Couldn’t find any more appropriate place to put this. Anyway, me and my friend might put some hours into developing games. We are complete noobs when it comes to game engines and 3D (beside my little knowledge of Blender).
Anyway, we are looking for best game engine that could work well with Blender. I don’t know how will export of object/rigging and other stuff to any other game engine go.
Also that game engine should be free (probably GPL). Is Blender Game Engine the best i can get?
The best engine to work with Blender is Unreal. As for being free, I’ve yet to find one that cleanly imports Blender models. If you want free, the best engines are S2 or ShiVa. Keep in mind that the Blender game engine is not a full game engine, and will not perform to standards set by devoted platforms.
It is a full game engine, to be clear, but the remainder of the post is valid.
Also, Shiva’s free version is only web-oriented. To be able to export to actual executables, you’ll need to pay. Also S2 only seems to support Windows 7 and XP - no other platforms.
@subdividesmooth - If you’re looking for free engines, you might want to try Panda3D or JME3 (though I have had nothing but trouble trying to get JME3 to load a blend file without any issues). The BGE is pretty solid and has been getting some work done recently, which is really nice.
As a question, what kind of game are you trying to make?
Yea, i saw that about Shiva. I am a bit suprised that there are no some good quality free game engines. Of course, that Panda3D would do it, but it is really hard to find good tutorials (including Blender -> Panda), and question is how many problems i would get into before even starting doing something.
As for game, we just want some basic First Person camera that can move around map, nothing special, no AI, no guns, just little physics (like animated doors). So what you propose BGE or something else??
BTW, what’s with Unreal Development Kit, is it similar to Unreal Engine 4?
If you don’t mind not having AAA graphics quality, the BGE itself is perfect for arcade games and simple interactive apps. (the latter can even be done without programming).
The BGE is also capable of much larger projects if you know Python well, despite the rumors that go around at times the BGE is still seeing actual development.
However, you will need to use another engine though if you plan on having your app. on mobile devices.
Honestly, as a “first engine” the BGE is not a bad way to go. It is very easy to get started with. Sure, you’ll probably run into limitations eventually, but by then you’ll probably have abandoned your current project (not being mean here, it’s just the way things typically turn out). So, for getting your feet wet with game dev, the BGE is great. Once you’ve gathered some more knowledge, then I’d look at other engines. Things like UDK are powerful, but they can sometimes be intimidating, especially to newbies. If you don’t want to use the BGE, you might want to take a look at Unity (has a limited free version) or Godot (open sourced recently); they might be a bit easier than UDK.
The unity free version is very good.You can find some good free scripts to start out with.And it has a active community.Lots of
tutorial information on the websight.You have to buy the unity pro game engine if your company makes 100,000 dollars off of a unity game.
You forget to mention that a large number of top tier features only work in the pro edition (1500 USD). This includes a few things you currently take for granted in the BGE (render textures, 2D filters, and I think custom shaders).
Also, the Unity material editor I hear does not come with as much stuff out of the box as in the BGE (if you want extensive node-based material building and the like, prepare to spend some money on a plugin).
Most people these days will spend up to thousands of dollars on a wide array of plugins and just use the core Unity engine as a base, there’s even been some conspiracy allegation even on whether UT decides not to implement features so as to not hurt plugin makers.
Now if you need extensive material editing and the works working out of the box, then the best option right now is Unreal 4.
If “to go with Blender” and “should be free” is all requirement you discovered so far the answer is:
Best game engine to go with Blender -> Blender Game Engine
(keep in mind this is the BGE forum ;))
I suggest you think about what you really need. As you are looking for free engines, you can try them all.
I don’t know how will export of object/rigging and other stuff to any other game engine go.
Painful!
and question is how many problems i would get into before even starting doing something.
More than you can imagine if you are new.
If you are new and doing it as a hobby, it doesn’t really matter which engine is better; because they are all better than you. More than you can chew!
But you may have less pain with Blender/BGE due to the non existence of import/export catastrophe (e.g. import some shape keys with a few click?..yet to find one!).
Thank you all for your response, i will go with BGE. Currently i have some stuff to do at college, then i anyway planned to get into some Phyton, and hopefully start this project on summer.
BTW @Moguri i know that there is lot of things to do, but as long i have good resources to learn and site like this to hop if i get into trouble, i can progress.
Quoted from Ace Dragon
“If you don’t mind not having AAA graphics quality”
Why ? the right lighting/shadowing/Diffuse/Specular/Detail/Normal and displacement
can all create graphic textures that can rival any triple A title game, also blender
can run at 60fps with some decent AA at any resolution you like “Depending on
your gaming rig”.
