Unreal Engine 5 Early Access Now Available
Unreal 5 is now available in early access
Epic games have released the latest new build of unreal engine 5 , the next gen game editor that will allow for development for next gen hardware and it is truly mind blowing!
NANITE MESHES-Quality unbound!
They have added a new tool for static meshes and 3D content called Nanite which is a virtualized micropolygon geometry system that enables us to create games with massive amounts of geometric detail containing millions to billions of polygons to the like of movie quality Zbrush assets. This eliminates the time-consuming and tedious work such as baking details to normal maps or manually authoring Level of Details (LOD). We are now capable of real time rendering millions of polygons—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans and placing them millions of times within the same level without any noticeable loss of fidelity and quality its unbelievable and truly unreal.
In order to use the new feature you will have to enable it as a checkbox item within your static mesh otherwise the engine will use the normal old method of LODs. There are a few limitations such as moving skeletal meshes such as game characters which cannot use Nanite however there are tricks that can be used like as in the Valley of the Ancients demo Epic games used by combining individual static mesh 3D objects onto a skeleton body rig allowing for high detail on the robot “Ancient one”. Epic also released the Metahumans which has LODs and can be used to still give you that high fidelity artwork allowing for creators to have AAA characters along with high detailed Nanite mesh worlds!
Lumen- The future is looking really Bright!
Wait for building lighting no more!!! Yes you heard it ,no more long light builds! Lumen is the new fully dynamic global illumination solution. Using Lumen, you can create dynamic, believable scenes where indirect lighting adapts in realtime to changes to direct lighting or geometry. There is a few seconds of delay while the system adapts but it just works perfectly. There are some caveats to consider when using it such as shadows and foliage which require some attention , but this is a early access build and we are sure to see this all much better in the final release next year.
Using Lumen is as simple as changing the drop down settings in the program and you no longer have to author lightmap UVs, wait for lightmaps to bake, or place reflection captures; you can simply create and edit lights inside the Editor while you work and see the same final lighting as when the game is run! That is awesome! You still have access to all the old light baking stuff you use to if you need it but we doubt you will go back once you experience truly dynamic lighting….
New UI and other features- Gotta Love Makeovers 🙂
In UE5, the Unreal Editor gets a fresh new look with new streamlined workflows and lots of new screen real estate, making it easier and faster to use with more accessible buttons as compared to the old Unreal engine 4 UI which did not make the best use of the screen space. The new UI also allows for docking of the toolbars to the right and left sides making it very easy to access and minimize for maximum viewport experience. We loved the new content browser which can be docked or autohides itself when not needed and easily accessed by using the CTRL+spacebar keys. There is also a new favoriting system for quick access to frequently used properties in the details panel; a new Create button on the main toolbar that makes it easy to place Actors into the world which replaces the old toolbar; metasounds, updated animation tools and alot more…There’s still a lot more to come for Unreal Engine 5 which we are expecting to see in the next shipping full release from EPIC games expected sometime in early 2022
How do I get it? What do I need?
How much does all of this cost? Nothing! All free part of Unreals amazing Ecosystem. You will however need a very powerful machine to run the sample project “Valley of the Ancient” with a RTX graphic card and 32GB or more Ram to get good frame rates. We tried it with a i7-10th gen GTX 1060 6GB and 32GB of ram and got it to work at 16-20FPS@1080P but soon ran into memory errors and alot of crashes so do be aware , the sample project is power and memory (>100GB) intensive!
The unreal 5 engine can run on GTX 970 and upward but you will only get good frame rates of 60FPS and higher at 1080P , you will need much better graphics card such as the RTX 2060 or higher, for 30FPS@4K and higher We recommend a RTX3060 or better to perform good lighting and for general game development at an indie level for higher resolution monitors. If your are on a budget a older RTX 2000 series card will do, however for best future proofing if your looking for a new graphic card we suggest a system with a minimum of a RTX3060 and 16GB system ram.
You can download Unreal Engine 5 Early Access and the Valley of the Ancient sample project from the Epic Games launcher, or visit the UE5 page for more info.
Happy creating…
Related: Metahumans Are Here!