We’re excited to share a few of the new features now available on the Master branch on GitHub. To be able to try out these new features, you will need to download the source code for the Master branch and build the Engine yourself. For more information about how to build the Engine from source code, please see this page. The Master branch on GitHub is constantly being updated and is not quality tested so it may be potentially unstable. We do not recommend using the Master branch for project development. If you wish to wait, these features will be made available to all in an upcoming official release.
Engine News
New Features
New: “Radial Impact” Sample Project!
This game from Devin Sherry is fast-paced, with three different game modes to choose from. Circles are dynamically generated and you click to interact with them at just the right time. The game also plays itself while you are in the menu system. Check out the video tutorials to learn how to add elements like these to your own game!
To download this project please check out our new Community Contributions section within the Learn tab of the UE4 launcher!
Improved Auto Convex Collision
We changed the editor to use a new library for generating auto convex collision in the Static Mesh Editor. It is called V-HACD (https://code.google/p/v-hacd/), and replaces the HACD library we used before.
New: Improved Shader Complexity for Decals
The “Shader Complexity” view mode has been updated to visualize the overhead of decals.
Shader Complexity view can be used to see the impact on the pixel shading cost. It uses a pixel shader cost estimate and accumulates where multiple decals overlap. The following shows a scene without (left) and with decals (right), in normal rendering (top) and with the ShaderComplexity enabled (bottom):
The darker color indicates a higher performance cost of those pixels. This information can be used to optimize the right shaders, remove barely visible decals or place them more efficiently. Note that the decal masking feature currently is not taken into account yet (masked parts should have a smaller constant cost because of using the stencil hardware feature).
Shader Complexity view is available in the viewport menu or by typing “viewmode ShaderComplexity” in the developer console.
New: Turntables in Persona
We now have a turntable within Persona! You can access it from Persona’s viewport toolbar:
Play will make it turn. Pause will make it stop and keep its current orientation. Stop will make it stop and reset its orientation. You can choose from a variety of speeds.
It works for all Persona modes: Skeleton, Skeletal Mesh, Animation and Anim Blueprint.
We have also added an Icon to the Playback Speed button, so it is easy to tell it apart from the Turntable Speed button at a glance.