2D or 3D Unity Dev - What's better??

0:00 - The Question
0:57 - Answer The Question.. PC & Pay
1:15 - PC Specs
3:00 - Jobs * Pay in 2d vs 3d
4:50 - Technical Differences
6:27 - Animation - Sprites vs Mecanim/Animator
7:30 - Input
8:15 - Movement
9:15 - FUN - The most important part
11:27 - BONUS 3D

[ForgotCheez]

In terms of job opportunities in big studios, there seem to be *tons* more postings that specifically ask for 3D experience. Even postings for mobile app development. If you have a stellar 2D project to show them, maybe that can make up for a lack of 3D exp, but you're probably going to need to work with 3D. Maybe making a 2.5D game where the models are 3D, but the game is flat? Idk

I feel like, if someone is asking this question, they're probably really new to game development. (If so, welcome!)
If you're learning how to make games, I think what's more important than 2D vs 3D is just making sure you love/are excited by the project you're working on. Because, after 3 weeks of struggling to get a mechanic working, being excited for the game is what's going to keep you going.
If you feel equally strong about a 2D idea and a 3D idea, the 2D one will probably be much easier, but if you play first person shooters and all you want is to make a first person shooter, go make *that*. Don't think "I would make this fps, but 2D is easier, so I should hold off."

[danielc.]

Hey Jason, I just found your channel about 2 weeks ago. I am a lot older in life and have decided to do something that I have been wanting to do for many years, game programming in Unity. I just wanted to say thank you for all the fantastic content that you have put out so that people like myself have a place to go to learn this wonderful program. I look forward to watching all your previous content and the ones that you have yet to make. I truly appreciate your hard work and dedication to this channel.

[treyhayden]

One thing that gets overlooked for 3D is just how much simpler the math and vector operations can end up being. The relative vectors like "up" or "right" for an actor in 3D are pretty intuitive / obvious, but "forward" in 2D might be something completely different. In my experience, the codebase for a 3D project usually has less trig and ends up being much more readable as a result, since most of those operations use built-in libraries and their well-known functions.

[murrigo]

Jason I'm sorry. I'm sure the content of your video is very informative, but I just spent the last 13 minutes staring at the light wheel in the right side of the video... and I didn't hear a word...

[abubakarejaz]

Thank U for the video Sir. Really helpful. Honored to see my comment in your video. Btw the revolving LED lamp is DOPE.

[goldone]

I've actually given up on 2d development partly because certain things are harder, such as pixel perfect rendering and sprite sorting. It feels like in 3d the systems you build are more rewarding. But in the end, I think the best advice is to figure out which games you'd like to make and figure out which dimension is better suited, as quite a few of the skills are not really transferable

[juanpablocardoso]

I pretty much agree with you. Furthermore I think it is more likely to run into performance issues on 3D games since they are usually bigger and may need more optimization tricks.

[CELUGames]

I have a degree in Civil Engineering and I worked with 3D modeling for 4 years. Today I do software engineering. I thought that because I have modeling experience, being a 3D indie gamedev would give me much more advantage and ease. Dude... Dealing with NavMesh, keyboard inputs, animation trees... Besides, it was very evident, to me, that doing something "well done" in the eyes of critics, for an indie dev, when it comes to 3D, is almost impossible. Physics is too cruel in 3D, man. I tried to use all 3D modeling in a topdown of 2D movement, but, even very linear, the bugs remain. Man, how much simpler 2D is (I wouldn't say easier), for those who tried both, it's surreal. "Oh, but I can't draw!" Friend, making a 3D model in Blender (except for something crude and polygonal) takes a lot of time and a huge whim, apart from the fact that you always have to keep an eye on the model's optimization (even if you do it in tools like Sketchup, for example). If you're just starting out, take the path you like best. But I would say that at 100% difficulty, 3D: 70% and 2D: 30%, in the proper proportions of the game, obviously. This is my opinion and my experience, I hope it helps you. Sorry english, it's not my language

[HE]

In regards to the specs question, I have ALWAYS built my games on low-end laptops. I only spent $128 on my laptop and I could build anything I want to build. All of the game engines work and everything. I think as long as your laptop has Windows 10 as well as maybe 4 GBs of RAM and 930 HDD storage (like mine has) then you're good to go. My note, my laptop before the one I'm using now had even less specs and everything still worked. I'd just avoid the EmmC type of storage for now. But, all in all, it is not necessary to spend a ton of money to build games.

[hawkgamedev]

Great video and great ending bonus, this is so true, I recently tried 2D and getting assets is hard, unless you hire an artist. Also the part where you say coming up with ideas in 2D is hard, is to true for me too!

[walkerlaury]

Hey! Thanks for the video. One topic that I would love to see covered is how to take a model or controller from the asset store and adapting it to a project. I get how to import assets, but then going from there seems a bit tricky for me.

[BlackJar]

The whole reason I got into Unity was to make 3d games, since I mostly play 3d games and generally more interesting to me. There is one thing about 2d that is much, much easier -- 2d engines aren't that hard to homebrew, whereas making a 3d engine is really hard (especially if you want to actually be any good at all).

[invmeru]

Good video. Agreed with everything.

If I may add. In my experience, sometimes, 2d has less information available compared to 3d. As if the community is smaller. And I mean not the basic things. Everyone has a guide on how to make a platformer nowadays. But as soon as you are doing not-so-common 2d stuff then you notice it. And it may be frustrating for newcomers. When I've started it was harder for me to find 2d solutions than when I switched to 3d.

Oh, and also some inbuild Unity features do not have a 2d analog. Or at least it was like this when I started learning.

[rubielnieve]

Great content! Thanks for your videos. Keep it up bro!

[littleowlgaming-unity-tutorial]

i find 3d easier to set up animations. 2d is simple, but I find it has some tricks. 3d, you can blend animations and augment with IK

[alakhan]

Hi Jason, the last part you mentioned is great. I have realized it that 3d assets are available easily. I don't know the reason. Thank you for this very informative video.

[JM_Traslo]

Hey Jason, love your videos! Unless I've totally missed it, could we see a video on how you would pitch your portfolio? Like what is it that an interviewer is looking for us to shine a light on when we've shown them a portfolio of projects? We've only got so much time to talk about things with them even if it's a long interview, so what is the most important to highlight. How would that differ between say a Games Programmer position and a Games Designer position (perhaps assume both are junior positions). Graduated right at the start of the covid pandemic and we got no real assistance on such things as a result, so looking for hints and tips where possible.

[gamesplusjames]

This was a cool breakdown! I spent my first few years with Unity only touching 2D stuff but now I definitely think way more in 3D :)

[dbweb.creative]

How would you go about making a sidescroller platformer with 3D assets? example games: DK Returns, Marsupilami, Yooka laylee... A video on this topic I think would be interesting, since basically this approach benefits from the best of both.

[dorfriedman]

Great video thanks! I also enjoy playing around in 3d for ideas and inspiration but I struggle with handling 3d models in FBX and OBJ format i use blender to edit them to prepare for unity sometimes it works sometimes not I wish one day maybe you can make a video on how to handle those files and remove the unnessecery stuff and importing with textures