Tag: Unreal

Posted on by — Leave a comment

PowerIK For Unreal Engine Hands-On

Today we look at PowerIK for Unreal Engine, a full body IK solver. PowerIK was recently released as part of the December monthly UE giveaways as part of the free forever category. On the Unreal Engine marketplace, PowerIK was described as:

Power IK is a full-body IK solver that lets animators push and pull any skeleton with any number of effectors.

Use Power IK to easily align creatures to uneven terrain, or dynamically modify their pose at run-time. Power IK is a robust and efficient solver that produces remarkably natural poses even under extreme circumstances.

PowerIK has the following features:

  • Unique proprietary full-body IK solver
  • Power IK Solver AnimGraph node
  • Built-in ground alignment
  • Power IK Rig Actor Component for making interactive rigs
  • Bonus! Procedural animation example blueprints
  • Bonus! 6 sample skeletal meshes with fully documented blueprints

While it supports Unreal Engine 4.26, the current install will give you an error when you try to run PowerIK. If this occurs, on Windows the fix is fairly simple. Navigate to your install directory for UE 4.26, then navigate to:

\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\PowerIK\Source\PowerIKRuntime\sdk\lib\Win64

Copy the file POWERIK.DLL. Next paste it to the directory

\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace\PowerIK\Binaries\Win64

Now it should work just fine. In the video below we go hands-on with PowerIK using the example project currently available for download here. If you run into some trouble, the documentation is available here.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Unreal Engine As A 3D Modeling & Sculpting Application

The most recent releases of Unreal Engine now include new beta Unreal Modeling Tools Editor Mode enabling you to create, sculpt and even texture entirely in Unreal Engine. If you want to check out the new features, you need to enable the plugin. Don’t worry, there are step by step instructions available below

In Unreal Engine, select Edit->Plugins.

In the Plugins dialog, filter by Model and locate and select Modeling Tools Editor Mode and click the Enabled checkbox.

Modeling Tools Editor Mode in Unreal Engine

This will first prompt you if you want to continue due to it being an experimental feature. Allow this, then it will prompt you to restart Unreal Engine, click Restart Now.

New plugin restart Unreal Engine

Once your project has restarted, you can access the new modeling tools in the Modes menu by selecting Modeling.

Modeling Mode in Unreal Engine

Once enabled a new toolbar will be available with options for creating new geometry from primitives or other creation modes, tools for modifying and deforming as well as sculpting geometry and much more.

Go hands-on with the Unreal Modeling Tools Editor Mode plugin in the video below.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Core Engine Monetization With Perks

Developers creating games using the Core game engine can now make money from their creation with the newly announced Perks monetization system. Lagging behind user content platforms like YouTube and Twitch, creating game content is becoming hotter and hotter. With the recent massive IPO of Roblox revealing that developers just made 1/4 billion dollars on the platform it’s obvious there is money to be made here. With the Perks monetization system, Manticore Games are offering developers a much more equitable 50% share instead of the 24.5% currently earned by Roblox developers.

Details from the Core Perks announcement blog:

With Perks, monetizing your games is easy. Simply put, Perks are in-game purchases built specifically for Core. They allow creators to sell in-game benefits and earn Credits from players. Players buy Perks with Core Credits, which creators can then easily convert to fiat (real) currency.

In just a few simple steps, you can make your game free-to-play or premium, require a membership, offer expansion packs, or whatever you want. No matter how you choose to engage and entice your players, we make it simple. And if after going in one economic direction you decide to pivot to another, you can change it up very quickly. Perks always gives you full control over the economics of your games.

Another significant difference is how developers make money and what is covered by the platform. In addition to double the earnings, the Core platform will also be taking care of a bigger portion of the workload as illustrated in this graphic.

Core Costs covered vs Roblox and Steam AppStore Etc

The Core Platform is powered by Unreal Engine and Epic Games have recently taken a stake in the company illustrating a certain belief in the idea. We went hands-on with the Core Engine when the open alpha release was announced. You can check out the video below to learn more about Core and the new Perks monetization program.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Unreal Engine 4.26 Released

Epic Games have just release UE 4.26. In this release we see features such as hair and anisotrophy reach production ready status. Additionally there is a new water simulation system (previewed here) and better integration of the new Chaos Physics System (tutorial here) and a brand new system for creating better skies, lighting and environmental clouds. Additionally there were several advancements on the film making side of the equation along side hundreds of other small improvements and bug fixes. With each new Unreal Engine release more and more functionality traditionally done in your DCC tool of choice such as modelling, rigging, animating and sculpting are being added to Unreal.

