Is Godot any good for 3D games?

Godot Engine is great

One thing important to mention while Unreal is amazing and unmatched. Indie Devs need to ask themselves what they can do will and art wise. Because a game is about the art aspect and also what you can add financially into it. I see many so called aspiring indie Devs wanting to make AAA games but without a budget and a team it's a dream. Godot offers simple tools and gived you the possibility to make games hence on a smaller budget in also a good amount of time. That's important people tend to forget Hollow Knight came from unity and without a doubt could be done in Godot.

There is already no match between Unity and Unreal so comparing Godot to Unreal is a bit pointless. That being said, Godot is more than capable to rival most Unity indie games in quality, the issue is the pipeline and workflow which is more mature in Unity. Godot is a serious contender to Unity for most indie dev in 2D but need a year or two in the 3D department to really make the cut imo. All of the above apply to experienced Unity dev asking themselves if they want to switch, if you're a beginner, Godot is perfectly fine, by time it mature you'll have matured too.

I saw Godot ask for a donation when downloading the engine... If i can make at least six figures on my first game, I'll donate 10% of my net profits. I want it to become better and stay free for new devs.

Yeah i wont be making 3A game but id love to have the option. It is 2023. Procedural and scan objects are a thing.

Yup, Godot doesn't scale - so true.
It is good for simple and/or small indie games and tech demos. I'm not talking about the level of details, textures, or lightning but just the number of nodes.
Take a tech demo scene, copy-paste it 100x, and run it - good luck. The lack of the most important 3D tools like a terrain tool is also obvious.
If you are making a small game with small scenes or a 2D game then sure, use Godot, but if you want to create a real 3D game then use UE5.

Godot has SERIOUS problems with its API boundaries and performance, as the "Godot is not the new Unity" author exposes. I have confirmed the author's findings and the game engine author of Godot just argues that it isn't an issue, when it very much is.

I'm still using Godot, but I wrote my own C# to C++ bindings that are extremely fast for some of the common API calls - it is measurably faster.

I'm not sure Godot can progress to AAA unless someone forks the engine and puts emphasis on scalability and performance.

I think that as time goes on, people are so dedicated to Godot and what it offers, that they certainly will TRY to get Godot's 3D graphics as close to Unity and Unreal as possible. And I believe that such people will succeed.

Honestly I'm fine making early PS3 and late PS2 era graphics. I just wanna know if the game I make can be mechanically deep and has fun gameplay. I specifically like fps and survival games with fun AI interaction, which I wanna mess around with in Godot.

not everyone is interested in producing AAA. especially at a time like this, when people are finally giving up on the big studios and are coming to terms with lower detail and visual realism. and i for one am not interested in making myself susceptible to potentially being basically blackmailed in the future because i used proprietary software and the owner suddenly decides that it should now cost money, like we've seen with unity. i generally aim to be as self sufficient as possible. for that there's only one way if you don't want to write everything yourself from scratch, and that is open source.

If the developers focused only on version 4 and higher, and did not still support the 3.x branch, which takes a lot of time and effort from them, then Godot would have already solved half of the problems that he has now. Juan says that they have no problems with performance, but this is not true - on weak systems this becomes very noticeable, especially in 3D games: the game takes a very long time to load, a long transition between levels, fairly simple scenes with 3D objects begin to slow down, although it seemed would be, because of what exactly. They solve these problems with the help of productive systems, but the engine itself is not very deeply modernized or developed.

Godot is great for non-realism games, like all mobile games, genshin impact etc.

UE is great for realistic games like GTA 5 and movies.

Both have their own nishes but godot may rule the whole Mobile game market in the future

Godot is amazing for 2d games, even with some bugged systems, like 2d light/shadows mask, it's scalable and can handle big beautiful 2d games. For 3D it still has a long way to go, but i do believe it can handle mid-sized games with good enough graphics. I totally understand it isn't enough for some big or high-fidelity projects. But to dismiss the entire engine like the guy did in that post, it's a bit of elitism, ok it is not the solution for you, but for a lot of indie projects is more than enough.

I find it hard to use Godot at the moment because tutorials really are more scarce for what you are specifically looking for. Like if I want to do a specific thing in Unreal, I have a higher chance of finding something very close and follow it. Godot seems to be upheld by small collection of highly skilled developers who make great content, but they can only cover so many things; not something everyone is looking for. Regardless, I feel safe following the Godot learning route because it can never be used to screw me over. It is open source. For Unity as we have seen, and potentially Unreal since it is controlled by a company, threats to developers are very real.

