Discover the new tools of Unreal Engine 4.11

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The latest update of the Unreal Engine (4.11) features improvements to skin subsurface scattering ( SSS), as well as a new eye shading model and material. There’s also a new cloth shading model, which includes high-quality motion blur for cloth. Plus, of course, there’s the new Weta-influenced hair shading model as described on these pages.

Paragon, the game being developed using 4.11’s new tools, makes heavy use of parallax occlusion mapping ( POM) for detailed displacement, combined with pixel depth offset for smooth and accurate intersection of meshes.

Epic has also created a volume raytracer for texture heightfields that treats 2D textures like volumes, to render convincing clouds and smoke.

Paragon uses new procedural foliage features, which uses a procedural foliage Blueprint, that simplifies the creation process for tree roots, vines and ivy placement. Foliage has the ability to trace level geometry to grow around meshes, or to draw freestanding trees.

Paragon also has early support for full hierarchical wind through upgrades to UE4’S Pivot Painter tool, enabling the creation of numerous foliage in- editor or in 3ds Max, which all uses the same wind properties.

Finally, Paragon makes use of light channels to provide the ability to mask lights to only affect particular objects, and capsule dynamic soft shadows are used to give the characters broad soft shadows when in the shade, in order to better integrate. Photo reference (far left) was used to ensure the in-game hair shader matched reality perfectly ( right)