What are the best 3D game engines for beginners?

Unity3D provides an exhaustive documentation where everything is given a full description supplied by a number of examples as well as video and text tutorials and live training sessions to understand the ins and outs of the engine. In addition there's an ever-growing community that can offer advice to help resolve any situations that may arise. Along with the official Unity resources, there are many high quality (and often free) third party tutorials available. See More

score 59 · Answer 2

Unity 3D

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Top Con

Not open source

Once you get more experienced, this can become an issue when you need to debug complex issues or add features to the engine. See More

AmiableTepeyollotl's Experience

I am not rich. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux;

Mobile targets:Windows Phone; iOS; Android; BlackBerry 10; Tizen

As long as the development company makes $100k or less, it can use the free version of Unity to release games. See More

Top Pro

Can be used for free

Top Con

Increasing number of bugs

With each new version things may stop working ,for example with Android, some bugs are never getting fixed, like the freeze bug with adb. See More

EnchantingPinikir's Experience

Got me with a contract in tiny print, do not subscribe to get pro lost my account over this. It's kind of sad and kind of under managed missing essential assets to build games takes more time away from you to build up from were most engines already have it such as rigid body's and physics. See More

Top Pro

Very popular

Unity is a proven game engine. It is used by a wide range of developers - from small indies to triple-A companies such as Microsoft, Paradox, Square Enix and Sega. See More

Top Con

Asset store is required to replace engine functionality

You will need to, for example, buy an input manager asset off their asset store in order to replace their own terrible inaccessible input manager. See More

DazzlingSarruma's Experience

They give you one month free then you have to pay 12 months every month no cancellation possible, fucking scam artists. Thanks God i avoided it See More

Top Pro

Easy learning curve

The way the editor is structured, by setting scripts on objects, and the use of a high-level language, C#, makes it easy to learn. See More

Top Con

Encourages bad coding practices

A lot of Unity code feels like a hacked blur of arguable coding practices. C# and .Net usage in Unity is questionable. A lot of the API is done in "C Style" (public static methods, available at all times), encouraging the use of public fields for everything, a lot of questionable implicit casting. The list goes on. See More

RespectableArmazi's Experience

Screen Splash makes the game bad See More

Top Pro

Over 20 platforms

Unity offers over 20 platforms for publishing including mobile, console, web, VR, and more. See More

Top Con

Dark UI theme not available in the free version

Dark theme, which is a must for prolonged work without eye strain, is only available with one of the paid monthly plans. See More

mahmoud salem's Experience

it excellent and easy and wonder See More

Top Pro

Has a great animation system

Unity provides a great state machine animation system called Mechanim allowing to separate animation from the model and assign the same animoations to different models. See More

Top Con

Bad UI tools

Way of creating UI is uncomfortable and inconvenient. See More

SincereWaygl's Experience

Community mods not always helpful (and somewhat arrogant) with respect to discussion of any technology other than Unity. Plenty of bugs. Profit motive seems to govern Unity and it's direction. Subscription options are not optimal when excellent Free Open Source options exist with comparable and even superior feature sets. See More

Top Pro

Powerful standard shaders

The built in standard shader in Unity 5 is incredibly optimized and supports PBS/PBR. See More

Top Con

Mobile builds (Android, iOS) take about 18MB at least

Even a Blank Project, Needs 18MB for the APK file (on Android). See More

Top Pro

Lots of assets can be found in the Asset Store

For those developers who can't afford an artist, or aren't skilled enough to create their own art, Unity features an Asset Store full of a wide variety of free and paid assets that can be easily added to a game. The Asset Store has more than just music and art. It also has code and modules that can be added to games including unique lighting or GUI systems. It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection. See More

Top Con

Weak memory management

.Net libraries are slowing it down, memory safety is compromised, classes have to be implemented to manage objects in memory, like object pooling. See More

Top Pro

Allows for rapid prototyping

Unity's modular system and usability allows for quickly developing a prototype of an idea. It has features like drag & drop editing, shaders, animation and other systems already in place to allow diving right into developing a game. See More

