in the end I did the switch to Unreal... Character customization WIP<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CLuZJFCC7Q> This is a tool I'm currently working on...it took me 2 days in total ( consider 2-3 hours per day ) to figure out the logic behind the blend shape blending, visual update, lipsync retargeting and so on, which is something that in Unity I have to code, there is no script which currently do that, and of course I have to hire someone for this... I already asked, more or less a year ago, about some custom scripts for an interactive architectural project I was working on, to be able to see in into the browser and be, well, interactive...only for the scripts ( 6 in total ) the average price I was asked was 800$, plus some plugins ( including Playmaker for simple node based logic stuff ), so in the end the loss on the project was way too much. Luckily I waited and UE4 came out, and the time and effort to develp the project was well spent, not too complicated to setup and to test some of the stuff I requested a quotation in Unity most of the stuff was already there, and the node based editor was a life saver. I perfectly know that with programming knowledge all those problems in Unity could be easily solved, but I still find the workflow very tedious in Unity...and I got easily bored with programming stuff, so in part its my fault, in part the ICE-like setup of blueprints made things easier for me. Currently in UE4 there are still some dumb things which they're still broken/bugged, but at least I'm able to start and end a project without too many issues or desperately ask for help ;) 2015-01-20 4:29 GMT+01:00 Siew Yi Liang <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: Hi Angus: Just came off a Unity project for my last job (http://neveralonegame.com/). My advice is exactly the opposite; if you value your time as an artist, don't even bother with Unity. It's nowhere near the level it needs to be to even think about competing with UE4/CE3, let alone other game engines. I normally don't like to write negative things, but because I feel so strongly against how Unity is designed (and how they responded to our support requests for stuff that was clearly broken), here's my breakdown of why I disliked working with it. Shaders: Even U5's new PBR shaders are a nightmare to work with. No node-based shader editor (other than Shaderforge, thank god for that) makes it very difficult for non-technically inclined artists to work up cool shaders. And I was working with U4, which was terrible in itself in terms of OOTB offerings for lighting. And as for the "one-click multi-platform deployment" stuff, yea...the last 3 months of Never Alone were our main engineer and a few of us frantically trying to figure out why our shaders were all compiling pink on PS4/fine on PC/geometry not rendering on XB1/other mad bugs, and Unity pretty much refusing to help fix their own bugs. At least with UE4 we'd have been able to fix the problems, whether ours or the engine's. Mechanim: The entire animation system is a nightmare to me. The retargeting system really pissed me off as an animator, and as a rigger, I wouldn't ever want to work with it again. Essentially whatever rig you provide Unity will always be re-targeted to a internal rig that is pre-defined and unchangeable...and it provides 2 spine bones for deformation, along with also requiring you to setup RoMs for every single joint...for every single character that you make. The only benefit to this? Animation re-targeting. Which no other sensible re-targeting system (afaik) does in this manner. The alternative? None, other than using the legacy animation system which is unsupported and does not have IK solvers. I should also point out that it was in response to Unity's nonsense with Mechanim that I ended up writing a custom viewer for Maya just so our animators (and I) could look at our own animations and critique them objectively without worrying about if Unity was actually doing some weird stuff with the Avatar system that was causing them to look different in-engine. Shuriken (particle system): Let me put it this way, having worked with UE4 and Unity (and a few other particle systems besides), there's no contest. Shuriken is in serious need of an overhaul; it's way too basic and buggy (esp. with animated textures and mesh particles), and 99% of the time effects I want I end up using a combination of scripting/shaderforge to get what I want, rather than struggling with the limitations of Shuriken. Pipeline: Unity's YML files (way it stores metadata) is an absolute nightmare. Apart from the annoying way it generates metadata files (and regenerates GUIDs for every asset comes in) the way it works (by randomly writing metadata everywhere within the same YML file) pretty much ensures that if you have more than 2 people working on the same level at the same time, you're going to end up with merge conflicts all the time unless you have very, VERY well-trained artists/designers in terms of SVN lock/whatever VCS you choose to work with. We ended up with a gDoc that had people manually update what section of which level they were working on based on nothing more than an honour system, because people didn't know how to use SVN lock, and you can imagine how that went :) As for animators, because blend state trees also use the same YML file storage format (and the same dumb ways of using GUID/UUIDs to refer to animation clips instead of filenames) also ensures that only ONE person can work on ONE file at a time, and must ensure that their file is checked in along with the metadata file that accompanies it, or Unity will start regenerating it on everyone's machines automatically, and then when they check those files in, enjoy resolving the resulting mess of conflicts! I'm not here to plug UE4 really (I personally am a huge fan of CE3 cause I'm a graphics whore :P), but I will say that if you think it's easier to 'learn' Unity compared to UE4...perhaps the UI? But I would suggest that running into technical roadblocks that actively inhibit producing quality content is far more damaging than getting over a higher learning curve. Hope that helps, (and it doesn't sound like I'm bashing Unity too much)! :P Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 1/19/2015 7:58 PM, Eric Turman wrote: @Nicolas Esposito "....In the end you could end up spending A LOT of money just to have some basica stuff which you could code ( if you have the knowledge... ) For me Unity is a good engine for a team project, not for a personal one." I think that you might benefit from considering thinking from a different point of view: Purchasing the right asset from the asset store can save a lot more money in the long run when you stop to consider how much time it would take you to create that from scratch (even if you are a competent coder.) When Considering assets from the asset store, the real questions are: * Could I script/learn-to-script this in less time than I would have to pay myself at $n/hour * Does the asset give enough capability and flexibility out of the box, and, if possible, what could it take to extend its capabilities * Is this something that I would rather invest in my time to become proficient at Unity allows an individual or very small team to accomplish a wide variety of projects on a wide variety of platforms that could otherwise be out of their reach. There are even node based setups in the asset store for programming. As for examples in Unity, there are many as well. Cheers, -=Eric -- -=T=- -- -- Juhani Karlsson 3D Artist/TD Talvi Digital Oy Pursimiehenkatu 29-31 b 2krs. 00150 Helsinki +358 443443088 [email protected] www.vimeo.com/talvi<http://www.vimeo.com/talvi> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="width:100%;"> <tr> <td align="left" style="text-align:justify;"><font face="arial,sans-serif" size="1" color="#999999"><span style="font-size:11px;">This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary. </span></font></td> </tr> </table>
