Unreal engine 4.16
With new sim and animation features, Unreal Engine 4.16 will give artists more control, according to Epic Games
The new features of this update revealed, including volumetric fog
F irst showcased at GDC 2017, the latest version of Unreal Engine packs quality new features including support for volumetric fog. Developers now have more control over media density and lighting for more exciting environments.
“The new volumetric fog in Unreal E 4.16 allows developers to create an incredible sense of mood and space. You can simulate clouds of dust or smoke flowing through light shafts,” says Daniel Wright, senior rendering programmer at Epic Games. “The algorithm we’re using provides a unified solution to volumetrics, so varying densities are supported and any number of lights can affect the fog,” he explains.
Now developers can use Materials applied to Particle Systems to control Volumetric Fog with the new Volume Domain setting. Daniel explains: “A single particle with a Volume Material causes a sphere of density to be added to the Volumetric Fog. The effect is fully 3D with no billboards involved. Multiple spherical fog particles with noise from textures can be used to limit fog to a certain area.”
Also now supported is the Nintendo Switch, which was supported experimentally in 4.15. Developers can now build, test and ship to hardware. Sumo Digital has already shipped its game Snake Pass made with Unreal Engine.
A new feature in UE4.16 is image-based convolution for bloom, which creates physically realistic bloom during postprocessing alongside the pre-existing bloom effects. This new and exciting method provides high-fidelity results by modelling using mathematical convolution of a source image with a kernel image.
animation modifiers
Animations can now be more easily handled thanks to animation modifiers, a new type of native and blueprint class. These can change, add or remove data from animations to reduce the complexity of the set-up required, and revert previous changes. Running the simulation while in the editor also makes troubleshooting bottlenecks easier and improves overall performance.
The VR Editor can also be accessed via the Radial Menu – a new addition to Unreal Engine 4 – with developers building in VR mode now able to access all major editor features and UI panels.
one change is the Nvidia Apex clothing solver, which has been replaced with Nvidia’s Nvcloth. Nvcloth provides better access to simulation data, as well as extra exposed parameters for inertia settings.
“The new Nvcloth solver is a lowerlevel solution to clothing simulation and operates very much like the internal solver in APEX (our previous solution),” explains Benn Gallagher, programmer at Epic Games. “Now we have much more control of the simulation and asset data for our simulations, which gives us a number of benefits. We can define our own data formats and build our own tools inside the Unreal Editor, removing the reliance on third-party tools or DCC plug-ins. We’re developing our own toolset to allow more developers to explore clothing as an option to breathe life into their characters. We are working alongside our technical animation team to ensure we build a rich toolset that allows us to produce content that meets our high quality bar. APEX handled a lot of extra functions we either replaced or just didn’t use. Scaling back to only the core particle solver lets us have much more freedom and control of the features we want and use.”
In terms of future development, some of the experimental features released with UE 4.16 include a first pass of a Google Cloud messaging plug-in, and a preview of PSVR Social Screen support. Epic Games says that any future work will replace this PSVR API with a flexible, fully supported crossplatform one. We can’t wait!