Top Con

Very self-centered engine

Unity3D uses very unique approach for doing things. Most of the knowledge acquired while using it, would be completely non transferable to other engines. Advanced Unity3D programming is really dealing with Unity3D bugs, and finding loopholes around engine issues - nothing to do with graphics, etc. Skills which would be valuable with other engines. See More

Top Pro

Great editor

The editor GUI is very powerful and intuitive. It allows pausing gameplay and manipulating the scene at any time as well as progress gameplay frame by frame. It also has powerful asset management and attribute inspection. See More

Top Con

Waisted resources

Slow, buggy, expensive and 1000 other problems. See More

Top Pro

Very optimized

Unity runs very smoothly even on systems that are considered "weak" by today's standards. See More

Top Con

Price is very high

Top Pro

Flexibility is provided by a strong component programming model

Top Con

Moderators on forums are sometimes arrogant

Top Pro

Offers choice of scripting languages

Unity provides a selection of programming languages depending on preference or knowledge. C# (CSharp) is arguably the most powerful, while JavaScript has the widest selection of tutorials. It should be noted that it's probably best to avoid Boo (a flavor of Python). See More

Top Con

Way too bloated

when Godot takes only 30mb of disk space, having Unity taking 6gb is totally unacceptable See More

Top Pro

Has awesome plugins

Top Con

Very bad terrain

Native terrain creates a lot of draw calls which is bad for performance. See More

Top Pro

Versatile

Can be used for projects of any size. Anything from basic mobile games to big blockbuster triple-A titles. See More

Top Con

Adds too many features without fixing earlier issues, rapidly increasing number of bugs that will never get fixed

Unity continues to add many new features without fixing earlier issues. Unity is either understaffed, overambitious, or both, resulting in a continual increase of problems and degraded experience across a number of platforms. Many bugs are reported daily and never get addressed, and there are many bugs from previous versions that are never looked at or fixed. See More

Top Pro

Free for mobile development

Unity allows free mobile development. There are some limitations. See More

Top Con

Pro is a contract scam

If you subscribe it's a contract you will have to pay them until the next year and if you don't you lose your account and they don't do refunds or any type of help with this. See More

Top Pro

Works with 3rd party IDEs

Top Con

Docs have inconsistent choice of scripting languages

Top Pro

Great community

Great Community support through the Forums and Unity Answers. See More

Top Con

Comparatively high learning curve is putting it nicely - expect to spend days upon days researching basic functionality

Although C#, JS, and Boo have documentation available online, it can still be difficult to understand the library and Unity's component based system. See More

Top Pro

OUYA support

Top Con

Bad batching support

Draw Call Batching is done automatically and does not include Skinned Renderers (eg. characters). Also for dynamic batching, meshes need to have less than 900 vertices. See More

Top Pro

Well structured

Overall, a coherent engine with a rational approach. People who complain a lot about being forced to hack around it usually do not read the docs, like the one that describe orders of execution, or specific functions hooks and such. Some like to say it lacks raw power where people who are used to standard optimizations have no problem. For example It is not uncommon to encounter users who complain about low FPS but forgot to activate occlusion, flag static elements, activate animations culling, and so on. As for complaints about C#, people who are transitioning from C++ were already bad at C++ before being bad at C#. They often come from the PC world where the sheer power of today's machines is very forgiving compared to the platforms we had to develop for in the 80s~90s. One of their errors is for example to never read this doc. See More

Top Con

Garbage collection can't be turned off

Given the use of C#, the memory control is out of the developers control, this can be good, but not controlling memory means that the garbage collector can trigger at any time and ruin performance. See More

Top Pro

Can create custom forms and tools

Top Con

Hard to maintain projects due to vendor lock

Unity3D is proprietary, closed source game engine. Unity asks money for features like basic version control support, etc. It is impossible to migrate a game from Unity3D in case performance does not satisfy growing requirements of a project. See More

