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When comparing Urho3D vs HeroEngine, the Slant community recommends Urho3D for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” Urho3D is ranked 3rd while HeroEngine is ranked 40th. The most important reason people chose Urho3D is:
The entire engine is open source and makes use of other open source libraries. Source code is licensed under MIT and available on [GitHub](https://github.com/urho3d/Urho3D).
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and fully open source
The entire engine is open source and makes use of other open source libraries. Source code is licensed under MIT and available on GitHub.
Pro Good documentation
The documentation for Urho3D can be split in two parts: auto-generated from class references and documentation written to cover the various aspects, features and systems of the engine. The written documentation is pretty good. It covers most of the aspects of the engine in clear and understandable English.
Pro Includes a lot of samples
There are a lot of sample projects included with the engine for both C++ and Angelscript. They are mostly very simple applications built to demonstrate the engines capabilities and features.
Pro Fat-free codebase
Only use what you need.
Pro Small turnaround times while developing
Builds are quite fast, aids in rapid development.
Pro Very high code quality
Urho3D is written in a modular and super-clean way, so that it can be integrated into the other parts of your game seamlessly.
Pro Good 3D level editor
Pro In constant active development
Bugs are usually fixed that same day. Core devs are very active on forums. New features are always being worked on. HTML5, DirectX11, and OpenGL3.1 support have recently been added (as of 4/15/15).
Pro Does not require an editor to get going
Pro Flexible rendering pipeline
You can configure rendering pipeline.
Pro Multi-Lights
There are no lights limits per mesh.
Pro Unofficial Oculus Rift support
Information on enabling OR support can be found here.
Pro Real time development- No nightly builds
Pro Streamlines MMO development
Backend completely handled by the team at Hero.
Pro Versoning control included in both HeroEngine and HeroBlade
No need for Perforce, Github or any other versioning software. It is built in. Check, Compare, Merge, revert, etc.
Pro Server and Networking built in
Pro Engine developer support
Developers of the engine and game developers are active on the Forums and Skype for private messaging.
Pro Versatile
Able to create many types of games and scales all the way from a single area up to a full-blown MMO.
Pro HeroScript
Designed for the needs of a MMO. HSL is also relatively easy to learn as scripting languages go. It was geared towards beginners, not time hardened programmers, and as such, its easier for a novice to pick it up sometimes, than a c++ programmer. That, and it was intended to be "readable" more like English.
Pro Very active community and support groups
Skype channel and forums questions answered by developers of HE and users very quickly.
Pro Highly optimized asset export plugins included
Though the export pipeline may be different and currently requires 3ds Max or Maya, the format is highly optimized to reduce high quality models down to KB's.
Cons
Con It has been stopped developing
The owner has moved to build new 3D engine, however, that is also experimental stage, not for production.
Con Little documentation and small community
There are some high-level design docs and a bunch of examples, but code is poorly commented and nothing much more can be found.
Con The UI can be hard on the eyes
Urho3D's UI could cause eye strain.
Con There is no support for reflections
Neither SSR nor cubemap parallax correction are implemented in engine.
Con Bad Android support
You can not compile this engine using latest Android Studio.
Con May be a bit hard to get started
To install Urho3D you need to get the archive from GitHub (be careful to download the master branch) and extract it. After that, you need to compile the engine with CMake. If all the dependencies are installed, then it should be a straightforward process, otherwise you will need to track down and install all the missing dependencies.
For people who don't have much experience with CMake this whole process may seem a bit like magic. For people who do have experience with CMake, the whole installation will be relatively easy.
Con Lack of DirectX 11.1 or 12 support
DirectX 9 is the last version supported.
Con High price
Con HeroScript
A standalone scripting language with (so far) little in the way of learning resources.
Con Custom model export
