Should I learn Unity or Unreal Engine?

There comes a time in every artist’s career that they are faced with an age-old question - Should I learn Unreal Engine 4 or Unity?
Now its important to note that these engines are ever-changing and always improving, so we are going to take a look at the current state of each engine and see how they have developed over the years, and where each engine plans to be in the next few years. And which one YOU should be using as a beginner artist.

Since this is aimed at beginners, I’m not going to go into detail about super-advanced concepts. Such as memory allocation and other advanced programming and scripting concepts.

I’m just going to cover the pros and cons for BEGINNER digital artists, the discussion for unity or ue4 for experienced 3d artists and game developers is a completely different discussion.

All artists in video (By order of appearance):

Julien Didisheim

Ted Mebratu

James Naughton

David Baylis

Pasquale Scionti

Rudy Parfaite

Ida Faber

Andrew Averkin

Maniacarta

Ted Mebratu

Tor Frick

Sebastian Gothe

Nick Carver

Renier Van Der Westhuizen

Sergey Tyapkin

Kurt Kusper

Inka Sipola

Thomas Francis

Otto Ostera

Saga Alayyoubi

Lucas Maxfield

Mod Ratchata

Tomer Meltser

Josh Van Zuylen

文惜（Wen Xi）

Yongjae Choe

Kacper Bartnik

Plamen Tamnev

Nina Clos

Alex Coman

Mateus Kurzhals

Mark Nicolino

Sherif A.Dawoud

Maria Yue

Florian Puype

Wiktor Öhman

Jessica Helgesson

Baolong Zhang

Plamen Tamnev

Andrew Averkin

Rafał Urbański

Carin Backlund

Alessandro Toesca

Dani Rojas

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Follow me:

[dom]

*spends years learning both*
Studios: We have an in house engine, now go learn that.

[stormsoendergaard]

Simple advice from someone who worked in games for quite a while now: learn both...

[xinoHITO]

As an indie game dev, I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to explain that Unity is really good for games with small teams. Also, I agree with what you said about Unreal being really good for beginner artists. Usually, artists don't want to make mechanics or tools (which takes programming) but rather make a visually striking piece (which isn't a bad thing) and it's good to note that in the end these aren't just art software anymore but game engines.

[Hugop_arts]

Worth for both this video and the Maya vs Blender one:
The best skill anyone on this industry can have is the ability to quickly pick up softwares. Learn how to learn. You might go from a Maya quixel UE perforce pipeline in one studio to a Blender Substance Unity Git pipeline in another.
Learning how to learn is a huge skill and that allied to understanding programming LOGIC (even if you are an artist and don’t actually learn how to code in any language) will get you much farther and faster

[arieltheartist]

Unity: Lightweight, Barebones, Only what you Need
Unreal: Everything AND the Kitchen Sink

[MarcoPaints]

Unreal comes with so many great tools - and as a Blender user, a lot of it just made more sense to me. I found it a lot easier as a non-coder looking to prototype game levels / designs!

[Hrorwulf]

Very interesting point of view.
As a software engineer, I find Unreal stiff and overwhelming.
Both engines are very powerful, but I find Unity's blank-canvas approach easier to pick up whenever I start a new project.
While on Unreal, I always find myself frustrated because the engine already wants certain type of game built, and making something different demands a lot of effort.

But your perspective as an artist gave me a lot to think about. It's true that Unreal has a lot more visual effects and lightning properties readily available out of the box. I never thought that for a visual artist that meant the engine is ready to build what they want from it.

[ramonspringer]

Chapeau to you sir for crediting all the artists in the description box. Thank you very much! You don't see that often...

[stephenadonis]

For some reason, this video is so calming. Just listening to your voice is almost curing my anxiety though it did not tell me anything new. I use unity and it kinda feels like things change a lot. Something that worked last year fails this year. It's pretty frustrating. But I'm managing. People sometimes switch software because they've grown and have become bigger teams
I don't think I'll ever change though. Unity has been kinda a good friend in a way for me though they are frustrating sometimes if not most times, they will get better I believe

[esbensloth]

Great video. My first engine was Quake 1, so I have no idea which would be best for a beginner but I wholly endorse the notion that what you use is not your identity. Just use whichever programs makes you enjoy working with it in all honesty.

Also don't be afraid to play with code, shaders and unusual engine features. Technical Artist is one of the most sought after position for every company I've ever worked at. Most visual scripting tools lets you read the generated code or shader. If you can use visual scripting tools you are already programming, doing the identical with code is just a reverse engineering process.

[people]

Wow. I've seen many videos on this subject, none of them have been more helpful than this. Incredibly in-depth and thoughtful. I appreciate it.

[theral]

Interesting, never gave it much thought how artists view the engines, nor did I think it would change much. Thanks for the insight

[NeoCrawler]

As a programmer learning both helped me way more than just sticking to one. Sometimes a solution was easily resolved in one, but needed custom creations in the other. Even though the engines differ much, most fundamentals stay the same. On top, (for programming) I recommend to also work into empty visual studio projects to learn C++ in, and learn how to code a game / engine from scratch. Because in the end the core knowledge is what they seek in the industry, at least in the higher tier. For indie it is almost always the case that they use pre-engines. While almost all triple A use custom created ones for multiple reasons.

[GmanGavin]

Imagine the "made with cryengine" splash screen as the intro of the video.

[StylizedStation]

Super excited to announce my new Unreal Engine course for beginners! Learn how to create your own beautiful worlds using Unreal Engine. Fluffy trees, flowing grass and sweeping landscapes. Only $49. Forever.

[akshaysharma]

People are fighing over Unity vs here i am using Godot on a 930m laptop running ubuntu ;D

[Nry_Chan]

Personal opinion: Your choice should depend on your project, your needs, and your team.
You should look on a case-by-case basis what you want to do, and weather or not the engine you want to use is right for that job or not.
Neither Unreal nor Unity will be the "perfect engine". It all depends on what direction you want to go in.
And, it never hurts to know both tools so you can see the pro's and con's of both of them.

[hamzahshuaib]

Wow, that last piece of advice is the icing on the cake, thanks so much man. Good work

[billikpe]

love what you said at the end about taking things personal when you personalise it

[gregkisinger]

For me, I look at this way. Chances are. I'll just learn one or the other and regardless of which one I choose to learn, I'll delve into it learning everything I can about it-so, since I'll immerse myself fully into one platform, I'd rather choose the one that has more potential. Thus far, it sounds like Unreal will offer more in the long run so that would be the one that I'll be choosing. Perhaps it would be nice to know both platforms, but realistically, for me, I might just have time to learn one or the other as well as I can.