Top Con

Scam

Blueprints are authoring tools designed for non programmers so designers and other team members can help tweak and prototype. UE4's Blueprint scripts resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish and games a lot faster to prototype. See More

score 44 · Answer 3

Unreal Engine 4

Top Pro

A visual scripting system for non-coders enables quick prototyping

Top Con

Slow

Compared to other engines, UE4 seems to perform various actions considerably slower. Actions like starting the engine, opening the editor, opening a project, rebuilding shaders, updating references, calculating lightmaps, saving projects, etc take long enough to get irritating and end up wasting precious development time. See More

Malakhite's Experience

Best engine, in my opinion. See More

Specs

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SteamOs, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

Languages:C++, Blueprints (Visual Scripting)

Epic provides multiple official video tutorials, lots of free example projects and content, an extensive wiki and regular streams showing how to use latest features. See More

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Top Con

Hard engine for beginners

This engine not easy for beginners. See More

Gembela Gergely's Experience

Unreal c++ coding See More

Top Pro

Active community

Forums have many active and friendly members that are quick to respond and help out. Staff too is very active on forums. See More

Top Con

Sparse Resources for C++

C++ happens to be the main suite for Unreal, yet the documentation is very, very sparse. See More

AmiableTepeyollotl's Experience

Difficult See More

Top Pro

AAA Ready

This is ready to make the next AAA game. See More

Top Con

C# not natively supported

UE4 does not support C# natively, but this can be achieved through MonoUE, although it requires using the MonoUE fork instead of UE itself. See More

Top Pro

Realistic graphics

Top Con

C++ - oriented development cycle: slow turn-around times

The Unreal Editor is the main place to do stuff (of course), so if someone wants to do a lot of C++ stuff, the compilation and linking turn-around times can be painful. Still they probably are quite fast in comparison to the provided featureset.. Still ,they are far from optimal. See More

Top Pro

Professional feature set for all aspects of game development

Almost everything a game developer wants has a deep and sophisticated tool waiting for them in UE4. No external plugins are needed to make powerful materials, FX, terrain, cinematics, gameplay logic, AI, animation graphs, post process effects, lighting etc. See More

Top Con

Extremely poorly designed

The code is a mess. Everything is connected, a single Actor is 1500 bytes, because it contains a million things that Epic once needed in a game. Inheritance for AActor: AActor > UObject > UObjectBaseUtility > UObjectBase See More

Top Pro

Developers have full control of the engine and source code

UE4 gives full access to the C++ source code allowing editing and upgrading anything in the system. See More

Top Con

Older versions perform better than newer ones

The newer versions have a lot of problems and errors, which causes most users to downgrade. See More

Top Pro

Powerful material/shader system

Allows a texture/material artist or VFX artist to create amazing effects from the ground up. See More

Top Con

Very high build size

A blank project will build in to a minimum of 200 MB. See More

Top Pro

Frequent updates

New feature releases can be commonly expected about once a month. See More

Top Con

Extremely long build times

Making a full rebuild, including engine can take a good 30 minutes. If you plan to use Unreal professionally, you better get some licenses for Incredibuild as well. See More

Top Pro

Free development license, including source code

The engine, including full access to source code, is licensed to developers for 5% royalty on resulting revenue if it exceeds $3000 per quarter. See More

Top Con

Frequent crashes

Often the editor crashes interrupting your work. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform editor and export

This engine exports for a big range of platforms including Linux. The editor can be run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux (Early Access). See More

Top Pro

No coding experience needed

Top Pro

Quick release-cycle

New feature releases can be commonly expected about once a month. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic global illumination with voxel cone tracing decreases the computational power needed

Voxel cone tracing is a similar algorithm to ray tracing, but uses thick rays instead of pixel thin rays to be able vastly decrease the amount of computational power needed. See More

Top Pro

Fast compilation for quick iteration

Recompiling an entire game to test a small change takes up a lot of time. UE4 quickly compiles in seconds instead of minutes improving iteration time by an order of magnitude. See More