Im someone whos been learning Unreal engine 5 to make my games but this whole unity trying to pull the carpet out from underneath us and retroactively change there EULA to add the runtime fee im afraid Unreal will try something similar
Which is why ive been considering switching to godot

finaly an objective video that doesn't spit on Godot or praise it too much

I feel like I see Lillybyte a lot just trashing on Godot. I get having issues with the performance, it has been a critique for a while. But, I swear whenever I see them, it is vitriolic. Also, the need to attack the tutorial makers is wholly gross and uncalled for.

Godot is good.
It has a slightly weird surface shader feel when coming from Unity, mostly due to unfortunate choices of defaults, but Godot ships out of the box with 4 lighting models, of which you usually combine 2 or more:

In addition to Burley, Lambert, and Toon diffuse and and SchickGGX, Blind/Phong and Toon specular lighting, each of which Unity offers ONE (Lambert/BlinnPhong) plus various reflection mapping models, including Screen Space and Baked Reflections, the actual lighting techniques provided are:

- Real Time Shadow Mapping
- Baked Lightmap Global Illumination
- Signed Distance Field Global Illumination, which includes Emissive Materials (!!!)
- Voxel Based Global Illumination (semi-baked)
- Screen Space Global Illumination (this of course includes emissive materials, and looks better than expected)

Unity URP has only 2 of these (Shadow Maps and Baked GI)

Unity Builtin also has Spherical Harnonics Lighting, which appears similar but much less accurate compared with Godot's SDFGI.

Unity HDRP has RTX lighting.

Unity has no first party Voxel Illumination and no non-baked Area lights or Emissive materials.

For a stylized look, Godot is visually and technically superior even to HDRP. It's also much easier and faster to write shaders for it.

Its lighting, not lightning.
One is the simulation of light in a scene, the other is the weather phenomenon that flashes before thunder.

Hi so I am in college for computer programming but I want to start game development I want to use Unity but they have a pricing system now so I will just use godot I wanted to know if godot is good for horror and action games and survival I wanna make a pixel action rpg and a horror action game in 3D but I don’t know where to learn if anyone can help me with this please do but I want to really use Unity for 3D games also Unity and godot but I know I have to choose one but I don’t know which one to choose

Hi so I am in college for computer programming but I want to start game development I want to use Unity but they have a pricing system now so I will just use godot I wanted to know if godot is good for horror and action games and survival I wanna make a pixel action rpg and a horror action game in 3D but I don’t know where to learn if anyone can help me with this please do

Short answer: Yes, but with ALOT of math, optimization and coding skills.

I am using Godot for 5 years now. Yes, of course Godot has some problems that need to be fixed. The current physics engine is a weak part for example.
But some people are just hating Godot and are always very vague about their criticism. Like the text from the first guy you show in your video.

the only thing close to unity is Unigine.. better than that would be unreal

It's honestly really good if you use Blender cas of the addons and pipeline. I think Godot is just way less popular so not many FPS devs work with it.

I think might come over to Godot for 3D (if I do I'll donate). Except I always seem to start out in a new engine with a character controller tutorial that allows the character to glitch through walls:( Does anyone care to share a good Godot 3D character controller tutorial that has no glitching through walls? I am fine with non physics and learning gdscript:)
Don't be upset C#, you will always be my first😊

After a few days poking 3D in Godot I can say its a reasonable Unity replacement, if you were using URP.
Godot is not on AAA level of quality, thats for sure, and devs who want to make AAA quality games wouldn't event consider using Godot in the first place, they go straight to EU5 now. So there is no point trying to target them.
But for stylized indie games like toony games, retro-style stuff, 2.5D games (like Octopath Traveller, Don't Starve or Cult of the Lamb) I believe it can get the job done.
And thats not taking into account great 2D capabilities of the engine, that already match, or even can exceed Unity in some cases. Thats a big plus for indies too.

Essentially, my first game was to create a simple short horror game. As for the graphics, I opted for Source engine-style visuals because I love the atmosphere it creates. I had my horror project halfway done in Unity. After all the controversy that happened with Unity, I decided to try Godot once my first game is finished. However, I'm not sure if Godot 3D is capable of capturing that Source Engine look based on performance.

That is not only graphics: I am using Godot for a physics 3D game and I can tell that is not good. The collisions are bad.

