Unreal Engine 5.2

PRICE Free Standard licence COMPANY Epic Games WEBSITE unrealengine.com

Unreal Engine (UE), is now at version 5.2 and continues to be a force to be reckoned with. It took Epic Games eight years to move from version 4 to 5 and it has continued to favour point iterations rather than full version updates.

So even though we’re reviewing 5.2 this time round, don’t be fooled into thinking that this is just a minor update. Epic has packed a lot into this release and provided the necessary foundation for even greater and more substantial developments in the future.

UE and Unity continue to trade blows, with both of them boasting the latest and greatest features that set them apart from the rest of the pack. This release features an expansion to UE’S existing ground breaking toolset while

introducing new features including Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) and Substrate. These sit with a number of feature refinements and stability improvements to keep the whole, complex machine moving smoothly.

In this review we’ll take a look at two major toolsets that provide foundations for further improvements, as well as seeing whether the new virtual production tools are anything to write home about. Let’s jump straight in.

If you’re used to any type of scattering tool such as Multiscatter or Chaos Scatter, then you’ll be familiar with the concept here. Scattering is the process of selecting assets, setting rules for how they’ll be generated across a surface, and then letting the software do all of the hard work. This type of technology is perfect for creating forests or any type of landscape and, in the case of UE, any type of world.

Unreal Engine actually introduced some scattering capability a number of releases ago with a Procedural Foliage Volume. Although there are similarities between the two, the new PCG framework provides a much greater level of functionality and has the potential for being extended on in future releases.

Once you have the PCG framework set up, the workflow is straightforward and intuitive. Static meshes can be dragged and dropped from the Content Browser straight over to the scatterer. Multiple meshes can be added to create a massive

PROCEDURAL CONTENT GENERATION FRAMEWORK