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That exactly, my game (release mid summer 2025) does not give you a small hint, that its using ue5.5. i work 2 years on it, and in that time for fun i made some projects, to get own styles. It really is in YOUR hands as a dev, how the game looks. And in unreal you can really change EVERYTHING.
The problem is that most game dev companies don't want to retopologize their assets to match their game style. If you saw Project Feline and it's incredible art style you woould be suprised that it was made with Unreal Engine 4 instead of 5. That's how you get to see that using assets isn't the problem, the problem is big companies are more concerned about making tight deadlines than paying attention to art style. Indie Devs stand out now cause they pay more attention to style than most new large companies.
@@Punisher1992 i have a question, how can i make a game that tends to realism but still has personality? you know batman arkham city is realistic, but isn't soulless
@@Fnale_Studios i would start with unique looking post process effects, change colour grading and stuff. Play around with it, find your own Style. BUT Arkham games arent fully realistic either. Characters have a certain style.
As an unreal dev, "realistic" tends to have a samy look, because it looks "real" and uses the default lighting engine. In unreal, you can customize ANYTHING. People just don't sometimes so you get the default look. It's just because realistic is like a default path for unreal
A large part of the "Unreal Engine Look" is because people don't really modify the Tonemapper/Post Processing settings, Lighting/Sky Atmosphere settings, TSR (sucks) settings along with using (mismatching) Assets without even modifying their Textures or just general Material settings (too much specular)
i need to learn about this to set the game im currently making apart from others. can you point me in the right direction to start learning about these things?? i would appreciate it
THIS! Most people dont have an artistic vision in term of "visuals" so they stick to basic default parameters. You can achive whatever look you want with ue
@@p1xelshooter287 I would probably start with the YT videos from Visual Tech Art with Eros who goes over the fundamentals and just released a video going over how you can use PBR but stylised.
The engine doesn't set the art style, the game designer does so it's weird to hear the implication that there's just an Unreal look. The same can be said for so a number of games done in Unity. Again, that isn't the result of Unity as an engine it's the decision of the designer or team that determine art style and lighting. People are playing PontyPant's game because it's unique & fun which is what's been lost from so much of our industry as focus has shifted to ray tracing, and AA techniques, and GI and on and on instead of just pure Fun. There's no shortage of games that aesthetically aren't going to win any awards, but they're a hell of a lot of fun to play and at the end of the day that's the only reason games exist.
No the rendering engine does change how a game looks, this is one reason AAA games use custom engines a lot of times because it gives them a unique feel.
Well that’s the problem with general purpose engines. Days Gone and Stalker 2 are two examples where unreal engine was heavily modified where they cratered their own assets and still those games have the unreal engine look and feel to them. It’s just inherent to the engine. Games made in frostbite will look like games made in frostbite engine. Games made in cryengine look like cryengine nomatter what
@@tingamer2508 no - this is false. The engine sets the limits or boundaries of the look - but it does not set the look. The look is in the art assets and the shaders. And you have to create those for every game. No one would claim Yoshi's Crafted World looks the same as Gears of War. I can take a game made in Godot, and make it look EXACTLY the same in UE5. What they are talking about here is asset flips and possibly just leaving the default temporal aliasing on . (Source: I'm a AAA rendering dev).
Exactly, if you retexture assets no one will ever recognize them even if they found the asset you used. I’ve taken a Superman model, put a custom helmet on and retextures and it looks completely different.
The issue a lot of people make a living off selling assets, and we are demonizing it. Yes less crap will hit the market, but also more of the good idea games arent going to get finished. Everyone should learn the art and actually flip it like he said change textures, tweak things, but yes model your hero assets.
I think it should be demonizing. It takes awhile money from artists to work on full flege projects. Also with the legality issues and at the end of the day the end customer will not appreciate it. Last time I checked every indie game developer goal is to make the customer happy so you do the hard work to get the amazing rewards.
I think framing this as an Unreal Engine problem is kinda disingenuous, and it's weird to me that you would take this stance as a Unity user. I'm sure you'd remember it wasn't that long ago when Unity was similarly slammed for "all being asset flips." I get the sentiment of "you don't want your game to look generic," but it's really weird when that's painted as "it's a problem with the engine." Much like years ago when Unity was getting slammed for this, I could point out several games that were made in Unity that people had no idea about, I can do the same thing with Unreal. I still see people consistently surprised when I tell them games like Epic Mickey, Persona 3 Reload, Bravely Default, Ender Lillies, Octopath Traveler, etc. were made in Unreal.
Its definitely a uniquely unreal problem as more and more large dev teams and companies adopt unreal and just tweak the engine to their needs. Unity does not have that adoption. More and more AAA titles have the unreal look and some companies barely change the default animations anymore.
Urgh. Thomas, no! Purchasing assets on a marketplace to use in your game is NOT asset flipping. I thought you knew this. We don’t need to encourage more gamers and developers to think that using assets is a bad thing. The AAA industry does it all the time. Just don’t be lazy about it.
I feel like more people need to talk about that because so many people such as myself just starting stresses about making your own assets when I might only be good at making weapons and not armor or building blocks for levels yet but marketplace assets really help fill in those gaps in all of our skill levels
if you have multiple assets you need to harmonize their art style to make a coherence whole and that sometimes is more effort than just making the the asset from scratch. players sometimes get jaded when they see the same assets unedited inside a lot of games.
Issue is, you start to recognize assets from game to game and this, depending on what it is, can be incredibly immersion breaking. Take for example, a sword. That's fine. It is a sword. i need not say more. On the other hand we say we have a unique quest item, specific to the universe and story, and here we are using this same ladle prop from this cooking simulator i played the other day. Kind of wild example but i exaggerated to make the point clear. If you're gonna asset flip, it's gotta be used specifically for filler material or like... world and environmental assets, set pieces, scenes and such. Not something that should be unique
1:20 No actually they use paid assets for free, they pirated it and they didn't have the required license. if using free assets would make trouble, most of the games on steam would be gone until now.
The high-profile AAA Unreal games tend to all go for realisim cause consumers think more real equal more better, and that gets the most attention. (which ends up feeding into public perception) But there a lot of Unreal games with diverse styles. Fortnite, nintendo games(pikmin4,peach,yoshi,mario & luigi), nightmare kart, borderlands, hi fi rush, etc. A more legit criticism of unreal is that it can be a pain for a non photorealistic artstyle if post processing, shader, and the built-in lighting models doesn't suffice. Writing your own lighting model requires 200gb Unreal Source code and lots of shader compilation from my research. Unreal is just a tool at the end of the day. It's easier for realistic out of the box but you aren't forced to use the crazy high end features.
Another problem is the closer things look to real life the more our brains think we are able to interact with it. and unfortunatly better graphics means there are fewer objects that are interactable. an example of this could be: I made a game, in in this game I have a room with nothing in it except for a box you can pick up you can open it, inside theres maby another item. contrast this with a room filled with hundreds of high quality Assets cups, boxes, chairs a table ect... now in this room with an incredible amount of assets and visuals you cant pick up anything, nothing is interactable. which is the better as a game. same with AI art its too clean it looks the same and at the back of your mind you know it took almost no skill to produce.
I'm pretty sure I once heard somebody say "don't make games too realistic" and I couldn't recall why, but this makes sense! Personally, the realism genre is quite boring unless you push in some stylization as well. Why I wanna play a game thats close to my own reality? Games were usually a way to "forget about reality". Now we're being reminded by it with these graphics instead lol
Interactivity is huge. There's nothing that breaks the immersion faster for me than a realistic looking game where characters and the environment interact like cardboard cutouts. I've been super impressed with playing AstroBot recently not because it's super realistic but the interactivity is next level. Hundreds of physics based objects lying on a glass floor which shatters when you walk over it, sending objects falling and scattering everywhere as you go. It's a sight to behold!
One thing I highly recommend doing is brushing up on the science of art. Google color theory(use a color picker app), rule of 3, height variation, and scene composition techniques. One thing that tremendously helped me was taking a screenshot from apex legends since they use a couple assets per environment and just highlighting why it looked good and all the tricks they used.
