In this post, I will share with you Unity and Unreal YouTube channels that discuss intermediate-advanced topics often not covered by other more popular content creators. These topics include application architecture, programming best practices, performance optimization, lighting and rendering, materials and shaders, etc. Some of these links I already mentioned in my Resources page. You might want to check that out as well.
This list is constantly changing and will expand when I find more hidden gems out there.
[Updated Sept. 15, 2022]
Unity
Freya Holmér
Freya is the creator of Shader Forge, a visual shader editor for Unity that used to be popular until active development stopped in 2018. Freya’s channel has a lot of content about shaders in Unity. On the other hand, I really wish that the videos were edited and compressed to shorter time frames.
- Intro to Tool Dev in Unity – An Improvised Live Course [part 1/4] (2020)
- Intro to Shader Coding in Unity – An Improvised Live Course (2019)
- Procedural Geometry – An Improvised Live Course (2019)
Infallible Code
This channel stars Charles Amat and occasionally Jason Storey where they talk about various intermediate level Unity topics.
- 4 Tips for Refactoring Your Code for Readability (2022)
- How Thinking in Systems Can Improve Your Code (2021)
- Here’s How You Should Be Thinking About Data (2021)
- How to Get Variables from Other Scripts in Unity (2020)
Jason Weimann
Jason Weimann is the host of the Game Dev Show, a video style podcast about Unity development where he invites other developers such as Jason Storey, Charles Amat (Infallible Code), Salim Grant, Andrew Slater (Infinity PBR), David Green (Warped Imagination), and Yorai Omer (Lead Dev at Terraria).
- Truth about Singletons in Unity (2022)
- Building BIG games (and mmos) w/ unity (2019)
- The 8 Game Code & Architecture Mistakes We ALL Make – Unity3D (2019)
- Unity3D Mistakes I made that you should avoid (2019)
- Unity Architecture – Composition or Inheritance? (2018)
Tarodev
Tarodev does an amazing job at explaining concepts. I found valuable tips in some of his videos which I think will improve your workflow.
- Project Initialization – Unity Architecture (2022)
- Value & Reference types in C#. Write Better Code! (2022)
The GameDev Guru
The GameDev Guru is the expert in Unity performance / optimization. He also has a blog and an exclusive membership called Unity Performance Taskforce which provides in-depth monthly lessons regarding Unity performance.
Turbo Makes Games
Turbo Makes Games is all about helping you make games quickly and effectively. This channel focuses on Unity Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) and Entity Component System (ECS).
Unreal Engine
51Daedalus
Tilmann Milde a.k.a. 51Daedalus is the author of the Unreal Engine 4 Lighting Academy. Back in the UE4 days, this was one of the few channels that covered advanced lighting topics. Tilmann, having worked on games such as Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Dead Island 2, shares a lot of his industry knowledge in his videos.
The lighting series, however, was posted 2017-2018. Unreal Engine has already changed a lot throughout the years. Some of the information might already be outdated. I hope he makes an updated series that covers UE5.
Alex Forsythe
Alex is a software developer who has worked on games such as Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016) and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). He does amazing unreal engine videos which explain topics in great detail with images and animations that make them easier to understand.
- Multiplayer in Unreal Engine: How to Understand Network Replication (2020)
- The Unreal Engine Game Framework: From int main() to BeginPlay (2020)
- Unreal vs. Unity: Actors & Components, Inheritance & Composition (2020)
- Unreal Engine C++ Project Setup, From Scratch (2020)
Quixel
Quixel is the company behind Megascans which is a photogrammetry asset library. The company’s channel has environment breakdowns which showcase the Megascan assets and how to achieve realism in UE. Very useful for 3D Artists out there.
Tech Art Aid
If you’re interested in technical art then this channel by Oskar Świerad is for you. His video tutorials cover shaders, optimization, procedural graphics & tools. My favorite is his series on UE4 Graphics Profiling which I use often as reference every time I hit a GPU bottleneck in Unreal. Hopefully this series gets updated to UE5 in the near future.
- UE4 Graphics Profiling: Measuring Performance (2017)
- UE4 Graphics Profiling: Pipeline and Bottlenecks (2017)
- UE4 Graphics Profiling: GPU Visualizer (2017)
The Cherno
This channel is not really related to Unreal Engine, but its C++ series is one of the best I’ve seen. Yan Chernikov used to work as a Game Engine Programmer at Electronic Arts. I often find myself going back to his channel when I forget a certain concept when programming in UE. He does an amazing job at explaining the confusing aspects of C++, and he also provides easy-to-understand examples that other tutorials often lack.
- How C++ Works (2017)
- How the C++ Compiler Works (2017)
- How the C++ Linker Works (2017)
Tom Looman
Tom is a Game developer and Unreal Engine instructor with 10+ years of Unreal Engine experience working both as an indie developer and at Epic Games. He mostly covers C++ in UE. I recommend checking out his blog which contains the complete information about the videos in his channel.
UnrealCG
Akhil has been pumping out really cool VFX tutorials in Unreal. I recommend checking out his channel if you’re a technical artist. You always learn something new every time you watch one of his videos.
William Faucher
William’s channel is one of the best I found that covers the latest features in lighting and rendering in Unreal Engine. He has been working in the entertainment industry for the past 13 years. Some of his works includes VFX/CGI shots in Marvel’s Black Panther, and HBO’s Watchmen.
- Lighting in Unreal Engine 5 for Beginners (2022)
- Lighting a NIGHT-TIME exterior in Unreal (2022)
- PATH TRACER Explained – Unreal Engine’s Underrated Tool (2021)