Top Pro

Spectacular lighting visuals

Top Pro

Easy to use animation blueprints

Unreal Engine 4 is one of the best game engines. It is super easy. It dosent require any use of coding due to Animation Blueprints. See More

Desktop targets:Windows, OSX, Linux

score 18 · Answer 4

Stride

All

1

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows

Mobile targets:Windows Phone, iOS, Android

Depending on your previous experience level, in a few hours time you should be able to test your first simplistic game. See More

score 28 · Answer 5

Blitz3D

Top Pro

Easy to understand

Top Con

Development stopped

Last commit was 3 years ago and there seems to be no forks out there. See More

AmiableTepeyollotl's Experience

Very easy. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows

Desktop targets:Windows

Languages:Basic

Top Pro

Lot's of great tutorials and examples

Top Con

Just for starting

Blitz3D is not suitable for large and complex games. See More

Has an acceptable 3D map editor that is easy to use. See More

score 10 · Answer 6

Leadwerks Game Engine

Top Con

Obsolete, developer is still selling this software while working on a completely different engine with a new name

Top Pro

Built-in level editor

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; Linux

Mobile targets:none

The flowgraph editor can be used with free script assets to build games without writing any code, but this is not directly intended or encouraged by Leadwerks. See More

Top Con

Documentation and support are limited for non-coders

Top Pro

Versatile flow diagram script model

Leadwerks's flowgraphs resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish. See More

Top Con

Highly misleading advertising

Valve's official documentation website is great for newbies. It demonstrates the pros and cons of the engine (and since the website isn't maintained by Valve, but instead the community, the pros and cons are largely unbiased). There are also a number of pages dedicated to entities used within official Valve games and also community-made mods that were turned into full-fledged games by Valve. These pages explain the ins and outs of how most source programming works. There are also guides for Valve's tools which are both included in Source SDK and in any Valve-developed game. See More

score 10 · Answer 7

Source

Top Pro

Great documentation

Top Con

It's not for free

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

Mobile targets:Android

Console targets:Xbox; Xbox 360; PlayStation 3

AGK comes with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) based on the Code::Blocks IDE for writing AGK scripts. A key feature of the IDE is its ability to broadcast compiled programs to other devices for testing. See More

score 10 · Answer 8

AppGameKit 2.0

Top Pro

Comes with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Top Con

Can almost only do trivial games

The editor is rather limited, not fully polished, and 3D is missing some key functionalities (3D is work in progress). See More

fubarpk's Experience

I have been using AGK for some time now and find it a great tool that is constantly getting updated with fantastic forum support See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac, Linux, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

Software produced with the App Game Kit is written in a language called AGK Script. This language has powerful inbuild commands including commands for 2D graphics, physics and networking. The commands make use of the platforms' native functions to improve performance. They are also designed to enhance code readability. The AGK Script commands have extensive online documentation. See More

Top Pro

Uses a powerful scripting language built for game development

Top Con

No built-in game mechanics, events, inventory.

Top Pro

Cross platform

Supports developing games for Android, iOS, PC, Mac, Linux and now HTML5. See More

Top Con

BASIC language

Even though it supports C++, it's mostly C++ mapped to BASIC without OOP. See More

Top Pro

Can be used for advanced games programming in C++

Libraries which provide the same functionality are available for the five platforms, so you can code in C++ See More

Top Pro

Fast development

There are plenty of functions which facilitate development and deployment. For example, the AGK player immediately plays the updated bytecode on Android devices then the online site helps with building an APK file for Google Play Store in minutes. See More

Top Pro

Support

Informed, timely and intelligent feedback from the AGK forum. See More

Top Pro

Plugin support for Windows

Plug-ins can now be added to the Windows platform. Create your own Tier BASIC commands and call them using the AppGameKit Basic script language style. See More

Top Pro

You only need to to pay for the license only

There is no charge for upgrades, or for extra platforms (the HTML5 version just appeared in the latest version), there are no subscription fees or other usage charges. If you publish onto either Apple or Google's stores you will have to pay their costs, of course, but the makers of AGK do not take a cut of this themselves. See More