@@Tekkai50 the unreal look is basically someone not changing anything in the settings and use the default that came with it. Is kind of like the default Cryengine And Unity look if you don't touch anything. In other words: not putting much effort in your game's art style.
Its all because of the lighting. Thing is the lighting is hyper customizable out of the box, but no one customizes it. At least not people who want to put out an asset flip game.
As a 3D artist who has been creating their own assets and also photographing many of the key textures, there are def some assets that I am happy not to make. Foliage being one of them haha. But it is wild to see people are doing entire games with asset flips, I don't understand it. Perhaps it is the dynamic between artists and programmers, and both valuing different things more.
Think of it a bit like a movie studio that reuses props and locations. If handled correctly it can be done without raising red flags. It's about art direction, gameplay, tone, etc.
There's asset from marketplaces in ALL AAA games. There's a difference between cherry picking some decent ones to carefully integrate them into your game and taking a bunch of different assets and just calling it a day.
That’s highly unlikely given how strict games are with their technical budgets, they usually make stuff in house because they have the resources and it keeps their multi platform frame budget in check with consistent poly counts/LODs, consistent draw calls, consistent code, and consistent art style. Buying an asset would likely require retopoligizing, making LODs, retexturing, and remaking the materials/shaders. It’s easier and cheaper to just have a junior artist make the prop.
Not the point. His game has it's own art style, yes i don't like it too but it doesn't look like an asset flip which is the main issue at the moment with tons of games. I agree with them, i rather see you made your own assets then flip the unreal engine assets and have that Unreal look which is getting worse and worse.
I disagree with his assessment that a “good but unreal 5” look is worse than a bad look. The majority of gamers like unreal engines rendering, the issue is if your environments are bland and uninspired. If it’s just a grassy field that looks good with some old buildings it will turn off people but if there is interesting and unique environments people will buy it.
In contrast, a great example of an Unreal Engine game is Lies of P. Strong art-direction with tons of original assets. Also surprisingly optimized for an UE game, the director said they put a lot of effort into optimization.
Part of the issue with UE games looking the same is that the engine doesn't have a good modular shading model (BSDF) system. You basically gotta hack together a 200GB source code build of the engine just for decent artist controlled toon shading (post processing isn't nearly as flexible enough) that can react to the engine's lighting systems. They haven't put much work into the engine's forward renderer, which means that you're going to make massive compromises going with that for clean visuals (with MSAA) thanks to that mainly being relegated for VR stuff. The workaround people used to get lighting and reflection information for materials has sadly been removed from the forward renderer as well. I don't even want to know what kind of black magic it took the Wuthering Waves developers to have full toon shading with per-material properties and that can have dynamic shadows. The guides for adding that stuff into the engine via C++ is already long and convoluted.
Another issue with the visuals in UE5 is that the out of the box optimization with lighting, anti aliasing, and nanite are not optimal and big studios who’s attitude towards choosing UE5 as an engine comes from the same mindset that puts less value in fine tuning the settings for those features and smaller indie devs either don’t have the time or priority to spend resources and time tweaking those features.
One thing I reckon that also contributes to that assetflippety-feel is that different asset creating artists use different software, have different workflow and workspaces and just in general have different feels for scale. Which means that if the dev utilizing those assets isn't careful with rescaling the objects it can look off when things come in slightly off sizes.
It's not the tool it's the people using it. You can do whatever you want in Unreal, it's just that it sells itself as "realism made easy". And so a lot of people use it for that reason. But the truth is you can do any style you want, cartoon, cellshading, you name it. Just look at Hi-Fi Rush, it was made with unreal but it looks nothing like "the Unreal look".
Same with Marvel Rivals. Completely stylised with a comic book esque feel, fun gameplay, you'd have no idea it was made in Unreal (reminds me of Sea of Thieves). The issue is the performance which is currently horrific but I hope they do fix it. I get like 50 fps on 4K with a 6950xt lmao so upscaling is required. And TAA blur in a competitive game is a bit ridiculous.
An asset flip game is where you take a ton of premade stuff and then toss them in and sell it for money without thought to actual gameplay. That is different from USING premade assets. I'm probably going to use some premade stuff, but edit it to make it different.
What I've learned from being a creative in music and photography is your concern, the issues reflected here, is an industry issue inside your head. If your target audience is game creators then your issue is valid. If your target audience is the consumer, then you're beating your head against a wall for nothing.
Honestly the thing that sells me on UE5 has never been the graphics and assets, it's been how easy it is to put all the pieces together. Literally everything, an entire game, an entire project can be done within the engine editor, its actually possible, and somewhat viable quite frankly. No other engine can even hold a candle to that. Unity comes close. I'd say cryengine was also pretty good when it was at it's peak. But then you start looking at things like Godot, which work great, but have tons of quirks & often time have to work outside of the editor. Go even further to things like the dagor engine, it is a great engine but getting into it is not easy. No editor, no gui, build from source, via git.... you practically gotta be a linux power user to understand how to even get started with it. Most people simply prefer simplicity & gui. Ue5 also, despite common meme themes, has some GREAT optimization tools if you actually use them and incorporate them into your codes, blueprints & world building.
Unreal games looking the same is no issue. Maybe our world looks the same too. What makes everything different is gameplay, creating lovely environments, and you can also color grade your game.
Explain the difference between buying an asset for $50 and editing it for use vs hiring creators to create your assets for $50,000? Aside from exclusivity rights it's usually just nowhere near as accessible. The reason I won't be making my own assets is because I don't have that kind of time or money. I can't work a normal job and learn unreal engine and master 3D modeling in any amount of reasonable time. I wish I had started in my 20s but that's not the case. I want to exit my current job and become a game developer but I'm not willing to spend 10 years double crunching trying to make my first game because I want it to look different from other Unreal Engine games. I want to get one out the door, get some funding for other projects and hope I can go from there.
For people that are looking high-quality assets you either are going to do it yourself or pay someone, at the end of the day taking a sec to download a megascan is extremely intuitive.
The lighting is almost always similar. Before, when games didn’t have accurate dynamic lighting, the environments felt completely unreal but STYLISED. However, with modern lighting, it works the same on almost every game
UE is a great engine but too many developers who use it have no sense of art direction or stylisation. The greatest of the most realistic looking games have good colour grading, production design, and stylisation of the final image. Like great movies they should have artistic direction not just a sterile and boring attempt to recreate reality. We’ve got reality already. That’s not what art is.
But in this case its not the problem of the tools, but the person that use it. If their game has no sense of art direction or stylisation that's just that, they lack a sense of art direction no matter what engine they use.
After looking at how much of a concept flip PontyPants's game is to Getting Over It and Thomas's sentiment towards AI generated assets, I just... okay, that was an opinion I guess.
Just about everyone will be using ai for 2d content at least when Adobe Turntable(or a similar program) comes out. So much nuance with ai, so tired of people painting it with such a broad negative brush. You can even make a lora with just your own art. The amount of time it saves is incredible.
Yeah, he was riding off the existing large fanbase of getting over it. I knew a dev who just copied raven field twice and then copied among us X sea of thrievrs and he sold well both times. It’s sketchy and unoriginal but it works
As a solo indie developer, the dream of creating a game that truly feels like your own can feel bittersweet. I would love nothing more than to have custom 3D models that match my vision, but the truth is, I don’t enjoy 3D modeling. It's not that I don't value it-far from it. I just don’t have the same passion for it as I do for design, storytelling, or crafting a player’s experience. And as a solo dev, time is my most precious resource. With all the skills required to bring a game to life, it feels impossible to master them all. So, I face the choice: do I save up to pay someone who can bring my vision to life, or do I use pre-made assets and work tirelessly to make them feel unique and personal? Neither option feels perfect, but it’s the reality of being one person trying to do the work of an entire team. Sometimes, I feel a twinge of guilt-like I'm not "doing enough" because I can't do it all myself. But then I remember, indie games are about heart and creativity. Whether through borrowed assets or outsourced work, my game will always reflect the passion and effort I pour into it. It’s not about doing everything; it’s about making something that feels meaningful, both to me and to the people who play it.
