Hi!
My boss at work was looking into using Unity in combination with our CAD software, for visualization and maybe VR/AR.I have never used Unity, but have used Blender a bit and am about halfway through your Blender course here on CGcookie.
Do you use Unity in a workflow WITH for instance Blender? Can you use Unity without any other software? I guess I am wondering what are the similarities/differences between Blender and Unity :P Animation vs. game making?
This is probably a very big question, but I just don't understand what Unity IS :D
Unity is a game engine. Blender is a 3D modeling/animation/rendering software. Typically, objects to be used in a game are modeled in Blender, then imported into Unity and used to create a game there.
Thank you! I have seen writings of Unity being used as sort of a render engine as well. Is this somewhat true?
hazemonkey Unity is a render engine in the sense that you can use it for real-time rendering, so you can plop some assets in there and be able to look around the object while each frame is rendered in real-time. In exchange, you lose visual accuracy. In order to perform like this, the engine has to make approximations on complex calculations as well as other resource-saving methods (baking out different maps to control things like specularity, ambient occlusion, etc.). Every single video game works this way (broadly speaking).
There's still no beating rendering images with a realistic (or physically-based) render engine if you really, really want that visual fidelity. However, if you want to show something to someone in a more real-time and interactive way, use a game engine. There will be some things you'll have to learn in order to get a similar level of fidelity than just rendering something from Cycles, but you can still use that knowledge in either path you choose. But you can certainly set up a scene to view in Unity and not have the more game-oriented aspects.
Look into the options more, see what works best for you. Good luck!
Thank you! This was a very informative answer. I think I'll definitely look into Unity going forward. As I'm working with product development in fields like agriculture, medical equipment and different type of research (not for end consumer and advertising) there is really no need for photorealism. We just want to get our clients exited about what we're doing :)
https://www.adigo.no/prosjekter/?lang=en
You can create simple assets with the unity addon probuilder. https://youtu.be/YtzIXCKr8Wo