Home General Discussion

Do you like the Unreal Engine look?

JordanN
interpolator
Offline / Send Message
JordanN interpolator
Sometimes when I'm reading through other forums or news sites, I notice there's a distinct hate for any game that uses the Unreal Engine. The usual complaints I see from people is that any game made with it is "cheap", "generic", has "vaseline", "brown", or is generally "very outdated".

Now I'll admit, I'm a bit biased on this subject. I've been a UE4 subscriber since UE4 first launched. I've also been interested and following Unreal Engine updates ever since Epic first teased the Samaritan demo in 2011.

But bias aside, I never had any hate for games using Unreal. To me, a lot of the complaints stemming from the graphics aren't actually the fault of the engine. A game going for a "brown, gritty, first person shooter look" is totally because of art direction and art directors.

Ironically, what I like about UE4 is that I think it does very colorful games the best. This is very important for me since I want to make games with lots of color, but still feel graphically advance or photorealistic.

Replies

  • Sean VanGorder
    Those sort of comments were usually made towards games using Unreal 3, not 4. The point is semi valid in that the love for gloss and detail normals that seems to come with using Unreal 3 mixed with a certain look that Lightmass contributed led to SOME games looking very similar as far as lighting and materials. Where the point is not valid is that these gamers may be able to point out 5 games that use Unreal but be unaware that 20 other games they play also use it.
  • Fuiosg
    Offline / Send Message
    Fuiosg polycounter lvl 5
    who the hell's saying that?
  • WarrenM
    But bias aside, I never had any hate for games using Unreal. To me, a lot of the complaints stemming from the graphics aren't actually the fault of the engine. A game going for a "brown, gritty, first person shooter look" is totally because of art direction and art directors.
    As a heads up, the engine can display any color supported by RGB sliders. True story.
  • JordanN
    Offline / Send Message
    JordanN interpolator
    Fuiosg wrote: »
    who the hell's saying that?
    I can find you some comments if you want.

    For example, when it was announced Kingdom Hearts 3 would use UE4 instead of Square Enix in-house engine, a lot of comments sprung up saying it's going to look very generic.
  • EarthQuake
    WarrenM wrote: »
    As a heads up, the engine can display any color supported by RGB sliders. True story.

    Hahaha, sums up this thread.
  • juniez
    Offline / Send Message
    juniez polycounter lvl 10
    but the default udk configuration does give a bit of a glossy look as youre largely going to be relying on point spec because cubemaps are a pain to set up in ue3
  • Ace-Angel
    Offline / Send Message
    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    Well, you have to remember that UE3 was the hottest and easiest engine to use for a while, and everyone who wanted to, did so.

    ZB was also becoming the favorite tool to many 'digital Nomads' (lel), and they wanted to show those Normal maps for everything they were worth.

    I'm not kidding when I say, many games made in UE3 lacked a Gloss or Specular map (even big studio ones, you know who you are, shame on you) and looked like they were passed in an oil massage parlor or something. I cannot recall how many packages I unpacked to study the game, ONLY to see a Diffuse and Normal map in them, nothing else per asset.

    TL;DR: UE3 got it's 'look' because everyone wanted their characters to look like oiled up models, because they had sculpted normal maps, and didn't understand the importance of Spec/Rough maps.

    UE4 doesn't have a 'look' because it's going for PBR, which many other engines are also doing, so the homogenization of the material curbs those comments, and because vs. as early as 5-3 years ago, we have much better resource which explain and teach these aspects.

    (Jesus, I just realized only recently we started polishing Spec definitions - pun intended).
  • [Deleted User]
    Offline / Send Message
    [Deleted User] insane polycounter
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • low odor
    Offline / Send Message
    low odor polycounter lvl 17
    not enough bloom
  • PyrZern
    Offline / Send Message
    PyrZern polycounter lvl 12
    The only thing I don't like about Unreal Engine is how to navigate around it inside the engine itself.

    Can I make it feels like I'm navigating inside Maya ?
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    For example, when it was announced Kingdom Hearts 3 would use UE4 instead of Square Enix in-house engine, a lot of comments sprung up saying it's going to look very generic.