Gamers don’t really care, my first game which heavily uses assets sold and did way better than my latest game which heavily uses custom assets. The only public assets I used in my latest game were trees and even then I updated their textures to fit the style. My lesson is gamers care more about concept than graphics, if you want quick money and have a gray moral code then just copy another popular indie games concept like the guy in the video did.
@tingamer2508 what are your games on steam that you sold and are sucessful. I've seen you defend assest flipping like irs Jesus. Let me see the sucess you had assest flipping
> Unity engine is on the rise > Game dev flocking to Unity because it's free and they have been told that they can create great game there > Many "bad and uninspired" dev also going there for the same reason > Bad dev create bad games, the quantity? well obviously so much higher than good games created by the same engine > Unity name is falling > Unreal engine is on the rise > Game dev flocking to Unreal because it's free and they have been told that they can create great game there > Many "bad and uninspired" dev also going there for the same reason > Bad dev create bad games, the quantity? well obviously so much higher than good games created by the same engine > Unreal name is falling
I think there’s a slight bit of jealousy with unreal engine games looking very good with minimal effort compared to other engines. When people say “they all look the same” they mean they all are high fidelity with great lighting
Honestly, that's my suspicion too... because I don't really get what this "Unreal" look is that people keep complaining about. When the video used the Hogwarts Legacy game as an example, I was just thinking "I mean, it looks like most AAA games do, regardless if they're in Unreal or not." Like, it makes me think "do they see games like Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West and assume those were made in Unreal too?"
@@SkylerFoxx-GameDev Yeah I think it’s the case. Usually when I see a game and think that it might be an Unreal Engine game it’s because I just associate a certain level of visual quality with games in that engine. It’s not like they all use same assets. It’s just fairly easy to make a game look great in Unreal with its tools vs Unity or another engine. I’m a big fan of this channel but i think this statement is incorrect. I really doubt someone in Unity trying to make a realistic high fidelity game would pass up having their game “look like Unreal Engine games”
Its less about visual fidelity result, but more about pattern recognition and the amount of work/skills it takes to achieve it. And player associate good game with high skills developers. Years ago, "High Visual Fidelity" used to be associated with "High Competency" (High Visual -> Skilled Dev -> Good Game), but now any typical middle school kid can make a shitty game that looks great on UE5 with sample projects and Megascan. So not only that visual fidelity is not a good indicator for good game anymore, but with more shitty UE5 game being released, these lazy default UE5 visual fidelity looks get associated with bad game instead (Default UE Looks -> Noob Dev -> Bad Game). Just like how Unity Splash screen used to be associated with Bad Games in the old days.
@ I agree the graphics don’t dictate if a game is good but I’m not sure if I agree with a typical middle school kid being able to create a game in UE. UE is probably more difficult overall than a lot of other engines, just easier to make look good.
@@mjoffball Making something that can be considered a complete "game" in UE5 is way easier than Unity/Godot lol, you can just use blueprint, no prior knowledge or code needed. Just look up the amount of "how to make UE game with Blueprint" courses and near complete Project Template out there. Builtin 1st/3rd person controller on default UE are way better and more complete than any other engine, just think of simple game like "Only Up!", you barely need any coding knowledge there if you make it in UE5 lol.
As an unreal engine user, i can understand the generic feel of most games being pushed out, especially when devs mesh different packages as well that dont fit together just to push the game out. Asset flip games definitely are easy to see. That being said for demo use i dont think it's as big a problem and almost necessary to use assets just to get a general idea of what the game is gonna be. I actually only use unreal marketplace free for the month assets or paid assets from the marketplace as i have the licenses showing i can use them that way. Another way i kind of use assets that look different is i customize the look by changing materials on each individual part of a model to have similar stylized looks that the "photo realistic" scanned look. I am making more of a stylized game and dont enjoy the "realism" feature of a lot of these unreal assets out there
Not all UE games look like that. games that don't have much effort into their graphics will look like that, but if you really put in time to make good graphics it looks photorealistic
not fan of the megascans, I'm after a more stylized designed so that's why im fortunate enough to have learned 3D arts and have background experience in the field before jumping into game dev. And now I'm working as a VFX tech artist. another crucial skill in game development
The question is: does it look that way cause it's Unreal or AAA? My game, Lockes The Thief, was made in Unreal and people tend to think it was made in Unity.
I often got the feeling, that people are just envy or hate big companies .... and that could be the main reasons they talk bad about Unreal and call the looks "generic". Btw, Lockes looks great. ^^
As someone who primarily level designs in Unreal engine; Its all about art style and what the artist does with the tools in front of them. Cant blame it primarily on the tools.
There are many stylized games with insanely detailed textures that have unique looks made with unreal , Borderlands, Street fighter kingdom hearts..... I work in software but even I struggled for years with unity, so I jumped into unreal it was clear all the assets are placeholder this encouraged me to learn more about art lighting and rendering , even 3d modeling. Unreal 5 is extremely user friendly I don't even know c++. I invest all my spare time away from work doing art now, but still make fun software. Maybe its a hot take but I think unreal is an untapped and overlooked resource for the less technical and beginners
so out of all the developers in the world to chat with, you picked a guy whose sole claim to fame is ripping off a game designed by bennet foddy 15 years ago. Yes, sounds like the perfect guy to ask about what might be 'harmful to games'
Ma take on it is that baseline performance of the engine is bad enough so developers have to do a lot of little and not-so optimisations and trying to make up for it with other tech like lumen and nanite, so we get that look
People have been calling out UE games for looking like UE games for almost two decades. And it's true, UE has a look. Granted, this also depends on art direction--the concept a lot of people fail to discuss when saying UE games all look the same. But honestly I've always found that 'look' to be some of the best looking games of all time. Many of the most gorgeous games are developed in UE. I think that trend will continue.
Unreal looks the same because the built in tools are such high quality most devs spend the time on other things. Ue5 has their source code available to change yourself also. I personally built my own custom version of unreal to work with my aws servers better.
UE lighting is waaay less customizable than Unity. That’s for sure. Just to get a proper toon shading without weird less than ideal hacks you have to customize the engine code, something probably way too hard for many indie devs.
You can add toon shading with a Post Process material if needed. Same as the lighting; alot of indie devs just don't look into customising it as it looks great out the box, but the options are there.
Unreals rendering engine isn’t neutral, it pushes towards enhanced realism. Unity 3d has its own style same with godot. It’s just how the rendering engines are coded. You can adjust the tone mapper and PBR styles though to sorta customize that.
i mean I've seen a multi million dollar games that use like the most cheapest models 😂 it comes down to the game as the product rather than the stuff used, i guess it's how you use it
Like explained in the video, I just feel like doing some sort of work of your own, has that “from you” feel to it. I’m not knocking grabbing assets from any store. I just think honing your skill in Blender or any other software, gives you a more creative feel to it.
It's all down to artists and artistic choice imho. Aint no one looking at the persona games and saying "you know what, this looks so much like Hogwarts Legacy". Unreal is a canvas and a set of brushes, devs decide what picture they want to paint.
I remember very vividly having the "it looks like an unreal game" about 5 or so years ago but with Unity. I would always go oh another unity game cool I guess. unreal is going to be used for better stuff but the devs have to want to spend the time re-coding the source code and not just use it vanilla. for small studios this isn't necessarily feasible some times. but when you have every AA and there brother jumping on the unreal train they need to look to customization for their art direction.
I understand his paranoia with store assets but, Only Up assets were free for personal use (tutorials/self-learning), yet the assets were use for a commercial game. all epic assets bought from Epic Store have a default license for commercial use (IN A GAME) you cannot re sale the assets themselves.
I watched the Podcast the other day but I wanted to say that this format of video is fantastic, i don’t always have time to watch or listen to an entire podcast so it’s great to get these kinds of snippets from them. I also agree that your content can be revolved around your Podcast and you should focus on that. It’s definitely the strongest part of your channel and if you are enjoying that aspect you should focus on it.
