I’ve seen feature comparisons of the engines and editors but I’d be interested to hear about the process of switching (if anyone here has) or blogs by teams who have done so. Had a look but I couldn’t find anything. I’m particularly interested in the differences in importing assets and how quickly a rapid prototype can be put together when compared to Unity.
Importing assets is very similar–FBX support on both. One thing that Unity supports that UE4 doesn’t is prefabs—for example–I have an airplane with a lot of seats already instanced and positioned in 3ds Max, I can export them all to FBX and import to Unity and it will import both the single seat plus a prefab that has all of the instances in the right position. UE4 doesn’t have prefabs so I have to import the seat and place the instances on my own (there’s some tools to help with that though).
As far as rapid prototyping ideas–Unity doesn’t have any level modeling tools–even though the tools in UE4 are pretty basic, at least it has something that you can use to block out a level. Also, the materials in UE4 are way way better. And as far as gameplay goes, in UE4 you can create gameplay with Blueprints instead of scripting, although scripting in C++ is available. In Unity there’s only scripting with C# or javascript, and even if you buy a system from the asset store to help it’s not as good as Blueprints.
How has it been otherwise? Is there anything else you wish you still had from Unity/ glad you don’t have to deal with anymore?
The only thing I miss is how easily you can control the hierarchy of objects in a level, you can just drop things on other things and organize them, UE4 only goes as far as having folders, which is nice but it’s a little bit easier in Unity for that.
There’s nothing that Unity includes by default that’s better than UE4, there’s some things you can get from the asset store that UE4 doesn’t have though. There’s many things I really hate about Unity, like the materials, they’re very limited. Plus theirs stupid things like the viewport, which doesn’t have true orthographic views. The orthographic camera can end up going past what you’re trying to zoom into, so it’s very frustrating to use the viewports, which is not a good thing to say about a 3D editor.
Only thing I am missing is the AssetStore. Currently the UE4 marketplace doesn’t offer that much content, but with more content coming in every week it’s going to be okay in the future. Eagerly waiting for C++ support for the marketplace though.
I love the low price monthly access to Maya 2015 giving me an edge to learn how to model, but I am thinking of cutting my progress time using SpeedTree for the plants. Beside I won’t be the only ones using it because top gaming companies are using it and I won’t feel any guilt of cheating my way through designing my very first game on Unreal Engine 4 and what makes Unreal so good is that I don’t have to pay Epic another monthly access and just continue using the current version I have now which is 4.4.3 which good for those just learning and on free time from work and school.
I highly suggest people taking extra course from DigitalTutors on Maya 2015 this is the tutorial I am currently doing: http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1572-Introduction-to-Maya-2015
I actually did went from Unity free version since at the time I didn’t feel like sacrificing $1,500 I went with Unreal and got me where I am today learning to model and later taking on the rest of my Blueprint tutorials. Also another good thing about UE4 is that you don’t have to learn to program, but I highly suggest learn to program in C++ for data, multiplayer, or if you’re planning to sell a game on STEAM market place or somehow connect to your dedicated server.
I actually have a lot respect for Unity, even though I believe in some respects it’s about six years out of date…
Pro’s:
Runs on low end hardware no issues
Fast, compiling near enough anything takes seconds even on rubbish dev PC’s
C# is really easy to get in to
Stable compared to UE4 in quite a few respects
Little to no submenus, very easy to navigate
No issues with foliage 
Tons of optimisation additions (like Umbra)
Good for mobile
Better for VR
Cons:
Very slow to the punch, toolsets are years behind and often when released they’re half baked. Some core features like 64-bit editor has still yet to be introduced outside beta.
Lack of toolsets, no material editor, no world composition tools, lack of Apex support, no cinematics tools.
Shaderlab (just a preference here, not a fan and I’d prefer straight up GL)
Amount of time it takes to make it look as good as UE4, chuck all the default shaders / shadow techniques / lighting in the bin and do it all from scratch.
The focus seems off to me, it always felt to me that they cared much more about mobile than PC or Console. Then again if that’s what you’re looking for it’s also a pro…
Enlighten, at least you don’t have to put up with it in UE4 there’s lightmass.
Same with every engine, they all have pro’s / cons. On the whole for what we do, I much prefer UE4. Even though it still has a fair bit to go. (Get’s much better every release)…
I also think the people at Epic are great with there customers, not that Unity are bad or anything. Just Epic seem to go the extra mile.
As for switching our subs ended about 2 weeks ago, we officially switched about a month ago. One of the biggest pains has been artwork so far, the scaling is different. Also lightmass didn’t play nicely with the UV maps we used in Unity either, so we are having to go through every mesh and update it one by one. Characters have had to be modified, I’ve also had to upgrade all the machines which cost a pretty penny…
One thing which is getting me, seen this quite a few times not with our project either. You upgrade from one version of UE4 to another and it breaks the project, that never happened with Unity not even from Unity 3.X to 5.X. I’m sure Epic will work through it with us, but it’s caused a few headaches.
It’d be cool to have more asset store material as well, it’s great for learning. When swapping engines, even if you’re a pro with one you are starting again (kind of)…