    Well, there's not much point discussing what the average Kotaku/internet reader is thinking really. Unless you meant, comments made by industry professionals ?

    Guilty Gear Xrd is made in Unreal3 by the way :)

    Guilty_Gear_Xrd_Screenshot.jpg
  • lotet
    Offline / Send Message
    lotet hero character
    Screencap of your site Jordan get back to work. You got polycount create a thread fever - you need some get shit done fever.
    lol, made my day.

    in all seriousness though, UDK(UE3) did make a lot of stuff looks the same, but I think UE4 looks really fresh and clean, which I could not say about UE3.

    so Im all in favor for UE4, it looks fantastic!
  • [Deleted User]
    Offline / Send Message
    [Deleted User] polycounter lvl 3
    The Editor skin is definitely too busy. Those gaps between tabs are sooo big.

    Is there possibility to change its skin, easily?

    :)
  • LRoy
    Offline / Send Message
    LRoy polycounter lvl 10
    cOI8dXI.png

    Screencap of your site Jordan get back to work. You got polycount create a thread fever - you need some get shit done fever.

    KGvbw.gif
  • AtticusMars
    Offline / Send Message
    AtticusMars greentooth
    The "look" people associate with UE is almost entirely because they use out of the box settings and dont change anything.

    Though if you see raytraced distance shadows in a scene it's almost guaranteed its UE4 since to my knowledge its the only engine currently supporting it.
  • ZacD
    Offline / Send Message
    ZacD ngon master
    UE3 can have default look about it, but half of the time when people complain, they don't realize that a ton of last gen games they love were UE3. Mirrors Edge, Borderlands, Batman Arkham games, BioShock, XCOM, Hawken, etc.
  • Shrike
    Offline / Send Message
    Shrike interpolator
    actually I saw a bunch of (non-dev) people talking about the looks of Unreal 3 games from time to time, they complained about the plastic look (that would be the same for all games), but actually meaning the specific Phong Specular BRDF implementation of U3 which is actually recognizable, and their light-mapping i guess. (For some strange reason UE3 games always used fire and such effects with exactly the same default color) Essentially developers using UE3 preset settings in many games
  • ambershee
    Offline / Send Message
    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    The "look" people associate with UE is almost entirely because they use out of the box settings and dont change anything.

    This.

    There is no 'Unreal Engine' look, however there is a 'we used all the default shaders' look.
  • Scizz
    Offline / Send Message
    Scizz polycounter lvl 11
    Wtf that trick question. Title: Do you like Unreal Engine. Actual Question: Are you put off by Unreal Engine. I almost hit yes haha.
  • Blond
    Offline / Send Message
    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    Ace-Angel wrote: »
    Well, you have to remember that UE3 was the hottest and easiest engine to use for a while, and everyone who wanted to, did so.

    ZB was also becoming the favorite tool to many 'digital Nomads' (lel), and they wanted to show those Normal maps for everything they were worth.

    I'm not kidding when I say, many games made in UE3 lacked a Gloss or Specular map (even big studio ones, you know who you are, shame on you) and looked like they were passed in an oil massage parlor or something. I cannot recall how many packages I unpacked to study the game, ONLY to see a Diffuse and Normal map in them, nothing else per asset.

    TL;DR: UE3 got it's 'look' because everyone wanted their characters to look like oiled up models, because they had sculpted normal maps, and didn't understand the importance of Spec/Rough maps.

    UE4 doesn't have a 'look' because it's going for PBR, which many other engines are also doing, so the homogenization of the material curbs those comments, and because vs. as early as 5-3 years ago, we have much better resource which explain and teach these aspects.

    (Jesus, I just realized only recently we started polishing Spec definitions - pun intended).


    this.
  • Spiffy
    Offline / Send Message
    Spiffy polycounter lvl 12
    Apart from everyone using nothing but Normal and Diffuse

    There is definitely a certain look that comes though in the rendering, the way the bloom looks (kinda has a really sharp solid gradient) and the way lights maps come up.