I think it is totally legitimate to use other assets or even just simple dummies when creating a concept or playing around with game mechanics. I come from a VFX background and asset recycling is nothing rare in that area. A game developer is also not necessarily a good artist. Just as I am very good at 3D modeling but totally suck at coding, complex logics, maths and basically everything nonvisual. I think if the core concept is about a gameplay mechanic or a certain type of gameplay, the graphics and presentation can be completely janky as long as the concept get across. There are numerous games that totally work even though their assets are more convenient than original. But when you want to create a character, a stylized world and your concept includes a clean and polished presentation and some kind of memorable visual storytelling, I think it would just not do such a project justice to rush and cut corners. But at the end of the day, especially when you are an indie developer without a big budget, I guess getting the project done should be primary objective. I think it is somewhat a matter of one's individual aspiration and standard.
All games look the same if done professionally and made specifically look like a mix between overwatch and Fortnite. It comes from the texturing workflow and art direction. Some reasons based on optimization. It is easier to scale down a stylized looking surface than some realistic texture. That goes for stylized. Quixel brought lots of badly made scanned assets and textures which as is in most cases not really physically correct, and materials are kinda junky. Plus foliage is not optimized for Nanite/lumen. Still out of box lighting is sort of correct. Like in movies it is based on real life properties. Which led to the second problem lack of what in movies would be cinematography director. But one which understands specifics of real time rendering. And can work with a good art director to establish THE LOOK. Have the look set and stylized assets or realistic - you will have a good looking picture which will give you the original feel. So in short - Art Direction is what makes the look. And understanding of available tech to be able make what will actually look good
The way I see it, consistently mediocre assets look better than an inconsistent mix of good and bad assets. The new Need for Speed game is a good example of this. The cars and materials look good, but the foliage and some models look terrible, and it throws it all off. Asset packs tend to introduce this. Also, Pontypants, my offer still stands if you want help porting Punch A Bunch to Linux/Mobile.
Nothing wrong with Store Bought Assets, but they come with caveats. I'd argue to release with the assets you can afford/make and if you can make enough money, go back and replace the marketplace assets with custom assets. Unity has a look as well, its just popular assets being used as art placeholders and or good enough. If it were up to me all games would be made entirely of primitives and the cubes would fight to the death!
Unreal engine is easy to get something that looks good right out of box. I had to build stylized shades and my own lighting solution to break away from the ue5 look. Not against assets but they are over used and flooded the marketplace which does suck
When you said that you where paroniad i felt so bad for you because twisted towers is one of the games im most excited for you can never have enough bioshock and i also feel like your game is different enough
To this day, I still haven't played Bioshock. Maybe after playing your will become my gateway to Bioshock. The same way HZD was my gateway to the Witcher.
I am happy your 3d artist refused to use assets. I'm a 3D artist and honestly, if you hire a 3D artist and tell them "only use assets" is like a restaurant hiring a chef and telling them "only use the microwave". It's not only insulting, it's soul crushing.
Lightning? Also, no art direction. Artistically or rather aesthetically, genres make the vision only go in one direction. I hate this because I'm using Unreal Engine 4 STILL and to prove that you don't need 5 to make a good looking game.
He said "yea it only took me a year..." as though that wasn't an impressive feat in of itself😂😂 Overall beautiful and brilliant game man, don't discredit yourself for using a 'similar look,' that doesn’t take away from the dedication, discipline, and effort you put into creating something that's uniquely yours. Amazing work, man!
Why is this even a discussion ? If you have made games before you'll know to recognize the engine it was built in. When games use the same engine of course they will have similar looks. Most games lack the scope/budget to customize the graphics or the lighting engine so yeah you are going to get a lot of games that have a familiar look. Take Unity for example. If you've built more than 2 games in Unity you will be able to recognize a game made in Unity from a 360p screenshot
PontyPants is right, look at marvel rivals it totally has unreal engine 5 look, same with black myth wukong. just check these two they look exactly the same and they are so generic :))
I understand where people are coming from. I understand the fully asset flip games are trash and need to stop. But im not bothered at all by a new solo dev making a game using all free assets for a game and it looks "unreal enginey" IF its a unique and fun game. Dont forget HOW MUCH WORK making a game is. How many hats you have to wear.
im honestly sick of people calling games realistic. they just aren't, we're nowhere near that, you just look at games from 5 years ago that were told to be ultra-realistic and they look goofy today. we're very very far away from games actually being realistic. anytime someone says a game is going for "realism" now, i know its a game i wont play, because if thats all it has going for it, i already know it doesnt have anything to it then.
Everything is being homogenized with Unreal. Between assets and blueprints, mechanics and looks are just being reused and everything just looks and feels the same.
The problem is I think indeed not really the engine but, as stated before in the comments, being lazy and not changing the default settings for light, water ect. This is not very hard to do and if customizing these settings u can quickly create your very own unique look for your Unreal Engine game. Same goes with Unity, Godot ect. Too many devs just use the out of the box settings so of course the games will then have a characteristic look connected to that game engine because it is that particular engines default settings.
One thing nobody ever brings up is Epic's choice to always have a cloudy looking lighting system since the og Unreal Tournament. It's very easy to spot but I think people are trying to over explain it. I think that's the main culprit. As a Ue5 dev it was hard to try to have my game not have this look, and I wasn't able to completely remove it from my game. Games using id's various engines throughout the years do not have this.
1.56 what was that about lol!! Anyway I am finally returned back to UNREAL and will be making all assets for my game. I cannot be using stuff people can see in every other game. Thats just me.
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I think a part of the problem is that unreal engine 5 looks so good out of the box it doesn’t incentivise devs to change the look of their game.
That exactly, my game (release mid summer 2025) does not give you a small hint, that its using ue5.5. i work 2 years on it, and in that time for fun i made some projects, to get own styles. It really is in YOUR hands as a dev, how the game looks. And in unreal you can really change EVERYTHING.
@@Punisher1992 Awesome
The problem is that most game dev companies don't want to retopologize their assets to match their game style.
If you saw Project Feline and it's incredible art style you woould be suprised that it was made with Unreal Engine 4 instead of 5.
That's how you get to see that using assets isn't the problem, the problem is big companies are more concerned about making tight deadlines than paying attention to art style.
Indie Devs stand out now cause they pay more attention to style than most new large companies.
@@Punisher1992 i have a question, how can i make a game that tends to realism but still has personality? you know batman arkham city is realistic, but isn't soulless
@@Fnale_Studios i would start with unique looking post process effects, change colour grading and stuff. Play around with it, find your own Style. BUT Arkham games arent fully realistic either. Characters have a certain style.
As an unreal dev, "realistic" tends to have a samy look, because it looks "real" and uses the default lighting engine. In unreal, you can customize ANYTHING. People just don't sometimes so you get the default look. It's just because realistic is like a default path for unreal
For sure
True. You can make cel shading, toony, anime, low poly and many more
can you disable TAA and get sharper details? all UE games look blurry
@@huydinh3395 yes
@@huydinh3395 Facts
A large part of the "Unreal Engine Look" is because people don't really modify the Tonemapper/Post Processing settings, Lighting/Sky Atmosphere settings, TSR (sucks) settings along with using (mismatching) Assets without even modifying their Textures or just general Material settings (too much specular)
for REAL. also often its just all the same motion blur, and other movement stuff. camera feel matters a ton.
i need to learn about this to set the game im currently making apart from others. can you point me in the right direction to start learning about these things?? i would appreciate it
THIS! Most people dont have an artistic vision in term of "visuals" so they stick to basic default parameters. You can achive whatever look you want with ue
@@p1xelshooter287 I would probably start with the YT videos from Visual Tech Art with Eros who goes over the fundamentals and just released a video going over how you can use PBR but stylised.
@ bet
The engine doesn't set the art style, the game designer does so it's weird to hear the implication that there's just an Unreal look. The same can be said for so a number of games done in Unity. Again, that isn't the result of Unity as an engine it's the decision of the designer or team that determine art style and lighting. People are playing PontyPant's game because it's unique & fun which is what's been lost from so much of our industry as focus has shifted to ray tracing, and AA techniques, and GI and on and on instead of just pure Fun. There's no shortage of games that aesthetically aren't going to win any awards, but they're a hell of a lot of fun to play and at the end of the day that's the only reason games exist.