Even if the graphical level isn’t the same

However for Indi games etc it counts less


Look at all the super games today look great and the game play is lame …

I'm sure that there are exceptions to this, but I don't think anyone is coming to Godot with the idea of it being a AAA engine. I've seen a few of this type of video pop up lately, bashing Godot for its shortcomings. Its simplicity is what makes it appealing for new devs. More features and functionality make this complicated and difficult to learn. These videos will serve to make people wanting to learn and make simple games look elsewhere, likely give up on engines with a collosal learning curve.

tbh I don't care for photo-realistic games so as long I can't make something pretty I'm good : D

I don't feel Godot is even aiming to be “a prominent contender in the AAA video game industry”. We have O3DE for that slot. My understanding is Godot seeks to be “the best contender for the average indie studio” (2d or 3d). Which is not the same as “every” indie studio either, since indies by nature are more likely to go out of the box and end up with niche requirements.

I think we need to stop spreading around rumors from mentally unstable people. For some reason Godot has some fervent haters. They often talk in vague terms about how they were wronged in the past. These types of people should not be listened to. Specific criticisms like showing inefficiencies in the C# and gdextension API layers, as that blog post you mentioned showed, is however great for the engine. The difference is that those are specific criticisms that don't try to insult the developers.
Do your own research, people. If someone comes with vague negative criticisms, ask them to specify. If they cannot specify they are not to be listened to.

If Unreal is like PlayStation or PC, then Godot should be like Nintendo. More focused on fun and accessibility rather than cutting edge technology. That's how I believe these engines will both remain relevant, in a balanced competition where they each have their share of the market.

I think rather than godot not being able to do 3d, its more like more people need to do 3d in it. Godot is more than able to do the basic 3d up to AA games.

Btw its "Lighting" not "Lightning" xd. Lightning is the thunder ⛈️ thing

Time saver... The video is a ad for unreal.

I spend the last 2 weeks learning Godot, and I have to say, it can even do 2D properly.
If you do pixel art, you have jitters, your sprites wobbles, when player and/or camera moves, everything jitters.
They seriously need to fix this, I can read this has been a problem since Godot 3.2?

yeppp

Actually, Godot has a rendering system like Nanite added to it, and they got some help from unreal engine developers to implement it. I think it just wasn't available yet because they had to fix a lot of bugs, but I think version 4.2 will ship with it, but version 4.3 will be the most stable version to publish your game in.

Flax seems to be the better Unity replacement, at least in the 3d area. And personally for 2D, I think Defold is better than Godot. Godot is a good all-rounder though but also annoyingly lacking for mobile (3d wise) and unable to have the 3d performance on the higher end.

I personally have no interest in creating or being a part of AAA games. I don't often play them either.
I'm a fan of indie titles and that's all I want to be involved with creating.

Godot 3D still needs a bit of work, but it is in a really good place right now.

Godot should NOT try to make roads into the AAA sphere, or try to position itself as a competitor to Unreal. No matter how much I like it for 2D, I understand that it’s barely even a competitor to Unity when it comes to 3D and infrastructure.

The push towards trying to match Unreal’s undeniably incredible technology, towards photorealism and cinematic experiences and enterprise-grade services, is what caused Unity to lose its focus, become bloated and increasingly corporate-minded, and led to its questionable expansion and profligate acquisitions… as well as the recent inadvisable moneygrabbing shitshow / licensing rug pull.

Godot needs to just fix what they have, and iterate on it, like established, professional, but relatively humble game engines such as Defold and GameMaker.

Disclaimer: I’m considering moving from Godot to Defold because my experience of Godot 4 has not been great and I’m disappointed in the reality of it after a few years of community hype. The lack of export to consoles is also a bugbear, not that I’ve got anywhere near completing a game worthy of such a move.

Unfortunately, Godot is way behind Unreal for realistic graphics and massive scenes, since the creator said it will never adopt data-oriented design or ECS for its gameplay scripting. Its Nintendo Switch porting cost is $3,000 and there is no tool to port a Godot game to Switch ourselves

IMO we don't really have a "perfect" option.
You either put up with Unity BS and untrustworthy actions, Unreal's CPP and Blueprints (and possibility of Epic trying to screw up its users in the future like Unity did), or you accept that Godot, while not perfect, is what's left for you.
In the end, use Unreal if you like it or if you want to make high fidelity/AAA games, otherwise Godot should be or will soon be good enough for your kind games.

LOL - comparing Godot with Unreal and complaining that Godot isn't as good... That's pretty dumb. Unreal has had hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D. It's the basis for most AAA titles. How about a sensible overview of Godot 3d's features?