July 10 livestream: Unreal Engine 4.3 Preview and Rendering Update

[Flak]

On this week’s Unreal Engine livestream broadcast, Unreal Engine General Manager, Ray Davis, and Sr. Environment Artist Ryan Brucks give a preview of 4.3, Tech Writer Lauren Ridge gives us a documentation update, we'll have a rendering update and more!

WHAT
Twitch stream: Unreal Engine 4.3 Preview and Rendering Update and more!

WHEN
2pm EDT

WHERE
www.twitch.tv/unrealengine

WHO
Ray Davis, GM
Ryan Brucks, Sr. Environment Artist
Lauren Ridge, Technical Writer
Guest appearances TBD

Tell us what you want to know about 4.3, documentation, the rendering update and anything else in this thread!

Here are the Community Spotlight content pieces for this week!:
GREAT content from Petit Con, which was a game jam held in Japan last week – here are a couple of examples:
Matetester
Frozen Cell
3D vs. Dot
Tappy Chicken “2”

Also, there are a few new examples on our forums we wanted to spotlight:
The Mustang Project
FTC's Adventure Kit
Quadcopter Flight Trainer


Hi guys! The youtube video from the stream is up!

http://youtu.be/BWXBkV_C8Zs

[Daydreamer]

Hi R, R, and L,

Per the Speedtree integration, will trees added via the foliage tool have collision?

Thanks,
-D

[Jacky]

I'm curious about the rendering update. Is it the distance field AO and skylight GI or something we dont know about yet? Always a reason to get excited about the stream.

[DanielW]

Is it the distance field AO and skylight GI

Mostly those, yes

[mikezteh69]

After the 4.3 update could the team gather and share some info on upcoming features for the 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 time frame? Just as a state of progress on the major upcoming features. Just a thought.

[DavidJHarmon]

if we keep going like this we will have unreal engine 5 out soon lol

so are we going to see true mmorpg coming out every soon with no headaches?

[Demolition Man]

After the 4.3 update could the team gather and share some info on upcoming features for the 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 time frame? Just as a state of progress on the major upcoming features. Just a thought.

I think this would be a great idea. It's hard for me to comment on what should be done with the engine when I don't even know what the team is working on. Now if you have to keep something a secret then do so. Just give us a general idea of where you are headed

[Weskey]

Here we go:

• With these new API as iOS Metal and Android Expansion Pack is capable of restrictions on Materials, Textures, Content andPerfomance disappear or diminish?
• There are plans to update the UDK Remote? Any chance of a version for Android?
• Is there any remote possibility in the future for games for Mac are exported from Windows and vice versa?
• Any chance of being displayed some small preview of the Sequencer or Cascade 2.0?
• Any chance of having something like the "Time of Day" natively?

Thank you, and congratulations to the entire team from the Unreal Engine, for bringing us this wonderful tool.

[DanielW]

After the 4.3 update could the team gather and share some info on upcoming features for the 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 time frame? Just as a state of progress on the major upcoming features. Just a thought.

Well, those features haven't been created yet =)

The engine roadmap is here and you can vote on things you want. Items being on the roadmap is not a guarantee for the feature, it just means that we want to investigate it in the next few months.
https://trello.com/b/gHooNW9I/ue4-roadmap

[Tkfore21]

Will we need to still install several items to get HTML 5 to work with this build? How much closer are we to being able to go down that path?

[KitatusStudios]

Any chance of getting my Free Blueprints book and upcoming GameDev book (Covering making games from start to finish with Unreal Engine 4) a shout-out on the Stream? I want to help as many people as possible find the resources so they can enjoy them!

The free Blueprints E-Book: https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...6929#post76929

The "So You Want To Make Video-Games?" Campaign [Free Book for Children, Adults and Elders! My Mission to get the book in front of everybody via Libraries, the Internet and more!] (Thanks again Mark Rein for the generous contribution!): http://bit.ly/SoYouWantToMakeVG

Thanks guys 'n gals <3

[Sitrec]

if we keep going like this we will have unreal engine 5 out soon lol

so are we going to see true mmorpg coming out every soon with no headaches?

Well, that's not how software versioning works, the "." is not a decimal, it's a separator. After 4.9 we'll most likely see 4.10 and so on.
The first number is the major version, then updates (4.3 for example) and last hotfixes (4.2.1 for example).

[The_Distiller]

Is there a chance for parallax corrected and higher res reflection captures to be implemented in the not too distant future?