That’s true but the main topic here was asset flipping, and those types of games tend to not be great.
No the rendering engine does change how a game looks, this is one reason AAA games use custom engines a lot of times because it gives them a unique feel.
Well that’s the problem with general purpose engines. Days Gone and Stalker 2 are two examples where unreal engine was heavily modified where they cratered their own assets and still those games have the unreal engine look and feel to them. It’s just inherent to the engine. Games made in frostbite will look like games made in frostbite engine. Games made in cryengine look like cryengine nomatter what
@@tingamer2508 no - this is false. The engine sets the limits or boundaries of the look - but it does not set the look. The look is in the art assets and the shaders. And you have to create those for every game. No one would claim Yoshi's Crafted World looks the same as Gears of War.
I can take a game made in Godot, and make it look EXACTLY the same in UE5. What they are talking about here is asset flips and possibly just leaving the default temporal aliasing on .
(Source: I'm a AAA rendering dev).
having a stylized game in unreal is key. reengineering assets vs flipping assets.
Exactly, if you retexture assets no one will ever recognize them even if they found the asset you used. I’ve taken a Superman model, put a custom helmet on and retextures and it looks completely different.
@@tingamer2508 yeah ive done things like that. going back and forth for unreal to blender sometimes.
The issue a lot of people make a living off selling assets, and we are demonizing it. Yes less crap will hit the market, but also more of the good idea games arent going to get finished. Everyone should learn the art and actually flip it like he said change textures, tweak things, but yes model your hero assets.
Not demonizing. Stating the hard truth: standing out is tough right now. Making your own custom style is a good way to stand out :)
I think it should be demonizing. It takes awhile money from artists to work on full flege projects. Also with the legality issues and at the end of the day the end customer will not appreciate it. Last time I checked every indie game developer goal is to make the customer happy so you do the hard work to get the amazing rewards.
I think framing this as an Unreal Engine problem is kinda disingenuous, and it's weird to me that you would take this stance as a Unity user. I'm sure you'd remember it wasn't that long ago when Unity was similarly slammed for "all being asset flips." I get the sentiment of "you don't want your game to look generic," but it's really weird when that's painted as "it's a problem with the engine."
Much like years ago when Unity was getting slammed for this, I could point out several games that were made in Unity that people had no idea about, I can do the same thing with Unreal. I still see people consistently surprised when I tell them games like Epic Mickey, Persona 3 Reload, Bravely Default, Ender Lillies, Octopath Traveler, etc. were made in Unreal.
Its definitely a uniquely unreal problem as more and more large dev teams and companies adopt unreal and just tweak the engine to their needs. Unity does not have that adoption. More and more AAA titles have the unreal look and some companies barely change the default animations anymore.
Urgh. Thomas, no! Purchasing assets on a marketplace to use in your game is NOT asset flipping. I thought you knew this. We don’t need to encourage more gamers and developers to think that using assets is a bad thing. The AAA industry does it all the time. Just don’t be lazy about it.
I feel like more people need to talk about that because so many people such as myself just starting stresses about making your own assets when I might only be good at making weapons and not armor or building blocks for levels yet but marketplace assets really help fill in those gaps in all of our skill levels
if you have multiple assets you need to harmonize their art style to make a coherence whole and that sometimes is more effort than just making the the asset from scratch.
players sometimes get jaded when they see the same assets unedited inside a lot of games.
Issue is, you start to recognize assets from game to game and this, depending on what it is, can be incredibly immersion breaking.
Take for example, a sword. That's fine. It is a sword. i need not say more.
On the other hand we say we have a unique quest item, specific to the universe and story, and here we are using this same ladle prop from this cooking simulator i played the other day.
Kind of wild example but i exaggerated to make the point clear.
If you're gonna asset flip, it's gotta be used specifically for filler material or like... world and environmental assets, set pieces, scenes and such.
Not something that should be unique
I get the point you're making, but using AAA as any kind of standard these days is not wise.
That's literally the definition of asset flipping. Make your own assets. If you have gaps in your skills, fill them.
1:20 No actually they use paid assets for free, they pirated it and they didn't have the required license.
if using free assets would make trouble, most of the games on steam would be gone until now.
The high-profile AAA Unreal games tend to all go for realisim cause consumers think more real equal more better, and that gets the most attention. (which ends up feeding into public perception)
But there a lot of Unreal games with diverse styles. Fortnite, nintendo games(pikmin4,peach,yoshi,mario & luigi), nightmare kart, borderlands, hi fi rush, etc.
A more legit criticism of unreal is that it can be a pain for a non photorealistic artstyle if post processing, shader, and the built-in lighting models doesn't suffice. Writing your own lighting model requires 200gb Unreal Source code and lots of shader compilation from my research.
Unreal is just a tool at the end of the day. It's easier for realistic out of the box but you aren't forced to use the crazy high end features.
unreals source code is like 9 gigs...? iirc, most of it comes from the debug symbols, not from the actual source code
@snesmocha sounds about right, I've not personally done it myself so just what I've looked into online when researching.
Another problem is the closer things look to real life the more our brains think we are able to interact with it. and unfortunatly better graphics means there are fewer objects that are interactable.
an example of this could be:
I made a game, in in this game I have a room with nothing in it except for a box you can pick up you can open it, inside theres maby another item. contrast this with a room filled with hundreds of high quality Assets cups, boxes, chairs a table ect... now in this room with an incredible amount of assets and visuals you cant pick up anything, nothing is interactable.
which is the better as a game. same with AI art its too clean it looks the same and at the back of your mind you know it took almost no skill to produce.
I'm pretty sure I once heard somebody say "don't make games too realistic" and I couldn't recall why, but this makes sense! Personally, the realism genre is quite boring unless you push in some stylization as well. Why I wanna play a game thats close to my own reality? Games were usually a way to "forget about reality". Now we're being reminded by it with these graphics instead lol
Interactivity is huge. There's nothing that breaks the immersion faster for me than a realistic looking game where characters and the environment interact like cardboard cutouts. I've been super impressed with playing AstroBot recently not because it's super realistic but the interactivity is next level. Hundreds of physics based objects lying on a glass floor which shatters when you walk over it, sending objects falling and scattering everywhere as you go. It's a sight to behold!
As a solo dev making a realistic 3d game i feel using ue5 assets is the way to go for me as I come from a programming background.
If you make a good game, nobody cares if it has the "Unreal look".
@@Tekkai50 Assets will be waaay better than programmer art anyway. So the right choice is a no brainer for some of us;)
One thing I highly recommend doing is brushing up on the science of art. Google color theory(use a color picker app), rule of 3, height variation, and scene composition techniques.
One thing that tremendously helped me was taking a screenshot from apex legends since they use a couple assets per environment and just highlighting why it looked good and all the tricks they used.
@@Tekkai50 Palworld for example, is a massive Hit
@@Tekkai50 the unreal look is basically someone not changing anything in the settings and use the default that came with it. Is kind of like the default Cryengine And Unity look if you don't touch anything. In other words: not putting much effort in your game's art style.
Its all because of the lighting. Thing is the lighting is hyper customizable out of the box, but no one customizes it. At least not people who want to put out an asset flip game.
As a 3D artist who has been creating their own assets and also photographing many of the key textures, there are def some assets that I am happy not to make. Foliage being one of them haha. But it is wild to see people are doing entire games with asset flips, I don't understand it. Perhaps it is the dynamic between artists and programmers, and both valuing different things more.
Think of it a bit like a movie studio that reuses props and locations. If handled correctly it can be done without raising red flags. It's about art direction, gameplay, tone, etc.
There's asset from marketplaces in ALL AAA games. There's a difference between cherry picking some decent ones to carefully integrate them into your game and taking a bunch of different assets and just calling it a day.
