Epic Games is releasing Unreal Engine 5.1 today as a new update to its game engine that it hopes will help build the metaverse.
The new update aims to make Unreal Engine 5 easier and faster to take charge of 3D content creation. The company has added a variety of new stress-tested features and enhancements in 5.1 to make Unreal more robust, efficient, and versatile for creators in all industries.
According to Epic Games, more than half of the next generation of games. Announced are created using the Unreal Engine. And developers can now use the new Lighten Global Light and Reflections System, it said. Knowledge is important for game developers, or anyone attempting to build a metaverse.
Virtualized micro polygon geometry system
We have also updated our virtualized micropolygon geometry system, Nanite, and virtual shadow maps. Which are the foundation for games and experiences that run at 60 fps on next-generation consoles and high-performance PCs. The improvements allow for fast-paced competitions and detailed simulations without delay, Epic said.
As with other solutions, Nanite has added a programmable rasterizer that supports material-driven animation and deformation with global position offsets. With this development, artists can use Nanite to program specific objects, such as Nanite-based foliage that blows away in the wind.
UE 5.1 also adds several features to make games and other large interactive projects more efficient. It helps increase team productivity. For example, with virtual assets, data can be decoupled from objects. Allowing developers to maximize the use of this data from a source, network. Network and synchronize only what they need from other sources.
New automatic pipeline state object caching for DX12 simplifies the design and execution of games for transport in DX12. Finally, on-demand shader compilation allows the Unreal Editor to run only the shaders needed to render an image. Generating considerable time and interactivity improvements, Epic said.
This release also provides additional features and workflow improvements for developers building large open worlds. World Partition offers an improved source control experience, including file management, filtering, searching, and list modification.
These and other details make Big Water more interesting.
Change lists make it easier to find content in the world and vice versa. HTOD (Hierarchical Level of Detail) support for water rendering and streaming allows us to represent big water with higher frequencies and a smaller memory footprint. The photos look pretty good as well.
Epics Vcams is now available in Unity 5.1
The Unreal Engine has been used in 425 films and television shows and integrated into more than 300 virtual production stages worldwide. With the new version of Unreal Engine 5.1, dedicated to virtual production workflows, engineers. Artists will have access to a dedicated in-camera VFX editor. An improved light card system, upgraded remote control APIs, extended color correction tools, and nDisplay’s initial Lumen support.
First, LED stage operators can now use the new dedicated In-Camera VFX (ICVFX) Editor. which supports a wide range of virtual production workflows. This comes almost free of charge, as stage operators need to hunt for specific items and controls through the Outliner. uE 5.1 also adds UI, UX, and performance improvements to the Remote Control API, making it easier for users to build custom browser-based easy and powerful tools for building remote controls.
The ICVFX editor also presents a screenshot of the light card system in the nDisplay wall presentation. The new light cards can be faded out by removing lines from the wall. In short, the new light cards provide a flexible and efficient way to create, move, edit, and save light cards and templates.
Unreal Engine 5.1 is engineered to work
This addition is the latest feature in the ICVFX Editor that allows the use of the Color Correction. Window in the Color Correction so that it can only be used in computer photo editing for any type of damage that is produced. This is a PC issue and reduces the need for complex masking.
Unreal Engine 5.1 allows OpenEXR to be used with new media plate actors, so users can simply drag and drop footage from the content browser. Decompressed and uncompressed EXR can be played back together on both engines. N Display with the appropriate SSD RAID and can now be converted to the correct format for optimal playback.
Simultaneously with the new version. The virtual camera system is now upgraded with a new underlying framework and Epics pixel streaming technology that increases responsiveness and reliability. The latest UI is equipped with a modern design focused on the camera, making it sound more familiar to camera operators.
Available devices like memory devices will be enabled and the UI will adapt to the new environment.
Unreal Engine 5’s lumen effects create precise light and shadow
Lumen, a highly dynamic global illumination and reflection system, is currently initially supported in 5.1 nDisplay and has a modest number of lights (around 5-7 lights total, depending on the graphics card). Lumen allows for indirect lighting, allowing the sun angle, the lights, and bounce cards. The next step required a baking step that interrupted the creative flow and could stop production.
UE 5.1 brings further improvements to GPU Lightmass, including support for Sky Atmosphere and stationary Sky Lights. Light features such as IES profiles and rect-light textures improved quality and performance across the board. Lightmass has been further improved with support for Light features. Such as Sky Atmosphere, stationary Sky Lights, IES profiles and rect-light textures, and improved overall board quality and performance.
Unreal Engine for animation
We use the 5.1 version of the Unreal Engine for animation.
The use of idle engines in animation has grown dramatically since 2015 and 2019, and is now estimated to be 60 million units between 2020 and 2022. Unreal Engine 5.1 has several notable improvements for those working with animated content, including characters, sequencing and animation.
Machine Learning (ML) deformers can now approximate nonlinear deformers. Complex proprietary rigs and arbitrary deformations with high fidelity by using a custom plug-in in Maya to train machine learning models. Which are then run in real-time in the Unreal Engine.
This allows for the simulation of cinematic-quality deformations, such as muscle flexion, hardening of blood vessels, skin sliding, and more. Other improvements to character deformations include an improved deformer graph editor for easy graph creation and color correction.
In addition, Control Line continues to grow toward a fully procedural rigging process, reducing team impact and scalability. Added to the core framework are new construction events that allow rig hierarchies to be generated by graphs. And custom user events for creating and triggering rig events such as Snap FK to IK.
supports Sequencer
These updates allow artists to create control rig assets that can build themselves to fit characters with different skeletal proportions and properties. Even the same control can be adapted to a three-fingered monster or an eight-fingered human without any modifications to the rig asset.
Unreal Engine 5.1 also supports Sequencer and other engine controls, including position, rotation, and look-at.
These can be used to create a camera as a character and keep his hands on the handlebars. Create a clown and throw a jumper in the saddle as he moves, or point a cowboy’s hips to the saddle but keep his hands on the reins or any other control rig or actor-to-actor relationship that can be quickly and easily created and animated.
The sequencer features enhanced blueprinting and Python scripting, a refactored UI/UX for stability and scalability, and an improved animation loading and editing workflow.
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