    But in the end it comes down to Technical artists to tweak the rendering/shaders and Artists to pick a unique color palette and style and stick with it.
  • Fogbrain
    Offline / Send Message
    Fogbrain polycounter lvl 5
    This isn't this same as the "DDO Look".

    If Unreal has any kind of "look", well that's probably because whoever's using it, isn't using it correctly and is going as default as possible.
  • JedTheKrampus
    Offline / Send Message
    JedTheKrampus polycounter lvl 8
    To me the "UE3 look" was the most characterized by awful low-resolution lightmaps and busy, desaturated textures with poor material definition. There are also the very distinctive and not always well-used light shafts and motion blur, and, to a lesser extent, bloom, which really made me reconsider whether I really wanted to be playing that game right now. If there's one game that I would point to to blame for that look, it would probably have to be Gears of War.

    Now, that's not to say that Gears of War looked bad, or that there weren't very, very good-looking games on UE3. That's just to say that if a game stayed too close to the defaults and tried to (poorly) imitate the art direction that Epic was taking at the time, it ended up detracting substantially from the experience.
  • NegevPro
    Offline / Send Message
    NegevPro polycounter lvl 4
    Most of the people who complain about the "Unreal Engine look" also tend to compare game engines like hot wheels. Everybody knows the only way to get a nice looking game is to open up the engine configuration files and set the quality setting to ultra and set the graphics sliders to 11! Stupid lazy developers keep forgetting to do both of these things, unfortunately.
  • TAN
    Offline / Send Message
    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    People summed up the reasons of the main question of the OP so all I could complain about UE4 would be my spoiled requirements from development team.

    Like a high quality/ performance friendly Real-Time Global Illumination solution. And yesterdays Twitch stream they actually answered my question and said " We got our top man pondering about this subject. "

    So fingers crossed and no complaints :D
  • almighty_gir
    Offline / Send Message
    almighty_gir ngon master
    i never thought UE3 titles looked plasticky... BUT, i did often think it had a distinctive look to its specular highlighting, very likely down to the way it compressed noisy normals.
  • MephistonX
    Offline / Send Message
    MephistonX polycounter lvl 9
    cOI8dXI.png

    Screencap of your site Jordan get back to work. You got polycount create a thread fever - you need some get shit done fever.

    314623-bob-l-eponge-620x0-1.jpg
  • JamesTKirk
    Offline / Send Message
    JamesTKirk polycounter lvl 8
    To me the "UE3 look" was the most characterized by awful low-resolution lightmaps .

    This! IMO Poor GI baking solution led artists to mask bad lightmaps with too detailed textures so it would always end with that distinctive flat and noisy "UE3 look".
  • Torch
    Offline / Send Message
    Torch interpolator

    Screencap of your site Jordan get back to work.

    OHHHHHHH :poly142:
  • Popol
    Offline / Send Message
    Popol interpolator
    cOI8dXI.png

    Screencap of your site Jordan get back to work. You got polycount create a thread fever - you need some get shit done fever.

    Best thing that came out of this thread.
  • Mask_Salesman
    Offline / Send Message
    Mask_Salesman polycounter lvl 13
    Hey guys I don't like that photoshop look... T____________________T
  • passerby
    Offline / Send Message
    passerby polycounter lvl 12
    Ya wish my models didn't look so mayaish
  • Higuy
    Offline / Send Message
    Higuy polycounter lvl 9
    The only thing I don't like in terms of Unreal visuals is the editor in ue4. seriously can we have some different skins pl0x thx ill pay u
  • WarrenM
    I believe that's planned but the tools team is slammed for the foreseeable future. Don't hold your breath. :)
  • Leinad
    Offline / Send Message
    Leinad polycounter lvl 11
    This reminds me of a thread you made a few months ago about graphics. I personally think all of the engines have potential to make breathtakingly beautiful games.

    I wouldn't get too caught up with the tool, the same way I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the paint brushes of a painter. While the tools are extremely important, often times what differentiates the final art/product is how the tool is used (artists/designers/programmers etc...).
Sign In or Register to comment.