[Twitch] 4.5 Check In, Animation Retargeting and More! - Sept. 25, 2014

[anonymous_user_d829b65b]

@CharlestonS;151980

You also mentioned that Lion’s Head’s GI is currently implemented into the engine, is there any documentation on utilizing this feature or is it the same GI that has been in since 4.0 that you have to enable via the .ini file?

+1 for that! Yeah, was also thinking about that.

[anonymous_user_f2b8b290]

Hey guys, I wasn’t in the live stream but can answer some rendering questions. Only answering the ones I know the answers to.

Question: Please Epic, there’s a lot of people wondering if and when you’re planning on improving foliage lighting?

Support for texture lightmaps on instanced foliage is being worked on but will not be in 4.5. We expect it to have a lot of problems even when it is working - you can easily have horrible build times with lots of instances either due to instanced triangle count or due to a ton of lightmap texels. In the end what you want for foliage lighting isn’t necessarily texture lightmaps anyway - triangles in foliage are really a simplification of many smaller leaves. Texture lightmaps are going to have a lot of seams everywhere. Two-sided foliage needs a special lighting model. We want to improve this but haven’t gotten to it yet.

They’ve done it for years, I think there is some spam filter automatically hiding all posts including the word “Foliage” for them.

Lol

Will we get realistic water support in UE 4.5 ?

The features for this are forward lighting of transparency and planar reflections. It’s something we want to improve but haven’t gotten to yet. I started working on planar reflection support for Epic Friday but had to shelve it as I ran out of time. Maybe next Epic Friday =)

• Any word on light shafts working on point lights as they did in UE3 with 4.5?

We haven’t gotten to that yet. The reason is that light shaft bloom on point lights kinda sucks and doing light shaft occlusion on point lights first requires inscattering from that point light (lit fog from local light sources) which we haven’t gotten to yet either.

• Will 4.5 finally fix the issue with materials being swapped for the default material during shader compiling?

Not yet, sorry =( The asynchronous shader compiling system is very complex and easy to make subtle bugs in, which has slowed this down.

• Any updated on Screen Space Reflections working with Translucent materials, possibly in 4.5?

I’m not sure that will ever be supported, SSR operates deferred on a single layer (opaque only). I don’t think it can be made to work in a forward pass with reasonable performance.

• Will we finally get, with 4.5, Real-Time GI and fully functional emissive lighting, or at the very least static emissive lighting support as we had in UE3?

Realtime GI - no improvements in this area, sorry. Emissive lighting in Lightmass will probably be re-added soon, it’s not too hard.

[anonymous_user_f2b8b290]

You also mentioned that Lion’s Head’s GI is currently implemented into the engine, is there any documentation on utilizing this feature or is it the same GI that has been in since 4.0 that you have to enable via the .ini file?

Same LPV that you enable in the ini

[FS_Creations]

The animation rettargeting feature is really impressive! I can’t believe it’s that easy.

[CharlestonS]

@ - Thanks for the info!

Since SSR isn’t viable for transparent materials is there any plan to allow for some sort of Real-Time reflections on them? In UE3 we could tie a capture actor to a RenderToTexture then set it up to output to the reflection vector of a material which worked well but there is a parameter missing from UE4’s Material nodes that was important for allowing this to work.

[gmpreussner]

@CharlestonS;151980

I was referring to using video files as textures, in UE3 we were able to import BINK files and use them as texture maps which was a really cool feature especially for architectural visualization and i would love to see this return in UE4, were you able to find out if this is going to be supported in the new Media Framework?

See : https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?4358--WindowsTextureMovie-&p=152045&viewfull=1#post152045

I think Bink is working on a player plug-in for the Media Framework, but I have no details at this point.

[anonymous_user_f2b8b290]

Planar reflections (scene capture reflect in UE3) will be the dynamic reflection method, it only works for planes though. Other translucency can still use reflection captures (those are not dynamic though).

[CharlestonS]

Well, i tried recreating the material that i created for UE3 in UE4 to allow for real-time reflection on planer surfaces utilizing a capture actor but in UE4 it doesn’t work and I’m assuming it’s because there is no **ScreenAlign **check box in UE4’s **ScreenPosition **node as there was in UE3.

I can get the real-time reflections to work with the capture actor but the reflections only use the view from the actor’s position, they don’t follow the player’s view.

This is a video showing what i was able to achieve with the material i created in UE3 on a translucent surface utilizing the **SceneCaptureReflect ** Actor writing to a RenderToTexture.

https://vimeo/84000888

This is a screen grab of the material setup i created in UE3 to achieve the reflections in the above video - Do you or does anyone else have any advice on how to translate this into UE4’s material nodes to work properly?
**
Right-Click > View Image/Open Image in New Tab to see full size**

://c-mediasolutions/share/ue4//ue3reflection.jpg

@;152047

Planar reflections (scene capture reflect in UE3) will be the dynamic reflection method, it only works for planes though. Other translucency can still use reflection captures (those are not dynamic though).

