32 min, the graphics and workflow = wowzaaaa. I hate Unity, but if they can deliver these promises (also ones about performance), this a big game changer.
Wonder what they use for GI. There are not much docs about upcoming version.
I see, that ‘Light Probes’
The thing is, Armory already is comparable to Unity, which is why Unity should be ashamed of themselves. Armory is built ontop of free open-source technology accesible to anyone by mostly one person, while they have whole professional teams with the funding to built their own foundations and cannot get greatly better results.
Just look at Unitys current GI, it is a bad joke. Cycles baking looks better and is probably also faster. Not to mention realtime GI, which is non-existant in Unity without use of the Assets store. From skipping through this talk I think that the new GI uses baked raytraced GI with AI denoising, which is running on stage even with that propably massive PC they used for it pretty slow.
Also I am totaly not a fan of it’s UI, and while Armory’s current one is currently not great as well, it is built on top of Blender so it is easily customisable by the user. I also do not suspect Unity to change its interface since it has hardly changed since Unity 4 (2013).
The things that Armory currently lacks are documentation, features, usability stuff and being know in the CG/Gameengine society (becoming free would help greatly), and all of these problems are being worked on. Btw, Armory already has a scriptable render pipeline (I think, it once even was customizable with nodes) and easily adjustable render paths for different platforms (whose exports are superior to Unity’s), which Unity praises as great new features in their software.
I want to end with saying that Armory curently can not compete with the giants like Unity and Unreal, but once it can it will destroy them (maybe not so quick with Unreal and only if the donation money doesn’t get stolen by the eevee game engine).
2 Likes
I hope we can make that nice Vegetation in Armory soon. While working on Sponza, that was an disappointing point. And yeah, performance. I would be extreme fan of light Probes, so I can deliver kind of GI effect to weaker gear.
The light probes will come once we jump to b2.8 as there is a proper interface for that thanks to eevee. Don’t want to hack it in b2.79. But transparency should be getting fixed…
5 Likes
Great! P.S. when you have time check out Git issues. I have added some details as you asked.
1 Like
I agree with Simonrazer. Unity and Unreal swim in money and don’t seem to be able to do much more than one person!? Once Armory gets stable I’m sure it will be the equivalent of what blender is to the other DCC software.
1 Like
Every game that I have played and was made with Unity is awful in terms of performance and stability. Firewatch, AC, Dreamfall Chapters, etc. There are lot of Articles, that it’s developers fault being lazy in optimizations, but I think (also from my personal exp.) that is only half of the story. Always got that feeling that they are new Feature freaks, and don’t care about stability. I mean they support almost every Possible VR device, but lack Must Be Basics, to produce a world title game. So it’s kind a sandbox, still 
But honestly I don’t care about past. If they start to move they lazy asses in right directions, I will keep my mind open.
In mean time, I hope Armory get’s those periods, where it’s boring, with no Shiny news about new features, but in that time it undergoes serious refactoring and optimizations under the hood :P. And some more core devs to speedup things, would be Fantastic (maybe not the right time yet).
@rogper, @Simonrazer and never forget that Armory uses Kha framework under the hood. So it’s definitely 2 person thing, not one. Robert does’s magic with Kha and without that Armory would no be the same 
3 Likes
I agree, Armory is doing wonderfully considering it’s one person only.
Armory don’t need to compete with Unity or Unreal, because it can’t have the same speed of realeases and features other have driven by large teams.
Good news, is majority of indie games are not towards making an mmo or a very complex game, Armory should easily fit in that indie category games.
There is also many people using commercial 3D engines starting to use both
open source 3D engines for less complex games.
Some want something different from agreement with companies about the money they could make or because open source allows source code access.
The best is yet to come, when Blender 2.8 will be released more people will get into Blender and Armory should also attract people new to games with Visual Scripting. This is the best workflow with a game engine using Blender as scene editor, objects or animations can be created or edited and tested right away in game.
3 Likes
WALL OF TEXT!
I didn´t liked the UI in Unity, too. I´m coming from blender and are used to use nodes. I was multiple times myself confusing, in wich of thise tiny slots i put… what? Same with the scripts and variables, layering in the Inspector. I think the Inspector is the thing in Unity i didn´t liked the most. I need to see, where everythings flows and i couldn´t get in the flow, while working. What i liked in Unity is the possibility to load .blend files straight into the project.
Unreal is, in my opinion, better in organizing things as Unity and the node system is pretty dope (!). But the blueprint system using also some small slots for varibles and things. I was confused, there, too. Same with Godot and cryengine… and so on.
I think this big software packages are great if you are 100% in their workflow. But if you doesn´t, your getting pretty fast into trouble. What i didn´t also liked, if i buy a asset in their store and i can only use it in their engine… where is the point of buying them. But again, if you are in the flow, you can make great things, pretty fast with the goodies of their stores. Unfortunatly, i can do my assets by myself and do understand scripting/scripts. The only things i would then buy are maybe some shader and post processing things.
I watched hours (!.. ) of long tutorials which could be at least two times faster (do not know much about Lumberyards and cryengines tutorials but should be the same xD, maybe).
For larger companies it is easier to work with expensive software, because of the support, they get.
Simple to maintain and mostly without bugs. And maybe for someting really big, like open world games and … you get the point, i think.
I don´t want to say that the engines are awful, they are having definetly their strength! But as a Indie Developer… in my opinion overkill, over the top. Graphics are just one piece of a game. An important one, but it should be also make fun, while working on something, that others should bring some fun and great hours of gameplay.
Or maybe i am just too old. xD
Someone who simple dive into the example libraries of Armory can get the point, that mostly all pieces for a game is already there. Just some puzzle time and exploring, …and it is done.
Of course the examples could be more, but well it´s just the beginning (hopefully).
I think it is also a plus for Armory, that you can get your hands dirty, fast. You don´t need hours of learning the architecture of the engine and it´s UI in and out. You can nail down a prototype in Armory in no time. As you could do in the BGE. If you don´t have a team of people behind you, you are grateful for every time saver and synergy. In connection with blender, there are is a lot of it.
In my opinion, you can´t really compare Armory with the big companies. But as written above, the fact, that a small tag team get the big ones by their balls … and offering an open and flexible way of game development, with great graphics (again, i do not see a BIG difference between Armory and the rest ;)) is simply amazing.
Another matter why i switched to Armory, yet.
5 Likes