That’s highly unlikely given how strict games are with their technical budgets, they usually make stuff in house because they have the resources and it keeps their multi platform frame budget in check with consistent poly counts/LODs, consistent draw calls, consistent code, and consistent art style. Buying an asset would likely require retopoligizing, making LODs, retexturing, and remaking the materials/shaders. It’s easier and cheaper to just have a junior artist make the prop.
Funny enough, the climbing game looks as generic as it gets to me. I will prefer the Unreal look anytime over this.
Yeah, him throwing stones in glass houses was difficult to listen to. What insane hubris and ego.
I thought exactly the same.
Not the point. His game has it's own art style, yes i don't like it too but it doesn't look like an asset flip which is the main issue at the moment with tons of games. I agree with them, i rather see you made your own assets then flip the unreal engine assets and have that Unreal look which is getting worse and worse.
@@HexYan His point is that the Unreal look is bad because it makes your game look generic. And his game looks generic. That's the issue.
I disagree with his assessment that a “good but unreal 5” look is worse than a bad look. The majority of gamers like unreal engines rendering, the issue is if your environments are bland and uninspired.
If it’s just a grassy field that looks good with some old buildings it will turn off people but if there is interesting and unique environments people will buy it.
In contrast, a great example of an Unreal Engine game is Lies of P. Strong art-direction with tons of original assets. Also surprisingly optimized for an UE game, the director said they put a lot of effort into optimization.
Thomas bumping the mic repeatedly keeps making me think someone is stealing my couch downstairs
Part of the issue with UE games looking the same is that the engine doesn't have a good modular shading model (BSDF) system. You basically gotta hack together a 200GB source code build of the engine just for decent artist controlled toon shading (post processing isn't nearly as flexible enough) that can react to the engine's lighting systems.
They haven't put much work into the engine's forward renderer, which means that you're going to make massive compromises going with that for clean visuals (with MSAA) thanks to that mainly being relegated for VR stuff. The workaround people used to get lighting and reflection information for materials has sadly been removed from the forward renderer as well.
I don't even want to know what kind of black magic it took the Wuthering Waves developers to have full toon shading with per-material properties and that can have dynamic shadows. The guides for adding that stuff into the engine via C++ is already long and convoluted.
PS: hogwart legacy was 4.27, not 5, which is actually a little impressive because they didn’t benefit all the UE5 tech, power wise.
Another issue with the visuals in UE5 is that the out of the box optimization with lighting, anti aliasing, and nanite are not optimal and big studios who’s attitude towards choosing UE5 as an engine comes from the same mindset that puts less value in fine tuning the settings for those features and smaller indie devs either don’t have the time or priority to spend resources and time tweaking those features.
One thing I reckon that also contributes to that assetflippety-feel is that different asset creating artists use different software, have different workflow and workspaces and just in general have different feels for scale. Which means that if the dev utilizing those assets isn't careful with rescaling the objects it can look off when things come in slightly off sizes.
Haha, that zoom on your face for "mmhmm" legit made me lol. Very unexpected.
It's not the tool it's the people using it. You can do whatever you want in Unreal, it's just that it sells itself as "realism made easy". And so a lot of people use it for that reason. But the truth is you can do any style you want, cartoon, cellshading, you name it.
Just look at Hi-Fi Rush, it was made with unreal but it looks nothing like "the Unreal look".
Really good take
Same with Marvel Rivals. Completely stylised with a comic book esque feel, fun gameplay, you'd have no idea it was made in Unreal (reminds me of Sea of Thieves). The issue is the performance which is currently horrific but I hope they do fix it. I get like 50 fps on 4K with a 6950xt lmao so upscaling is required. And TAA blur in a competitive game is a bit ridiculous.
An asset flip game is where you take a ton of premade stuff and then toss them in and sell it for money without thought to actual gameplay. That is different from USING premade assets.
I'm probably going to use some premade stuff, but edit it to make it different.
What I've learned from being a creative in music and photography is your concern, the issues reflected here, is an industry issue inside your head. If your target audience is game creators then your issue is valid. If your target audience is the consumer, then you're beating your head against a wall for nothing.
Honestly the thing that sells me on UE5 has never been the graphics and assets, it's been how easy it is to put all the pieces together.
Literally everything, an entire game, an entire project can be done within the engine editor, its actually possible, and somewhat viable quite frankly.
No other engine can even hold a candle to that.
Unity comes close.
I'd say cryengine was also pretty good when it was at it's peak.
But then you start looking at things like Godot, which work great, but have tons of quirks & often time have to work outside of the editor.
Go even further to things like the dagor engine, it is a great engine but getting into it is not easy. No editor, no gui, build from source, via git.... you practically gotta be a linux power user to understand how to even get started with it.
Most people simply prefer simplicity & gui.
Ue5 also, despite common meme themes, has some GREAT optimization tools if you actually use them and incorporate them into your codes, blueprints & world building.
Unreal games looking the same is no issue. Maybe our world looks the same too. What makes everything different is gameplay, creating lovely environments, and you can also color grade your game.
Love the clip style format, hope you do more of these.
Thank you! I'm thinking 1-2 clips per podcast. What do you think?
@@thomasbrush i think thats reasonable
The Climbing game looks a lot like Bennett Foddy, but not exactly Getting Over It, but actually GIRP. It looks like a spiritual successor to it.
Explain the difference between buying an asset for $50 and editing it for use vs hiring creators to create your assets for $50,000? Aside from exclusivity rights it's usually just nowhere near as accessible. The reason I won't be making my own assets is because I don't have that kind of time or money. I can't work a normal job and learn unreal engine and master 3D modeling in any amount of reasonable time.
I wish I had started in my 20s but that's not the case. I want to exit my current job and become a game developer but I'm not willing to spend 10 years double crunching trying to make my first game because I want it to look different from other Unreal Engine games. I want to get one out the door, get some funding for other projects and hope I can go from there.
For people that are looking high-quality assets you either are going to do it yourself or pay someone, at the end of the day taking a sec to download a megascan is extremely intuitive.
The lighting is almost always similar. Before, when games didn’t have accurate dynamic lighting, the environments felt completely unreal but STYLISED. However, with modern lighting, it works the same on almost every game
Totally agree. Mediocre lighting forces creative environment design
Please make more podcast like content, I LOVE IT
UE is a great engine but too many developers who use it have no sense of art direction or stylisation. The greatest of the most realistic looking games have good colour grading, production design, and stylisation of the final image. Like great movies they should have artistic direction not just a sterile and boring attempt to recreate reality. We’ve got reality already. That’s not what art is.
But in this case its not the problem of the tools, but the person that use it. If their game has no sense of art direction or stylisation that's just that, they lack a sense of art direction no matter what engine they use.
After looking at how much of a concept flip PontyPants's game is to Getting Over It and Thomas's sentiment towards AI generated assets, I just... okay, that was an opinion I guess.
Just about everyone will be using ai for 2d content at least when Adobe Turntable(or a similar program) comes out. So much nuance with ai, so tired of people painting it with such a broad negative brush. You can even make a lora with just your own art. The amount of time it saves is incredible.
Yeah, he was riding off the existing large fanbase of getting over it. I knew a dev who just copied raven field twice and then copied among us X sea of thrievrs and he sold well both times. It’s sketchy and unoriginal but it works
As a solo indie developer, the dream of creating a game that truly feels like your own can feel bittersweet. I would love nothing more than to have custom 3D models that match my vision, but the truth is, I don’t enjoy 3D modeling. It's not that I don't value it-far from it. I just don’t have the same passion for it as I do for design, storytelling, or crafting a player’s experience. And as a solo dev, time is my most precious resource.
With all the skills required to bring a game to life, it feels impossible to master them all. So, I face the choice: do I save up to pay someone who can bring my vision to life, or do I use pre-made assets and work tirelessly to make them feel unique and personal? Neither option feels perfect, but it’s the reality of being one person trying to do the work of an entire team.
Sometimes, I feel a twinge of guilt-like I'm not "doing enough" because I can't do it all myself. But then I remember, indie games are about heart and creativity. Whether through borrowed assets or outsourced work, my game will always reflect the passion and effort I pour into it. It’s not about doing everything; it’s about making something that feels meaningful, both to me and to the people who play it.
