Engine choice is usually decided by team experience and platform targets rather than by features. Where it does come down to 3D capability, these are the real differences.
Unreal
- Strongest out-of-the-box visual fidelity. Nanite and Lumen genuinely change what a small team can achieve visually.
- Material editor is excellent and the master-material/instance workflow is well established.
- Heavier, in build times, editor requirements and project size.
- C++ and Blueprints. Blueprints let artists build behaviour without programmers, which matters more than it sounds for prototyping.
Unity
- Broadest platform reach, especially mobile, and the most mature mobile tooling.
- Render pipeline choice (Built-in, URP, HDRP) is real flexibility and a real early commitment — materials do not port between them.
- Largest asset ecosystem, which matters when filling a project quickly.
- C#, generally faster to iterate in than C++.
Godot
- Light and fast to work in. Small editor, quick iteration, no licensing complexity.
- glTF-native, which makes the import path the cleanest of the three.
- Smaller ecosystem and fewer battle-tested large-3D-project examples.
- Scene-based architecture suits modular content unusually well.
The questions that actually decide it
- What has your team shipped before? Familiarity beats features almost every time.
- What platforms must you hit? This eliminates options faster than anything else.
- How visually ambitious is the project relative to team size?
- Do you need artists to build behaviour without engineering support?
What does not decide it
Asset compatibility. All three import the common formats, and models move between them with roughly equal friction. Choosing an engine because your models are FBX is choosing on a non-difference.