[gabrielefx]

Please create the on-line UE4 database for assets:
characters
materials
objects
plugins

plugins to add:
midi i-o
osc i-o
dmx i-o
data connection (SQL)
video in from external boards, cams or streams (e.g. Sony playroom)
mpg4 video playback

regards

[Zeustiak]

The level browser update looks great. My question is regarding procedural use of this browser. I would like to be spawn a map into a streaming level, have it save that information, and then load and unload that streaming level as normal as if I had manually placed it there, which I spent a week or two attempting without any success.

Will this update, or future updates allow for procedural spawning of objects and terrains into these levels during runtime?

[Xces]

it would be very helpfull if you add a target to pack an dedicated server...

using the one from the shootergame works but a one click solution would be better

[TheJamsh]

A few questions from me, I'll be tuning in at work tonight

- How much more expensive is the Lit Translucency now than it was previously?
- Does this mean that Translucent surfaces now support Lightmaps? What about 2-Sided Lightmaps for things like planes of glass lit from both sides etc.
- Does the Lit Translucency Support Realtime Reflections? For Example, can I now have an accurate realtime reflection on water surfaces?
- Is epic planning on releasing any of it's other Tech Demos in future releases, mainly Infiltrator. There are some unique material functions that I'd like to see. (PM'd Ryan and E-Mailed Francois about them already)

- Shameless Plug: Do you wanna feature either one of these for lolz/kudos in the community spotlight :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoT8hSsnduI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7iK6u-w3Po

[Osman]

Good stuff epic, here are my questions

1: For the new DFAO you guys mentioned it only works for static mesh. Out of curiousity, is the way you guys handle BSP and StaticMesh a lot different in terms of rendering? I use it mainly for blocking out my levels but I leave some here and there and I'd like to know what to keep an eye out ( Maybe they will not bounce right or capture reflections in the same way..etc )

2: Is it possible to see your setup for Fortnight since it is a very dynamic game. What kind of a lighting setup do you have for interior and exterior. Or is this all secrety stuff ^^

3: Will we be getting better acces to GameMode in blueprint. It'd be nice to setup minimum player count before the game starts, if its round-based, round time etc. I can do most of these myself in blueprint but it seems like the functionality is already in GameMode.h but not exposed.

[kodmistrz]

1. Can I work safely on 4.3 Preview? I don't want situation like crash my project in the future.
2. I look at Roadmap and see feature for June: Integration of DetourCrowds. It will be available in 4.3?

[KingBadger3D]

[QUESTIONS FOR STREAM} PLEASE MAKE SURE THE ABOVE GUYS GET SHOWN THIS BEFORE THE STREAM TO PREPARE SOME ANSWERS



http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/65/01/20/PDF/article.pdf

Bruneton & Neyret's EG'12 scalable, high-quality tree imposter method for forest rendering.

This Method is very close to the Blueprint render to texture system Ryan has been working on, The PDF has some nice details on algorithms and implmentation, We really need this done. Foliage is one of the last things that UE4 is pretty bad at right now, add this method to the brilliant PBR system of UE4 and were onto a winner.

Also a quick question about the terrain tools as they are in UE4 editor, at this time we can select an area of our terrain generated by our imported height map to copy to another location on our same terrain, Please can this be updated to also take into consideration the base map data from the textures imported for material base. E.g if i copy a selection of the map (height) can the tool be updated to also copy the Colour map base texture data, Normal map, etc etc with that height data that your transferring to another area of the terrain. Having ONLY the height information copied from one spot to another without the other maps just ruins the base textures created. If you get that working the terrain tool becomes a whole lot more usable.

Right click the image and select open in new tab for full res


Right click the image and select open in new tab for full res


For Example This is one of the test Environment's ive been building. Has height map,Normal,Grass/Rock Mask/Sand Mask/Roughness Map (basicly all the PBR maps you need. Within the terrain tool i may want to copy one area of the map i like to another area i don't like that much, But as is the tool would only copy the height info and break all the other imported PBR maps ive created. But if it copied all the relevant map data from each texture terrain editing from imported maps becomes superb. Please Please Please make this happen.

