The future of Game Engines??
polycounter lvl 10
I am currently considering using game engines for architectural viz and cinematics and I intend to concentrate on using them rather than renderers like Vray,mental ray as I am of the opinion that in a matter of years game engine graphically will be almost close to what these renderers can achieve.The graphics of the next generation engines like UE4,Cryengine and Snowdrop already have graphic capabilities that look almost photorealistic.
I am thinking of going with Unreal engine 4 as I feel its the most popular of the game engines out there.Their $19 per month is a good deal but I am wondering if its fair that one should pay 5% royalties though they won't be requesting royalties for cinematics or videos rendered with the engine.I understand they are releasing the source code as well.
Cryengine on the other hand isn't asking for royalties with a lower subscription fee and the graphics looks really good.I can't say if its better tha UE4 at the moment due to it not being used that much.
Snowdrop engine-There isn't much info about it at the moment.I must say it looks breathtakingly good with the node based system and pbr rendering.
Unity-I am not even considering it.With UE and Cryengine's subscription.Unity isn't attractive or popular in archviz or mainstream games.Graphically it isn't on par with the others.
I am thinking of going with Unreal engine 4 as I feel its the most popular of the game engines out there.Their $19 per month is a good deal but I am wondering if its fair that one should pay 5% royalties though they won't be requesting royalties for cinematics or videos rendered with the engine.I understand they are releasing the source code as well.
Cryengine on the other hand isn't asking for royalties with a lower subscription fee and the graphics looks really good.I can't say if its better tha UE4 at the moment due to it not being used that much.
Snowdrop engine-There isn't much info about it at the moment.I must say it looks breathtakingly good with the node based system and pbr rendering.
Unity-I am not even considering it.With UE and Cryengine's subscription.Unity isn't attractive or popular in archviz or mainstream games.Graphically it isn't on par with the others.
Replies
Most mobile and indie games are made on unity.
check this out https://www.marmoset.co/skyshop
Plus 5 version will be released soon:
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I hope that prices will fall...
Between Unity and UE4 I would say it depends of the type of architecture you plan : dynamic lighting or not ? UE4 has a great GI but is static, while Unity 5 is powered by enlighten and support then dynamic GI.
http://www.geomerics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Enlighten_Brochure.pdf
think only the cryengine has a real gi solution...
lionhead has implemented a smilar solution in unreal...
http://www.lionhead.com/blog/2014/april/17/dynamic-global-illumination-in-fable-legends/
wrong and wrong, but maybe my info is outdated
unless crytek changed something the artists also have to work a lot to make gi working in "realtime"
and unreal may support enlighten, thats true but we are talking about some heavy licensing fees here, and that almost 200k of license fees.
enlighten needs to be licensed seperately for unreal4, i posted what it roughly costs from what i heard from various productions i know people using it.
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IMO the graphical features listed for an engine are a lot less important than the workflow. At this point production efficiency is a bigger challenge for game development than processing power and between Unity and Unreal I would pick Unity for most projects.
UE4- $19 per month
CE-$9 per month
Btw,I have been wondering if CE allows u to continue using the downloaded version if u decide to cancel ur subscription or u need to continue paying every month?
For UE4 you need to pay separatelly for possibility to output to consoles. You need to share 5% of you income from released material till the end of the world.
With Unity you pay 1500$ and that's it. You can pay additionally for iOS/Andrid support (1500$ each) but it's still less than paying couple thousands/millions each year for UE4. Think about Minecraft, they made more than 300$ millions last year, so the real price for UE4 for them would be 15$ million (of course Minecraft would have to be made in UE4 first
Not that it should stop you, because having source code have its pluses, but like some superhero once said - "With great source code comes great responsibility" - or something like that
Oh, and I'm also preparing to use UE4 for visualization, cinematics. I'm just waiting till they iron out all the child age problems + consumer version of Oculus and Myo.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?530-How-to-enable-Light-Propagation-Volumes-GI-WIP-AND-BETA
Thanks for that post man.From the thread u popsted,it's seems enlighten isn't very convenient to use after all.
Well..one can manage this until UE comes up with their own realtime GI.Someone in the thread mention Cryengine has had GI for years?
Can anyone pls confirm if u buy a month's subscription of CE,if u cancel it after downloading.Can one use that version for as long as u want like UE or u have to pay monthly to continue using it?
But to make thing sure, you can take a look at this thread:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132609
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/12764/is-the-enlighten-middleware-included-with-all-lice.html
I wouldn't rely on the LPV currently in UE4 to decide your engine choice. The feature is far from being usable at the moment. It works in Fable because they use open environments with heavy vegetation, but in architectural environment with thin walls you will see a lot of leaks.
It's not known yet. They (Crytek) will release more infos when the release of the monthly subscription starts in early may. But as was said already they will still offer the FreeSDK (without updates in the future) on top of that.
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This vid is very close to Vray imo.Very.
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I don't know if this was rendered with the UE4 but I suspect Enlighten was used?Looks really good as well.
Brigade 3.0 is alreadly getting close.I can't help wondering how much its gonna cost when they finally remove the noise and release the engine.They are using two GTX titans.Wonder if they make it three.
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you can't just remove the noise. If you would things would be < 1 fps again
path-tracing works by shooting rays from eye and each frame randomly jitter them as they hit a surface (the reflection required for global illumination). The results of those many iterations (many paths across the scene) are accumulated to refine the results.
Things like caustics and specular reflections take a long time to refine, cause you more or less don't know where the interesting spots are in your world, and they can be relatively small (low chance to hit) but bright (important not to ignore or blur over).
As Neox mentions, there is good reasons companies like vray can live from just squeezing the most out of making this process fast. The resolutions in the real-time demos are often also much lower than rasterized games are.
Here is a nice comparison of a 2 vs 260 GPU system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2WyZQX7z8Jo
Though indeed the image quality of all the hacks and tricks that games use to get real-time has improved, but ultimately a rather low-res/blurred simplified solution. Though in the end, who cares, if it looks cool and suits the game