, thanks!

@gmpreussner;152046

See : https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?4358--WindowsTextureMovie-&p=152045&viewfull=1#post152045

I think Bink is working on a player plug-in for the Media Framework, but I have no details at this point.

[anonymous_user_f2b8b290]

Do you or does anyone else have any advice on how to translate this into UE4’s material nodes to work properly?

It can’t work in UE4 atm, because the scene capture reflect functionality is missing. That’s what mirrors the world around the mirror plane and implements clipping so you only see what’s on the right side of the plane.

[CharlestonS]

Ahh, ok then, thanks anyway!

@;152078

It can’t work in UE4 atm, because the scene capture reflect functionality is missing. That’s what mirrors the world around the mirror plane and implements clipping so you only see what’s on the right side of the plane.

[Beep2Bleep]

I missed the stream but was wondering what was said (or when in the steam) about 4.5? Did they give any projected release date. The Source code Engine Update News is now almost 30 days old 8/28/14.

[ChrisTm]

@;152038

Hey guys, I wasn’t in the live stream but can answer some rendering questions. Only answering the ones I know the answers to.
Support for texture lightmaps on instanced foliage is being worked on but will not be in 4.5. We expect it to have a lot of problems even when it is working - you can easily have horrible build times with lots of instances either due to instanced triangle count or due to a ton of lightmap texels. In the end what you want for foliage lighting isn’t necessarily texture lightmaps anyway - triangles in foliage are really a simplification of many smaller leaves. Texture lightmaps are going to have a lot of seams everywhere. Two-sided foliage needs a special lighting model. We want to improve this but haven’t gotten to it yet
Lol
The features for this are forward lighting of transparency and planar reflections. It’s something we want to improve but haven’t gotten to yet. I started working on planar reflection support for Epic Friday but had to shelve it as I ran out of time. Maybe next Epic Friday =)
We haven’t gotten to that yet. The reason is that light shaft bloom on point lights kinda sucks and doing light shaft occlusion on point lights first requires inscattering from that point light (lit fog from local light sources) which we haven’t gotten to yet either.
Not yet, sorry =( The asynchronous shader compiling system is very complex and easy to make subtle bugs in, which has slowed this down.
I’m not sure that will ever be supported, SSR operates deferred on a single layer (opaque only). I don’t think it can be made to work in a forward pass with reasonable performance.
Realtime GI - no improvements in this area, sorry. Emissive lighting in Lightmass will probably be re-added soon, it’s not too hard.

Merci for the anwers because + coffee with my best english ,I don’t know what he was saying :rolleyes:
Thank

[anonymous_user_6334e343]

Hey great stream yesterday, !
Is the Preview of the Release Notes coming soon.?

[anonymous_user_138c2332]

In few words they haven’t gotten to yet to most of what guys are asking.

[anonymous_user_d829b65b]

@;152038

Support for texture lightmaps on instanced foliage is being worked on but will not be in 4.5. We expect it to have a lot of problems even when it is working - you can easily have horrible build times with lots of instances either due to instanced triangle count or due to a ton of lightmap texels. In the end what you want for foliage lighting isn’t necessarily texture lightmaps anyway - triangles in foliage are really a simplification of many smaller leaves. Texture lightmaps are going to have a lot of seams everywhere. Two-sided foliage needs a special lighting model. We want to improve this but haven’t gotten to it yet.

@;152038

Realtime GI - no improvements in this area, sorry. Emissive lighting in Lightmass will probably be re-added soon, it’s not too hard.

Hey , thanks for taking your time to answer all these questions. Very helpful! I’m feeling said about no Realtime GI improvements, I hope there will be some major improvements in the next updates, same with the foliage. As I really want to push outdoor environments in UE4, and showcase it to the community. But again, thanks alot for the hard work put into the great updates. Retargeting system is definitely something very in 4.5… looking forward to use it!

[anonymous_user_e805727e]

Please release it quickly

[FrankieV]

@Chariots;152380

Just watched the archived video, navmesh streaming coming in either 4.5, or 4.6, nice!

Link please

[FS_Creations]

@;152748

Link please

/b/572029040

[anonymous_user_a7874504]

Recap

Is there any of being able to see this stream as i missed it and its not appearing on the unreal page on twitch

[CharlestonS]

If you click the Twitch link and select the first video on the right side that’s the archive of the stream - /b/572029040

It took me a minute to figure it out also…

@Lucky Red Fish;152958

Is there any of being able to see this stream as i missed it and its not appearing on the unreal page on twitch