Epic Video games has launched Unreal Engine 5.2, the most recent model of the sport engine and real-time renderer.
The discharge lays the foundations for 2 main new toolsets: the Procedural Content material Technology Framework (PCG), for populating giant scenes inside UE5, and Substrate, a modular material-authoring system.
Different modifications embrace Chaos Flesh, a brand new real-time muscle and mushy physique simulation system, help for simulation caching within the Niagara results toolset, and updates to Nanite, Lumen and the trail tracer.
As normal, there are smaller modifications all through Unreal Engine’s key toolsets, together with modelling, UVs, texturing, lighting, animation, physics and rendering, plus new options for digital manufacturing and combined actuality tasks, updates to the Datamsith toolset and USD workflows – and native Apple Silicon help.
To avoid wasting you wading via hundreds of phrases of launch notes, we’ve rounded up 5 of the important thing new options in Unreal Engine 5.2 for CG artists, versus programmers.
1. PCG: new instruments for populating giant open worlds
One of many largest new options in Unreal Engine 5.2 is the Procedural Content material Technology Framework (PCG), an experimental toolset for populating giant scenes inside Unreal, with out the necessity for exterior instruments.
In line with Epic, the PCG lets artists “outline guidelines and parameters to populate giant scenes with Unreal Engine property of [their] selection, making the method of making giant worlds quick and environment friendly”.
It contains each in-editor instruments, together with a brand new node graph and a set of operators, and a runtime element.
Workflow is interactive, with modifications made within the node graph editor updating a challenge in actual time.
On the time of writing, the documentation for the PCG doesn’t appear to be stay, however you possibly can learn a technical overview on the Unreal Engine public roadmap and discover extra particulars in this video from GDC 2023.
2. Substrate: new modular material-authoring framework
One other key work-in-progress toolset is Substrate, the brand new materials authoring system launched for early testing in Unreal Engine 5.1, the place it was often called Strata.
When enabled, it replaces Unreal Engine’s fastened shading fashions with a modular multi-lobe framework that gives a wider vary of parameters to regulate the look of the supplies authored.
The largest modifications might be to layered supplies, with Substrate making it potential to create multi-layered appears to be like: for instance, mud on prime of a transparent coat materials like automotive paint.
Though Substrate is computationally intensive than the fastened shading fashions it supersedes, efficiency “scales in response to complexity … with legacy supplies having the same value [to] earlier than”.
3. Chaos Flesh: real-time mushy physique simulation
Different new options embrace Chaos Flesh, a real-time mushy physique simulation system that extends Unreal’s Chaos physics toolset from destruction results and inflexible physique dynamics to deformable objects.
Though a lot of the present demos are for non-organic objects like automotive tyres, Chaos Flesh is designed for tissue simulation, notably the deformation of a personality’s muscle groups throughout skeletal animation.
Workflow entails changing the item to be deformed right into a tetrahedral mesh, with UE5 performing the simulation on low-res geometry at runtime, utilizing outcomes from a cached high-res sim to extend constancy.
Chaos Flesh helps geometry streamed in by way of Nanite, Unreal Engine’s new digital geometry system, and helps interplay between mushy our bodies and the encircling surroundings, controllable by way of Blueprints.
4. Updates to Nanite, Lumen, ML animation, Niagara and the Path Tracer
Nanite itself has been prolonged, with new options together with help for customized depth and stencil maps, lighting channels, and a worldwide clip aircraft.
Lumen, Unreal Engine’s real-0time international illumination system, will get higher help for skinny geometry, like folds in clothes and physique components like ears and noses, and higher integration with hair grooms.
Animators get updates to the ML Deformer, the AI-trained secondary movement system launched in Unreal Engine 5.1, with a brand new pattern scene accessible as a free obtain from the Unreal Engine market.
The machine studying material deformation system will get improved accuracy and efficiency.
VFX artists utilizing Niagara, Unreal Engine’s particle-based results system, get help for simulation caching, making it potential to retailer and reuse simulation outcomes, and a brand new CPU-based Decal Renderer.
For offline rendering, Unreal Engine’s Path Tracer will get help for spline meshes and mesh decals, higher subsurface scattering, and the choice to render objects as holdouts with out the necessity to change supplies.
5. Digital manufacturing: updates to VCam, nDisplay and an upcoming iOS ICVFX editor
For digital manufacturing work, Unreal Engine 5.2 options additional updates to the VCam system, together with the choice to regulate a number of digital cameras from a single editor occasion.
nDisplay, for output to multi-display set-ups like LED partitions, will get experimental help for SMPTE 2110.
And the desktop in-camera VFX editor will quickly be joined by a brand new iPad app, making it simpler to regulate digital environments on set, though on the time of writing, it isn’t accessible in Epic’s iOS app retailer itemizing.
Extra modifications to asset growth, scene structure, rendering and pipeline integration
Unreal Engine 5.2 additionally contains plenty of smaller updates all through the engine’s key toolsets, plus updates to USD workflows and to the Datasmith toolset for the import of CAD information and DCC fashions.
You could find the total checklist of modifications by way of the hyperlinks on the foot of the story.
System necessities and availability
Unreal Engine 5.2 is accessible now for 64-bit Home windows, macOS and Linux. The discharge introduces native Apple Silicon help, which ought to enhance efficiency of the Unreal Editor on present Macs.
Use of the editor is free, as is rendering non-interactive content material. For video games developed with the engine, Epic takes 5% of the gross royalties after the primary $1 million generated by a title.
Learn an summary of the options in Unreal Engine 5.2 on Epic Video games’ weblog
Learn a full checklist of latest options in Unreal Engine 5.2 within the on-line launch notes
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