Unreal Engine 4.25 released!

[Skylonxe]

@unit23

This landscape modifying tool feature is also released? Not sure where this is mentioned in the notes.

[video]https://twitter.com/i/status/1257689944568598528[/video]

It’s not a landscape tool. It’s general mesh sculpting.

New: In-Viewport Modeling and Sculpting Improvements (Experimental)

We continue to make major improvements in our experimental set of tools for working with geometry directly within the Unreal Editor Viewport, progressing with every release toward the goal of achieving complete, end-to-end workflows for geometry modeling and adaptive mesh sculpting.

In this release, we’ve also introduced several mesh repair tools aimed at correcting minor issues with imported Assets, especially those that come from CAD applications. These offer the ability to fill holes, to move pivot points relative to the geometry, and to generate and adjust UV mappings interactively.

[Skylonxe]

I will just pin here interesting blueprint changes, I believe these deserve more attention.

New: Implemented variadic function support for Blueprints
New: Added Blueprint support for FIntPoint.
New: Users now have the options to display access specifiers for functions and variables in the “My Blueprint” window.
New: You can now add metadata to FString and FName UPROPERTYs; this metadata specifies a dynamically called function to get the options that are available to the user in a Details panel.

[DamirH]

As usual the most interesting changes are in the footnotes away from the spotlight. Let’s take a look at a few!

New: FAudioDevice lifespans have now been fully decoupled from the UWorld, meaning that you can arbitrarily spawn and use instances of the audio engine in code. This is useful for building profilers, or for rendering audio for arbitrary systems. \ Example usage: \ FAudioDeviceParams DeviceParams; \ DeviceParams.Scope = EAudioDeviceScope::Unique; \ MyAudioDeviceToRecord = AudioDeviceManager->RequestAudioDevice(DeviceParams);

This one will most likely have its uses in stuff like, loading screen audio perhaps, or cross-level music. I know there was some functionality to prevent a audio component from destroying between levels before too.

New: All test methods now return a boolean to indicate if the test passed or fail. Implemented new macros run those methods and, if they return false, insert a “return false” in the code, so that it exits the current test immediately. This lets programmers write automated tests much faster.

See comments and example in Core/Public/Misc/AutomationTest.h

Hooray for Gauntlet!

New: Added Physical Material Masks to Materials, which are used to associate multiple physical Materials with a single Material based on a mask. This is only supported when Chaos physics is enabled. In the Material, set the Physical Material Mask to a mask and Physical Material Map to an array of physical materials. In the Static Mesh properties, Support Physical Material Masks must be enabled and additional data will be stored at runtime.

This is by far the biggest thing for me in this release. No longer do you have to split your material IDs on metal, wood etc. to get proper physical materials on them. Please oh please tell me this works with landscapes too?

New: Added optional per-instance custom data for Instance Static Meshes. This comes with a material node to sample the custom data by index. Also added a Blueprint setter for the data. This data will be serialized on the InstanceStaticMesh Component. By default the number of custom data floats is 0 and this will not allocate any additional data.

This one is also gigantic. Custom data per-foliage instance!? Sign me the %!#@# up.

[Iskandros]

Somebody goofed up the HDRIBackdrop plugin - rotations of the backdrop are now off by a factor of 6.28. RotateAboutAxis takes a 0->1 Range, not Radians (which is the conversion that is now actually performed).

Bug submitted.

[Tain]

I filed a bug report, but it looks like SSR is totally busted if you change the Anti Aliasing Method to anything but TemporalAA.

[Globomidia_3DU]

Point cloud…please, where is the budget option??? How can I make it full res now?? Anyone? Thx!

[BtotheLaker]

Thanks for the update! Lots of juicy things to get stuck into!

Is it just me or are Instance-synced variables on AI Blackboards now broken? I can’t seem to utilize them any blackboards without UE4 crashing, even in a fresh project with a near-empty blackboard.

Assertion failed: BlackboardDataToComponentsMap.FindPair(&BlackboardData, &BlackboardComp) == nullptr [File:D:/Build/++UE4+Licensee/Sync/Engine/Source/Runtime/AIModule/Private/AISystem.cpp] [Line: 220]

Had a search online for the error message and noticed someone had this in preview 7. Still seems to be occurring. It was all working in 4.24.