I just dont understand why people say blender is not going to make a AAA game ??? Sure michael jordan would not look good in sandals but i bet if he tried he could air jordan in em... im just so confused and been reading over the past
4 years on here about blender can`t produce a triple A quality game ::coughdeadcyborgcough::
or how blender is limited, what are these technical limitations ?
not being able to export to consoles ? not being able to generate instant decals ?
game engine bugs ? collision bugs ? just to name a few…
The non-swimmer blames his bathing suit ;).
As I wrote in another thread … the greatest strength sits in front of the monitor … and the the greatest weakness as well.
If you do not have much experience - any tool is the best (preferably a tool that supports you).
BGE can make AAA games, it’s just generally easier and quicker in other engines, which is why most developers choose them; they prove quicker results at a lower cost with less manpower. If you’re looking for one of those, Unity is probably your best choice, as it is diverse and has many compatible scripting languages.
It’s my favourite engine, and no matter how much I try other engines, I find myself returning to it.
In response to the thread question, BGE is, of course, as Monster said, the best game engine to go with Blender 
I concur, but that would be why people use BGE instead. 
BGE is a raw engine- it has no presets or anything to make your life easier in the development process. That’s why it’s a great engine for beginners, as anything you create in it is created only by you, and you have to put in a lot more effort into every detail, whereas in full game engines, these things are done for you.
BGE is definitely the best option for a starting developer.
Custom shaders are not something blocked by Unity Free. The big things I think that Pro has is the post processing, render textures and video playback. Though for the render textures and video playback there are some work arounds.
A lot also depends on what you want to do gamewise and what your focus will be. UE4 is great from a more art focused perspective with it’s interface. but keep in mind that UE4 doesn’t even have video playback either since they dropped the Bink video format.
Blender game engine seems alright, but compared to UE4 and Unity I feel like it would take a lot more time to get it to the point of easily using the same features.
The game industry is moving to the Physically Based Shading standard and I haven’t found all that much in terms of shader support when it comes down to variety, and while it’s possible to use the node editor, the node types in Blender aren’t as artist friendly as those in other game engines. Out of the box other game engines have nodes for panning UVs, calling surface normals and tangents, fresnel, etc.
While some of these things are possible they require a lot more nodes just to get the same amount of work done. And in the end, if you are an indie developer you are probably doing pretty much everything on your own anyways and you won’t want to be wasting more time than needed to get something done when there is a faster alternative. I’ve been trying to use nodes to make a shader set up similar to what I have in Unity and my node graph is already gigantic just for trying to emulate node types Blender doesn’t have.
I don’t know if this already exist but it would be extremely useful if there was some sort of thread for people to post common actions as node groups and have a blend file anyone could download that they could append to make their lives a lot easier when it comes to making shaders.
Something else to think about is what platform you want your game on and what sort of scope the game will be. Cost wise I probably wouldn’t suggest Unity for mobile games if you want the pro features since you would have to get the $1500 pro license and then the pro license for iOS and another pro license for android.
UE4 seems like it can handle exporting to mobile well out of the box.
BGE I think can work on android but I don’t think it has anything for iOS.
And then if you ever want to get your game on a console that is something else to look at as well and see which engine best fits your needs there too.
Can someone PLEASE help me get shape keys on to UDK as morph targets? I am brand new to these forums, and im not sure of whats appropriate to post, but I saw a comment about shape keys with just a few clicks, and I am having the hardest time getting them on
Hello. I actually have a situation where I am planning out a sandbox game with large open space and high polygons for character models, but medium-low-ish for half the environment poly’s. It is a rpg. Various demolishable assets. Everything goes to blender first but what engine would be able to best keep up and process these things smoothly?
When i first started in game engine i went with unity but after 2 years i quickly saw that i was going nowhere and that it needed ton of asset store stuff just to do basic stuff.
Then i tried UE4 and it was love at first sight and i was astonish at how many features were pack in the engine without shedding a single buck.
In unity i was having a hard time with lighting and in UE4 lighting was so much easier and look way better in a very short amount of time spent in.
Blueprint is simply what made my life so much easier since i am not from a programming background, i consider myself more of a tech artist since i was very familiar with state machine logic and blueprint is even more than this.
My only grip is the market place that doesn’t have enough high quality content specially in the blueprint section. Sometime when i don’t understand something i like to buy a blueprint that show me how it’s done and i learn a lot from this.
With Mr Mannequin and auto rig pro it’s now a real pleasure to do character animation in Blender and to send it back to UE4 without losing your sanity!