Another request for terrain & Foliage tool, Im building my environments in high end 3d app (Blender in this case). What id really like is to be able to use Blenders Particle system to distribute tree models, rocks etc onto my terrain directly in the high end tool, but then once ive got what i like to be able to turn each of those hair particles into a dummy which holds the object type, position, rotation, scale (say i have 100,000 pine trees instanced) then to be able to export that set of dummy's with FBX into UE4 terrain foliage tool and the foliage tool to recognise the name prefix (for example pine) that you have imported as mesh into UE4 and then scatter instances of the object across the map in the positions matched by the imported dummy's (which would mean no having to go round painting in foliage by hand, Also being able to mask map areas with a black and white map would also be helpful (so if you are hand painting foliage in it will only add objects for example where black is in the mask map

For More Terrain Work ive been doing goto this thread on the forums:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...d-Environments

Object-order Ray Tracing for Dynamic Scenes

Quick Breakdown:

Ray tracing is a robust and flexible approach to image synthesis that elegantly solves many problems that are hard to solve using rasterization. Recent advances in the performance and flexibility of graphics processing hardware have made ray tracing a viable option even for real-time rendering applications. Yet, integrating ray tracing into existing rasterization-based real-time rendering solutions poses significant challenges. Modern rasterization-based rendering engines typically use the capabilities of modern GPUs to generate, transform and amplify geometry on-the-fly. In contrast, efficient ray tracing techniques typically depend upon pre-built spatial acceleration data structures that allow for fast random access to the scene geometry.

Our article presents a method for tracing incoherent secondary rays that integrates well with existing rasterization-based real-time rendering engines. In particular, it requires only linear scene access and supports fully dynamic scene geometry comprised only of triangle soups. All parts of the method that work with scene geometry are implemented in the standard graphics pipeline. Thus, the ability to generate, transform and animate geometry via shaders is fully retained. Moreover, shading can share the same material system that is used in a deferred shading rasterizer.
Consequently, our method allows for a unified rendering architecture that supports both rasterization and ray tracing. The more expensive ray tracing can easily be restricted to complex phenomena that require it, such as reflections and refractions on arbitrarily shaped scene geometry. Other rendering steps can be dealt with using rasterization as usual.

While our method of ray tracing works object-order, we still manage to limit the number of intersection tests that have to be performed: Using a coarse conservative voxel approximation of the scene, we first estimate potential hit points for each ray and subsequently only test triangles with rays that have potential hits nearby. Furthermore, we introduce a multi-pass intersection testing scheme that allows for early termination of rays on first hit (analogous to Z-culling optimizations), which is a recurring problem in methods that deviate from standard (depth-first) traversal of spatial data structures.

Our GPU Pro 5 article provides a detailed description of our ray tracing method as well as a sample implementation that demonstrates the tracing of incoherent secondary rays with reflection rays. Ray tracing is implemented in the context of a traditional rasterization-based deferred shading engine, everything besides reflection rays is rasterized as usual.

Download Link for the GPU Pro 5 Book Code examples (includes the ray tracing example, YOU NEED TO LOOK AT THIS).
http://www.crcpress.com/downloads/K2..._Downloads.zip

The above Object order raytracing is very interesting and works well with deferred rendering (even can use the original engines material system (PBR in UE4's case) this would be superb. I also had the idea of mixing the render to texture tools shown in Ryans last stream to simplify the raytrace system even further, By mixing this with the render to texture approach of 3d geometry imposters for objects not near to camera view the engine only would need to trace rays against a single quad, getting rid of one of the slowest parts of trying to get realtime raytracing working, Intersection testing against tris. By mixing the approach of the above tree imposter method (that should also be converted into other world geometry imposters as well like rocks and other static geometry in any scene) realtime raytracing just becomes a matter of for a large chunk of the scene intersection testing to a single quad per object (as each object should have colour,normal in the baked imposter maps) data BVH building (or what ever method you choose for a hierarchy) would be much faster and well within the realms of achieving good frame rate's.

You guys need to look hard at these suggestions.

Cheers KB

[KingBadger3D]

Also:

Also ive been pointing people in the direction of this great work by Morgan Mcguire

Fast Global Illumination Approximations on Deep G-Buffers

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/pape...eepGBuffer.pdf



Screen space isnt perfect but this new approach goes far beyond what we would call normal screen space, Mixed with LPV for a course of screen GI approximation so as to get bounced light information from behind the view point should work like a charm.

[AdamZ]

I'd like to know if 4.3 will have any assets from Speed Tree integrated to test out, such as a tree, foliage, grass, etc.

I'd also like to know how the progress of integrating Substance is coming along.

Thanks!

[HavocX]

Are there any optimizations of the editor rendering in 4.3. There are reports of higher framerates from some who have tested the preview.

[HavocX]

Do you have any news on when the Marketplace will open up for user content?

[The_Distiller]

A few details about the upcoming skin shader would be nice. Will it give similar results to the one used in The Order 1886 in terms of softening? How are chances for it to be in the 4.4 release?

[joessu]

Shoutout to Zak for making really awesome cascade tutorials, I went through all of them and they are fantastic. Cascade is also fantastic! I went from not knowing at all how to use it to being able to reproduce my concept artist's effects concepts better than he intended!

