Top tools for 3D Development in 2020.
2D is still big in the market. Pushing the web development forward, providing nice and efficient user experience design. Moreover, when it comes to game development you can see a lot of 2D Platform based games popping out on Steam or IOS / Android Platforms. 2D is good, but 3D can push the boundaries even further, especially with the new technologies developing every single day be that for Game Development or Web & Mobile Development.
- Unreal Engine
First and foremost let’s cover the big players in the market. Unreal Engine is one of the best game engines on the market, especially when it comes to 3D Development. With the new Unreal Engine 5 Announced the possibilities are becoming endless. We are not talking about game development only, 3D Product Configurators, Virtual and Augmented Reality based solutions and more are a huge part of Unreal. With a good community surrounding the platform you can easily find introductory tutorials and projects all over the internet.
List of the Released Unreal Engine Projects over the years:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/released-projects
2. Unity 3D
I was thinking of covering the Unity with Unreal together but Unity itself is such a huge part of 3D Development that it has to be mentioned separately. Unity is known for its game development, some of the hugely popular video games have been created with the engine over the past couple of years most notably: Ori and the Blind Forest, Hearthstone, Cities: Skylines. It is mostly considered better engine then Unreal when it comes to 2D Development but Unity also has a huge community and impact on the AR / VR / MR world. Software Development kits such as Vuforia SDK, Wikitude, ARCore / ARKit, are a big part of unity.
List of projects created with Unity:
3. Three.js
Three.js is in short 3D Javascript library. It is one of the best libraries for creating web based 3D Solutions, from video game development (https://krunker.io/) to complex and immersive web site design (https://cineshader.com/). If you want to dive into 3D Web development Three.js is the place to start and go.
List of projects created by Three.js:
4. Babylon.js
Real-Time Game Engine for the web. If you go to the Babylon.js site you can find the Sandbox mode which allows you to drag / drop your 3d object files onto the scene. It also comes with the material editor as well as playground. Babylon.js has some big names backing them up such as Ubisoft (Assassins Creed Pirates), Mojang / Microsoft (Minecraft Classic edition for the web)
Full list of projects created by Babylon.js:
https://www.babylonjs.com/community/
5. Buildbox 3
Here we are venturing to game development. Buildbox is a game development platform for creating 2D, 3D Games for IOS / Android. In 2019 Buildbox launched the Buildbox 3 which comes with many different functionalities and assets. If you want to start with Game Development for mobile devices. buildbox is the place to go.
List of projects created with buildbox:
https://www.buildbox.com/showcase/
This was just a brief overview of the whole 3D Development scene at the moment (this is my personal opinion about 3D Development, I fully understand that there are multiple different platforms and engines out there but I have personally used those above and I can truly say that the community, support as well as the development process is satisfying and good.
If you want to learn more about me the things we do and create send me an email over at
Josip Vlah
CEO Definition8