A summary of new features from the Unreal Engine 4.26 release notes:

The production-ready Hair, Fur, and Feathers system enables you to design the most believable humans and animals. You can use the Volumetric Cloud component along with the Sky Atmosphere and Sky Light to author and render realistic or stylized skies, clouds, and other atmospheric effects with full artistic freedom. The new Water System makes it possible to create believable bodies of water within your landscape terrains that react with your characters, vehicles, and weapons. With an improved and expanded feature set, Chaos physics now lets you simulate Vehicles, Cloth, and Ragdolls in addition to Rigid Bodies so every aspect of the environment comes to life.

Sequencer now works in conjunction with Control Rig and the new full-body IK solution to create new animations inside of Sequencer, reducing the need to use external tools. Movie Render Queue (formerly known as High Quality Media Export) has been enhanced to support render passes enabling further enhancements to be made to the final image in a downstream compositing application. nDisplay multi-display rendering is easier to set up and configure in addition to enabling more pixels to be rendered at a higher frame rate, thus increasing performance and supporting larger LED volumes with existing hardware. The Collaborative Viewer Template has been significantly improved to enhance the collaborative design review experience, and enable more users to join a session. The Remote Control API has been improved to seamlessly connect properties and functionality in Unreal Editor to UI widgets giving users the ability to quickly change properties from an external device, such as an artist on stage changing the sky rotation or the sun position from an iPad.

In the video below we take a quick look at the new water system as well as a quick tutorial on creating Hair alembic files using Blender for export to Unreal Engine, then quickly showcase the new Groom hair functionality.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Unreal Engine Asset Giveaway For December 2020

Every month Epic Games giveaways several assets on the Unreal Engine marketplace and December is no exception. This month we have 5 new assets that are available for free until the first Tuesday in January, but once “purchased” those assets are yours to use free forever. Speaking of forever, there is also one new asset in the permanently free collection.

This months free assets include:

This months permanently free asset is:

A common question with these assets is can the be used outside of Unreal Engine. Generally the answer is yes, unless the asset was owned or sourced directly by Epic Games, like the Power IK asset this month, in which case it can only be used in Unreal Engine projects. You can learn more about this months UE4 asset giveaway in the video below.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

NVIDIA Release RTX Branch of Unreal Engine 4.25.4

The NVIDIA game development team just announced the release of the RTX GPU optimized branch of Unreal Engine. The 4.25.4 branch of Unreal Engine is the most current as of time of writing. The NVIDIA RTX branch is all about bringing RTX hardware optimized raytracing performance to UE4.

Details of the release:

  • Stability improvements
  • Hitching improvements due to async shader management
  • Transmissivity of light through foliage
  • Several generic SW overhead reductions for RT setup
  • Better culling default for instanced static meshes (foliage)
  • Minor fixes for light culling in reflections
  • Substantial improvements in GI and path tracing performance with high light counts
  • Unreal Engine 4.25.4 Update

There is also a experimental caustics branch with the following features:

  • The new hybrid translucency mode
  • Multi-bounce refraction optimization
  • Based on the latest NVIDIA RTX Branch
  • Mesh and Water caustics feature

More details of NVIDIA Unreal Engine support are available here. In order to access the RTX branches available on GitHub you have to first link your GitHub account to your Unreal Engine account with details available here.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Unreal Engine Free Content for November 2020

Every month for the last couple years Epic Games have given away several assets for Unreal Engine with today being no exception. While the assets are completely free, they are only free until the first Tuesday of December. Once “purchased” the assets are yours forever.

