We have been asked to use Unreal Engine as part of our System Modelling module in my second year. This was the first time which I ever experienced the Unreal Engine, after previously using Unity in my first year at university. I was aware that Unreal existed, but I never used it before. I have setup a scene in Unreal which uses the First Person Blueprint template, and will be experimenting with the features.
Positives:
I like the fact that you can move the camera's position in the scene view with the mouse and keyboard: I find it easier to control the camera's position and look rotation.
I appreciate some of the popups which show in the bottom-right of the screen, such as when you 'undo' a change. This makes it much clearer, for if you are trying to fix a specific change not fully clear (e.g. changing a game object's position by a few pixels). This is a feature which I've not seen in Unity.
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| An example of a pop-up notification. |
Negatives:
I experimented with changing a game object's position. I moved a grey cube, which gave me an error saying that 'Lighting needs to be rebuilt'. To fix this, I found a method which involved 'rebuilding' the lighting.
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| The menu option to fix the 'build lighting' in the scene. |
This process took a few seconds to rebuild, but it fixed the lighting. However, if I perform this action when I always move a game object might add use up more time. In comparison to Unity, this is a much slower process, as lighting automatically refreshes in Unity.
From experience in Unity, I enjoyed being able to play the game in one window, and have a live scene view in an alternate window/tab. I've been unable to find this feature here, so I would not be able to test different camera viewpoints, unless I change the player's position/rotation.
I feel like I will learn more about Unreal throughout the semester, and I may continue to draw comparsions with Unity.