Gamers don’t really care, my first game which heavily uses assets sold and did way better than my latest game which heavily uses custom assets. The only public assets I used in my latest game were trees and even then I updated their textures to fit the style.
My lesson is gamers care more about concept than graphics, if you want quick money and have a gray moral code then just copy another popular indie games concept like the guy in the video did.
@tingamer2508 what are your games on steam that you sold and are sucessful. I've seen you defend assest flipping like irs Jesus. Let me see the sucess you had assest flipping
I am happy that the speakers actually own up and disagree by some claims.
I’m trying to disagree more, even if these folks are my heroes
@@thomasbrush Discussion sparks ideas, Sheep only follow the flock.
Being a UE Dev. I need more stuff like this.
Don't get me wrong guys
> Unity engine is on the rise
> Game dev flocking to Unity because it's free and they have been told that they can create great game there
> Many "bad and uninspired" dev also going there for the same reason
> Bad dev create bad games, the quantity? well obviously so much higher than good games created by the same engine
> Unity name is falling
> Unreal engine is on the rise
> Game dev flocking to Unreal because it's free and they have been told that they can create great game there
> Many "bad and uninspired" dev also going there for the same reason
> Bad dev create bad games, the quantity? well obviously so much higher than good games created by the same engine
> Unreal name is falling
I think there’s a slight bit of jealousy with unreal engine games looking very good with minimal effort compared to other engines. When people say “they all look the same” they mean they all are high fidelity with great lighting
Honestly, that's my suspicion too... because I don't really get what this "Unreal" look is that people keep complaining about. When the video used the Hogwarts Legacy game as an example, I was just thinking "I mean, it looks like most AAA games do, regardless if they're in Unreal or not." Like, it makes me think "do they see games like Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West and assume those were made in Unreal too?"
@@SkylerFoxx-GameDev Yeah I think it’s the case. Usually when I see a game and think that it might be an Unreal Engine game it’s because I just associate a certain level of visual quality with games in that engine. It’s not like they all use same assets. It’s just fairly easy to make a game look great in Unreal with its tools vs Unity or another engine. I’m a big fan of this channel but i think this statement is incorrect. I really doubt someone in Unity trying to make a realistic high fidelity game would pass up having their game “look like Unreal Engine games”
Its less about visual fidelity result, but more about pattern recognition and the amount of work/skills it takes to achieve it. And player associate good game with high skills developers.
Years ago, "High Visual Fidelity" used to be associated with "High Competency" (High Visual -> Skilled Dev -> Good Game), but now any typical middle school kid can make a shitty game that looks great on UE5 with sample projects and Megascan. So not only that visual fidelity is not a good indicator for good game anymore, but with more shitty UE5 game being released, these lazy default UE5 visual fidelity looks get associated with bad game instead (Default UE Looks -> Noob Dev -> Bad Game). Just like how Unity Splash screen used to be associated with Bad Games in the old days.
@ I agree the graphics don’t dictate if a game is good but I’m not sure if I agree with a typical middle school kid being able to create a game in UE. UE is probably more difficult overall than a lot of other engines, just easier to make look good.
@@mjoffball Making something that can be considered a complete "game" in UE5 is way easier than Unity/Godot lol, you can just use blueprint, no prior knowledge or code needed. Just look up the amount of "how to make UE game with Blueprint" courses and near complete Project Template out there.
Builtin 1st/3rd person controller on default UE are way better and more complete than any other engine, just think of simple game like "Only Up!", you barely need any coding knowledge there if you make it in UE5 lol.
As an unreal engine user, i can understand the generic feel of most games being pushed out, especially when devs mesh different packages as well that dont fit together just to push the game out. Asset flip games definitely are easy to see. That being said for demo use i dont think it's as big a problem and almost necessary to use assets just to get a general idea of what the game is gonna be.
I actually only use unreal marketplace free for the month assets or paid assets from the marketplace as i have the licenses showing i can use them that way. Another way i kind of use assets that look different is i customize the look by changing materials on each individual part of a model to have similar stylized looks that the "photo realistic" scanned look. I am making more of a stylized game and dont enjoy the "realism" feature of a lot of these unreal assets out there
Not all UE games look like that. games that don't have much effort into their graphics will look like that, but if you really put in time to make good graphics it looks photorealistic
not fan of the megascans, I'm after a more stylized designed so that's why im fortunate enough to have learned 3D arts and have background experience in the field before jumping into game dev. And now I'm working as a VFX tech artist. another crucial skill in game development
The question is: does it look that way cause it's Unreal or AAA?
My game, Lockes The Thief, was made in Unreal and people tend to think it was made in Unity.
I often got the feeling, that people are just envy or hate big companies .... and that could be the main reasons they talk bad about Unreal and call the looks "generic".
Btw, Lockes looks great. ^^
@@paluxyl.8682 you might be right...
And thank you! It was my first game!
As someone who primarily level designs in Unreal engine; Its all about art style and what the artist does with the tools in front of them. Cant blame it primarily on the tools.
UNreal has become what Unity was from years, but for a most (maybe) critical reason... the world turns
There are many stylized games with insanely detailed textures that have unique looks made with unreal , Borderlands, Street fighter kingdom hearts..... I work in software but even I struggled for years with unity, so I jumped into unreal it was clear all the assets are placeholder this encouraged me to learn more about art lighting and rendering , even 3d modeling. Unreal 5 is extremely user friendly I don't even know c++. I invest all my spare time away from work doing art now, but still make fun software. Maybe its a hot take but I think unreal is an untapped and overlooked resource for the less technical and beginners
I rather think, 95% of devs of Unreal-games never ever even changed one of the default settings of the lighting or ect.
so out of all the developers in the world to chat with, you picked a guy whose sole claim to fame is ripping off a game designed by bennet foddy 15 years ago. Yes, sounds like the perfect guy to ask about what might be 'harmful to games'
Ma take on it is that baseline performance of the engine is bad enough so developers have to do a lot of little and not-so optimisations and trying to make up for it with other tech like lumen and nanite, so we get that look
wow talk about synchronicity. I was just looking to switch over to the unreal engine. thank you for uploading this video today!
People have been calling out UE games for looking like UE games for almost two decades. And it's true, UE has a look. Granted, this also depends on art direction--the concept a lot of people fail to discuss when saying UE games all look the same. But honestly I've always found that 'look' to be some of the best looking games of all time. Many of the most gorgeous games are developed in UE. I think that trend will continue.
Unreal looks the same because the built in tools are such high quality most devs spend the time on other things. Ue5 has their source code available to change yourself also. I personally built my own custom version of unreal to work with my aws servers better.
UE lighting is waaay less customizable than Unity. That’s for sure. Just to get a proper toon shading without weird less than ideal hacks you have to customize the engine code, something probably way too hard for many indie devs.
You can add toon shading with a Post Process material if needed. Same as the lighting; alot of indie devs just don't look into customising it as it looks great out the box, but the options are there.
Unreals rendering engine isn’t neutral, it pushes towards enhanced realism. Unity 3d has its own style same with godot. It’s just how the rendering engines are coded. You can adjust the tone mapper and PBR styles though to sorta customize that.
i mean I've seen a multi million dollar games that use like the most cheapest models 😂 it comes down to the game as the product rather than the stuff used, i guess it's how you use it
Like explained in the video, I just feel like doing some sort of work of your own, has that “from you” feel to it. I’m not knocking grabbing assets from any store. I just think honing your skill in Blender or any other software, gives you a more creative feel to it.
Yo what is the song in the intro, it’s so funky
"Why does Unreal engine have that look?"
What?.. you don't like Neat Look 🗿
It's all down to artists and artistic choice imho. Aint no one looking at the persona games and saying "you know what, this looks so much like Hogwarts Legacy". Unreal is a canvas and a set of brushes, devs decide what picture they want to paint.
As a guy who tried both engines for years, Unreal Engine is Trap for solo Developers
I remember very vividly having the "it looks like an unreal game" about 5 or so years ago but with Unity. I would always go oh another unity game cool I guess. unreal is going to be used for better stuff but the devs have to want to spend the time re-coding the source code and not just use it vanilla. for small studios this isn't necessarily feasible some times. but when you have every AA and there brother jumping on the unreal train they need to look to customization for their art direction.