This months free assets include:

Permanently Free Additions:

Unfortunately there is no video yet as YouTube Studio for creators is currently down and nobody can upload or edit videos right now. Once YouTube errors are fixed we will upload a video.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Humble Ultimate Fantasy Game Development Bundle

There is a new Humble Bundle of interest to game developers, this one is the Ultimate Fantasy Game Development bundle. It’s a collection of fantasy themed models, full rigged, textured and animated with tons of modularity and different texture packs. Even more impressive, the package is available as keys for both Unity and Unreal Engine asset stores and the models and textures are in a format that can be used in any 3D game engine with ease. As with all Humble Bundles, this one is organized into tiers:

1$ Tier

  • Plant Monster
  • Rock Monster
  • Mushroom Monster

15$ Tier

  • Giant Worm
  • Minotaur
  • Mimics & Chests
  • Medusa
  • Locks and Lockpicks

25$ Tier

  • Spiders
  • Dragons
  • Humans
  • Armor Pack 1
  • Weapons & Armor 1
  • Character Accessories
  • Trolls
  • Demons
  • Magic & Melee Sounds Library
  • Devils

As with all Humble Bundles, you get to decide how your money is allocated between Humble, Charity, the publisher and if you so choose (and thanks if you do!) to support GFS purchasing through this link. You can get additional asset packs in the same art style created by Infinity PBR on the Unity Asset Store. You can learn more about the asset pack in the video below.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Unreal Engine 4.26 Water Simulation

Previously expected in Unreal Engine 4.26 Preview 1, the new experimental water simulation system from Fortnite has finally shipped in Unreal Engine 4.26 preview 3. The new water simulation system enables you to quick create realistic and highly configurable water simulations, including oceans, lakes and rivers. Of course the key word is experimental, this is a feature that is nowhere near ready for prime time.

You can see a quick preview of the water system in action in the video below. Given the fact that there currently exists no documentation and it seems several of the features are currently broken, the video by no means showcases all of the new fluid simulation systems capabilities. Currently the only information available on how to use the new system come in the 2 1/2 Epic Games livestream available here. While early on, the new system does seem incredibly promising. For now however, the UIWS, or Unified Interactive Water System from the September monthly UE4 giveaway is most likely a better choice.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Oculus Quest 2 Game Development Options

October 13th is the official launch date of the Oculus Quest 2, and with millions of Quests now in gamer’s hands, some are no doubt going to want to figure you how to develop games for them. This is a quick overview of the various different technical options and tools for developing games on the Oculus Quest 2.

The very first thing you are going to want to do is visit the Oculus Quest Developer Portal, the central repository and jumping off point for Oculus VR development. You are also eventually going to have to register to get your developer keys, which are required to deploy your completed game onto a headset. We will cover this in a later tutorial. For now let’s look at some of the options available for Quest 2 game development.

Native Development

Oculus release a set of low level C++ development tools for creating your own game or application basically from scratch. Native development is ultimately Android NDK development and requires Android Studio to be installed, as well as the Oculus Mobile SDK. There are a number of C++ code samples to get you started. Only take this option if you are an experienced coder and want to work at a very low level.

Unity Game Engine

The Unity game engine is perhaps the most commonly used game engine for VR development today. The Quest 2 is fully supported and you get a huge amount of starter content and tutorials to get you going. Oculus have getting started with Unity guides available here.

Unreal Engine

After the Unity game engine, Unreal is probably the next most commonly used game engines for VR development. Like Unity, Oculus have getting started materials for Unreal Engine available as well. If you are having trouble deciding between Unreal and Unity, check out this video comparing the two.

Godot Engine

The open source Godot game engine is another option for Oculus Quest development. There is a Oculus Mobile plugin available here as well as the Quest specific Quest Toolkit for Godot, which ships with tons of examples to get you up and started.

Other Engines

CryEngine can be used for Quest 2 development, as evidence by The Climb. Unfortunately CryEngine mobile and VR support is only available in a private beta currently. Additionally the Lumberyard game engine supports VR development, but currently only desktop platforms. You can run Rift and Vive games on the Quest, but using Lumberyard you can’t currently do native development.

WebVR

One of the easiest and quickest to get up and running is creating browser based VR games that can be run on the Quest 2. Here one of the easiest options is A-Frame where you can create 3D worlds using simple HTML-esque markup. Three.JS is the technology A-Frame is built upon and is another option, while the higher level PlayCanvas game engine has VR support as well.

You can learn more about the Oculus Quest 2 and the development options available in the video below.