Couple of differences and wondering if they are 4.3 vs 4.2.1 related.

Size by Speed is not in the modules, is this a 4.3 thing? (didnt see it in the docs). Size by Life works anyways.
RadialGradientExponential is inverted for me (and a few others). Used a 1-minues and it was fine though.

[leucus]

substance plugin timeframe, lot of money wrapped up in them, will be awesome to finally be able to use them

[HeadClot]

Hey Epic -

I am curious about World Browser and some miscommunication that may have happened. In the previous live stream at the very end it was said that world browser would support Single player worlds in 4.3

However a member of epic games staff said on the forums that it will support multiplayer in 4.3. I am a bit confused which is it?

[DizcoDev]

@joessu

Size By Speed is used for GPU Particles.

regards

[joessu]

@joessu

Size By Speed is used for GPU Particles.

regards

Not according to the tutorial that i followed. The 4th video he creates a sparks emitter (CPU) and gets a size by speed module.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur..._QT4GLiU#t=857

check out at that exact time.

[DizcoDev]

Not according to the tutorial that i followed. The 4th video he creates a sparks emitter (CPU) and gets a size by speed module.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur..._QT4GLiU#t=857

check out at that exact time.

Hmm. Okay looks like in 4.3 it will be possible to use Size By Speed on CPU Particles. Here on my 4.2.1 install it only works on GPU Particles. My bad Sorry!

[zeOrb]

Not according to the tutorial that i followed. The 4th video he creates a sparks emitter (CPU) and gets a size by speed module.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur..._QT4GLiU#t=857

check out at that exact time.

Yeah, it's in 4.3 both for GPU and CPU particles.

[zerofiftyone]

Hey folks. I had a quick question: What's the current status of UMG?

[Ozykz]

Hey! I have a quick question, What is the status on the "Auto lightmap UV workflow" that's posted on the roadmap, And am i correct to assume its similar to the UV tools of Enlighten, where it generates the UV lightmaps automatically without having to make it manually? Also, will we see it in 4.3? Thanks guys, You rock!

[joessu]

Yeah, it's in 4.3 both for GPU and CPU particles.

Awesome!

Hey folks. I had a quick question: What's the current status of UMG?

I think there is a thread somewhere here on the forums that is constantly updated with status.

[MC Stryker]

Hey Guys,

Really looking forward to the updated lit translucency but I notice there is a lot of flickering with translucent materials when using the Oculus Rift currently in 4.2, has this been improved or were there any other improvements to translucent materials? Thanks!

[Brian Karis]

What is the status on the "Auto lightmap UV workflow"?

Working on it as we speak. The idea is to make an automatic UV packer that is good enough quality to make it the default workflow for using lightmaps. Right now there are two ways to generate lightmap UVs inside of unreal, both of which give pretty poor results. I am going to replace both with a new one and make it pack on import instead of as a hidden tool you need to know about and use. The long term goal is to make the concept of lightmaps as 2d textures totally transparent to the user. To achieve this, UVs need to not have to be provided by the artist and we need to smooth object and UV seams. The goal is a lofty one and this is step one down that path.

[Brian Karis]

A few details about the upcoming skin shader would be nice. Will it give similar results to the one used in The Order 1886 in terms of softening?

The preintegrated skin shading model that has been present since 4.0 is the same general model The Order uses. Although efficient, we haven't been able to achieve the quality of skin we are after with it. The skin technique we are working on uses screen space subsurface scattering based on the work of Jorge Jimenez. It should be much higher quality skin than anything we have supported in the past.

[n00854180t]

The preintegrated skin shading model that has been present since 4.0 is the same general model The Order uses. Although efficient, we haven't been able to achieve the quality of skin we are after with it. The skin technique we are working on uses screen space subsurface scattering based on the work of Jorge Jimenez. It should be much higher quality skin than anything we have supported in the past.

Awesome - I'd love to be able to get such high quality skin on my characters.

Working on it as we speak. The idea is to make an automatic UV packer that is good enough quality to make it the default workflow for using lightmaps. Right now there are two ways to generate lightmap UVs inside of unreal, both of which give pretty poor results. I am going to replace both with a new one and make it pack on import instead of as a hidden tool you need to know about and use. The long term goal is to make the concept of lightmaps as 2d textures totally transparent to the user. To achieve this, UVs need to not have to be provided by the artist and we need to smooth object and UV seams. The goal is a lofty one and this is step one down that path.

This is really nice and would probably remove most of my annoyances with lightmaps at this point. Having to massage the UVs right now is a real pain.

[Zeustiak]

Wish these livestreams would make it on to youtube faster.