Top Pro

Easy basic programming

Program in tier 1 BASIC programming for every 3D game need. See More

Top Pro

HTML5 support

The AppGameKit Basic can now export to HTML5. See More

Top Pro

Raspberry Pi free version available

A Raspberry Pi version is available and free. Users just need to register with the developer and then they can download. See More

Top Pro

Very fast compilation

It is a compilation based language, but the compilation is very fast. A project of about 1800 lines of code, for example, can compile almost instantly. See More

Top Pro

Instant testing on multiple devices at once

AppGameKit supports instant testing on all connected devices. With the push of a button you can run your game on any device connected to the development machine. See More

Top Pro

Excellent documentation

Every function is fully documented with examples and exercises. The Tutorial PDF is a full Introduction to 3D game programming with integrated references to every functionality and its most important usecases. The documentation is regulary updated. See More

Top Pro

Performance

Everything takes ages..feels like Unreal 4 See More

score 16 · Answer 9

GameGuru

Top Con

Slow

Top Pro

Feature priorities are chosen by the community

The Game Creators team frequent the forums and ask the community for feeback and suggestions both there and via an open poll on the website. They have a great history of reading suggestions, viewing screenshots, and generally working with the community. See More

fubarpk's Experience

A great tool for beginners who want to be able to develop 3D games without the need for programming skills and comes with a great starter level to get you started and constantly getting great updates and support through the TGC community See More

Specs

Dev platforms:linux

Desktop targets:Windows

Mobile targets:none

2D:yes

There is only one supported platform. No macOS/Linux or mobile. See More

Top Con

Windows only

Top Pro

Designed for ease of use

Simplicity and accessibility are the core design goals of FPS Creator Reloaded. See More

Munchicken's Experience

Easy & fun to use! See More

Top Con

Lack of user-interface

Although you can customize a lot, the user-interface does not show that. But plans are in place to improve this with some front facing GUI into the LUA scripts so you don't need to code as much. See More

Top Pro

Royalty free

Games you publish with GameGuru can be sold without any restrictions or commissions. See More

Top Pro

Export to AGK

DLC's exist that allow for exporting to AGK and use on mobile. See More

Top Pro

DLC's available

Many DLC's are available with lots of new assets. See More

Top Pro

Character creator

Includes a character creator. See More

Top Pro

PBR textures

Now supports PBR textures. See More

Top Pro

Large asset store

A store where you can buy various assets for your games like sounds, 3D models, weapons... Very good prices and a lot of assets are even free. See More

Top Pro

Powerful scripting language

Uses Lua. See More

Top Pro

Building editor

Currently in development but already looking very good! Easily create big and customized buildings with default building blocks and share them with others. Also very easy to use in the designer: The buildings are treated like entities but still directly available in the 'building editor mode'. See More

Top Pro

Friendly GUI

Awesome friendly GUI, and quite easy to use. See More

Top Pro

Active and helpful community

Users share ideas, help, and advice through the official forums. The community also provides a wealth of free assets, and the GameGuru Assets Store sees constant additions. See More

Top Pro

Continuous development and updates

News and improvements are released on a monthly schedule. Interaction between The Game Creators and project backers is excellent. See More

Top Pro

Awesome tech support

Top Pro

Massive community of users

The gamer creator forums have a large number of users, developing games, making models for sale and to give away for other users. They answer questions, help each other with problems in their games, and can make using this software so much more fun and easy. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use your own custom assets

Easily import your own 3D models with the built-in importer and create custom characters with the Character creator. Custom weapons are much more difficult, though. See More

While I don't have a ton of experience with it, I can say that this could eventually become the new Unity. I used their superposition and older benchmarks all the time for testing my systems and never thought they would open this engine up for free to the community. It has unmatched photo-realism. It uses C# just like unity. I believe C# to be the best language for experts and beginners. C++ is not elegant and flowcharts are limiting. See More

score 5 · Answer 10

Unigine

PerseveringCottyto's Experience

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; Linux

Languages:C++; C#

Supported languages:C++; C#