I understand his paranoia with store assets but, Only Up assets were free for personal use (tutorials/self-learning), yet the assets were use for a commercial game. all epic assets bought from Epic Store have a default license for commercial use (IN A GAME) you cannot re sale the assets themselves.
I watched the Podcast the other day but I wanted to say that this format of video is fantastic, i don’t always have time to watch or listen to an entire podcast so it’s great to get these kinds of snippets from them. I also agree that your content can be revolved around your Podcast and you should focus on that. It’s definitely the strongest part of your channel and if you are enjoying that aspect you should focus on it.
I think it is totally legitimate to use other assets or even just simple dummies when creating a concept or playing around with game mechanics. I come from a VFX background and asset recycling is nothing rare in that area.
A game developer is also not necessarily a good artist. Just as I am very good at 3D modeling but totally suck at coding, complex logics, maths and basically everything nonvisual.
I think if the core concept is about a gameplay mechanic or a certain type of gameplay, the graphics and presentation can be completely janky as long as the concept get across. There are numerous games that totally work even though their assets are more convenient than original. But when you want to create a character, a stylized world and your concept includes a clean and polished presentation and some kind of memorable visual storytelling, I think it would just not do such a project justice to rush and cut corners.
But at the end of the day, especially when you are an indie developer without a big budget, I guess getting the project done should be primary objective. I think it is somewhat a matter of one's individual aspiration and standard.
actually I want the unreal look and I can't make all of the assets
All games look the same if done professionally and made specifically look like a mix between overwatch and Fortnite. It comes from the texturing workflow and art direction. Some reasons based on optimization. It is easier to scale down a stylized looking surface than some realistic texture. That goes for stylized. Quixel brought lots of badly made scanned assets and textures which as is in most cases not really physically correct, and materials are kinda junky. Plus foliage is not optimized for Nanite/lumen.
Still out of box lighting is sort of correct. Like in movies it is based on real life properties. Which led to the second problem lack of what in movies would be cinematography director. But one which understands specifics of real time rendering. And can work with a good art director to establish THE LOOK.
Have the look set and stylized assets or realistic - you will have a good looking picture which will give you the original feel.
So in short - Art Direction is what makes the look. And understanding of available tech to be able make what will actually look good
Bioshock which was made in UDK, a primitive version of Unreal. DragonBall sparking Zero, UE5. Just putting things into perspective.
It’s like all unreal engine games use the same lip stick brand it’s all oddly similar but slightly unique in color.
We can all go back and forth about why, but at the end of the day…. Most Unreal games truly do look the same. Most is the key word :)
The way I see it, consistently mediocre assets look better than an inconsistent mix of good and bad assets. The new Need for Speed game is a good example of this. The cars and materials look good, but the foliage and some models look terrible, and it throws it all off. Asset packs tend to introduce this.
Also, Pontypants, my offer still stands if you want help porting Punch A Bunch to Linux/Mobile.
Good point!
Nothing wrong with Store Bought Assets, but they come with caveats. I'd argue to release with the assets you can afford/make and if you can make enough money, go back and replace the marketplace assets with custom assets. Unity has a look as well, its just popular assets being used as art placeholders and or good enough. If it were up to me all games would be made entirely of primitives and the cubes would fight to the death!
Unreal engine is easy to get something that looks good right out of box. I had to build stylized shades and my own lighting solution to break away from the ue5 look. Not against assets but they are over used and flooded the marketplace which does suck
When you said that you where paroniad i felt so bad for you because twisted towers is one of the games im most excited for you can never have enough bioshock and i also feel like your game is different enough
Who is this "Bennet" and to which game is this one similar to?
To this day, I still haven't played Bioshock. Maybe after playing your will become my gateway to Bioshock. The same way HZD was my gateway to the Witcher.
We don't need more cartoony fortnite looking games I'll take the unreal look all day!
I am happy your 3d artist refused to use assets. I'm a 3D artist and honestly, if you hire a 3D artist and tell them "only use assets" is like a restaurant hiring a chef and telling them "only use the microwave". It's not only insulting, it's soul crushing.
I eventually learned my lesson
@thomasbrush good to hear lol if there's one thing 3D artists love more than anything, it's modelling.
Lightning? Also, no art direction. Artistically or rather aesthetically, genres make the vision only go in one direction.
I hate this because I'm using Unreal Engine 4 STILL and to prove that you don't need 5 to make a good looking game.
I play more anime cell shaded games in unreal, then anything on ur list. Maybe you’re only looking at realism.
Holy shit I made the complete right move.
He said "yea it only took me a year..." as though that wasn't an impressive feat in of itself😂😂 Overall beautiful and brilliant game man, don't discredit yourself for using a 'similar look,' that doesn’t take away from the dedication, discipline, and effort you put into creating something that's uniquely yours. Amazing work, man!
Why is this even a discussion ? If you have made games before you'll know to recognize the engine it was built in. When games use the same engine of course they will have similar looks. Most games lack the scope/budget to customize the graphics or the lighting engine so yeah you are going to get a lot of games that have a familiar look. Take Unity for example. If you've built more than 2 games in Unity you will be able to recognize a game made in Unity from a 360p screenshot
Correct!
So many ue5 games look like a reskinned fortnite, and i think thats done on purpose because young gamers like something new that feels familiar.
bro looks like an unreal engine character
PontyPants is right, look at marvel rivals it totally has unreal engine 5 look, same with black myth wukong. just check these two they look exactly the same and they are so generic :))
I understand where people are coming from. I understand the fully asset flip games are trash and need to stop. But im not bothered at all by a new solo dev making a game using all free assets for a game and it looks "unreal enginey" IF its a unique and fun game. Dont forget HOW MUCH WORK making a game is. How many hats you have to wear.
It's interesting how unreal defaults for realism while epic's most succesful game is stylized.
im honestly sick of people calling games realistic. they just aren't, we're nowhere near that, you just look at games from 5 years ago that were told to be ultra-realistic and they look goofy today. we're very very far away from games actually being realistic. anytime someone says a game is going for "realism" now, i know its a game i wont play, because if thats all it has going for it, i already know it doesnt have anything to it then.
Everything is being homogenized with Unreal. Between assets and blueprints, mechanics and looks are just being reused and everything just looks and feels the same.
The problem is I think indeed not really the engine but, as stated before in the comments, being lazy and not changing the default settings for light, water ect. This is not very hard to do and if customizing these settings u can quickly create your very own unique look for your Unreal Engine game. Same goes with Unity, Godot ect. Too many devs just use the out of the box settings so of course the games will then have a characteristic look connected to that game engine because it is that particular engines default settings.
You got to play the Great God Grove and go Mega ball and Vividlope And seasons a , love Letter those games need more support
5:55 Hogwarts Legacy was on Unreal Engine 4 lol
Is this Unreal Engine? Has anybody try it with UEVR, in VR?
I can’t stand this look. It’s so clean and plato like.
One thing nobody ever brings up is Epic's choice to always have a cloudy looking lighting system since the og Unreal Tournament. It's very easy to spot but I think people are trying to over explain it. I think that's the main culprit. As a Ue5 dev it was hard to try to have my game not have this look, and I wasn't able to completely remove it from my game. Games using id's various engines throughout the years do not have this.
You have full control. Utilize these:
1. Inverse Square Falloff
2. Light Function Materials
This content silly. If you dont have content.
Unreal has that "honey glaze" look to it. That's usually how I can tell if a game is made by Unreal.
That's the PERFECT description
But it looks sweet. I like it. How can you not?
Exactly, just made a similar comment, it's the cloudy lighting system since the og Unreal Tournament. Unreal 1 actually had better lighting.
@@Mekkablood UE5 is like the best render core you can get. It has nothing to do with og Unreal Tournament. Those times are long gone.
1.56 what was that about lol!!
Anyway I am finally returned back to UNREAL and will be making all assets for my game. I cannot be using stuff people can see in every other game. Thats just me.