I’ve submitted a bug report with an example project but wondering if I’m just doing something stupid with instance-synced variables. Do I need to do anything behind the scenes other than check the box?

[muchcharles]

I’m having the TraceServices build error too:

40>  [1/3] UnrealInsightsCLI.cpp
40>C:\git\UnrealEngine\Engine\Source\Programs\UnrealInsightsCLI\Private\UnrealInsightsCLI.cpp(9): fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'TraceServices/SessionService.h': No such file or directory

[Nupaul]

Does anyone have issues with C++ projects where when you add a new Component the source file opens with errors in Visual Studio?

I also see this:
Warning: HotReload operation took 13.5s.
LogSlate: Window ‘Add C++ Component’ being destroyed
LogUObjectGlobals: Warning: Failed to find object 'Class /Script/ArtRunnerCpp.CounterWatch’
LogHotReload: New module detected: UE4Editor-ArtRunnerCpp-0562.dll
LogHotReload: Starting Hot-Reload from IDE

[HARMze]

No more mobile tonmapper?? Its so bad. How i can back it?

[RazorbackDB]

Anyone else having problems with the singlelayerwater shading model?, just switching to it crashes de AMD graphics driver for me.

[mad_methods]

Quest hand tracking officially supported in 4.25?

[Rahulkhorwal]

Great update, Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X as first-class platforms, and throughout the year we will be updating the 4.25-Plus branch with optimizations

[LNaej]

Very excited by this update!

Don’t know if it’s just me, but using Android Studio 3.5.3 and the install procedure described heredoes not work out of the box.
Had to remove some entries in my path causing errors with SetupAndroid.bat (Windows 10), and now I’m trying to run it again after having removed “lldb;3.1” from the list of packages called by the sdk-manager (around line 83). lldb;3.1 does not seem to be a package available with this android studio version.

Update: Removing "lldb;3.1" did the trick for SetupAndroid.bat (line 83).

Update2 : it seems to fail when building specific epic java code related to google billing api. I did not configure Google PlayStore and do not need/want to. Don’t know if it’s because of that. Still investigating.
The main error: Z:\app\src\main\java\com\epicgames\ue4\GooglePlayStoreHelper.java:19: error: package com.android.billingclient.api does not exist
May be related:

UATHelper: Packaging (Android (ASTC)):   File ..//Source/ThirdParty/Oculus/OVRPlugin/OVRPlugin/Lib/armeabi-v7a/libOVRMrcLib.so does not exist, not copied!
UATHelper: Packaging (Android (ASTC)):  
UATHelper: Packaging (Android (ASTC)):   File ..//Source/ThirdParty/Oculus/OVRPlugin/OVRPlugin/ExtLibs/VrApi.jar does not exist, not copied!
UATHelper: Packaging (Android (ASTC)):  
UATHelper: Packaging (Android (ASTC)):   File ..//Source/ThirdParty/Oculus/OVRPlugin/OVRPlugin/ExtLibs/SystemUtils.jar does not exist, not copied!

[Danjisan]

@LNaej

Very excited by this update!

Don’t know if it’s just me, but using Android Studio 3.5.3 and the install procedure described heredoes not work out of the box.
Had to remove some entries in my path causing errors with SetupAndroid.bat (Windows 10), and now I’m trying to run it again after having removed “lldb;3.1” from the list of packages called by the sdk-manager (around line 83). lldb;3.1 does not seem to be a package available with this android studio version.
So, the script finished to execute with success, now I will check if it packages correctly. Will updated here if it can help other people.

Update: it seems to fail when building specific epic java code related to google billing api. I did not configure Google PlayStore and do not need/want to. Don’t know if it’s because of that. Still investigating.

I had the same issue with “lldb;3.1” and managed to “fix” it by removing it from the SetupAndroid.bat. ( Thanks LNaej ! )
I did not configure Google PlayStore either.
Using the HandheldAR Template I managed to Package for Android ETC2 with no warnings and no errors. I also tested it on my device and it worked fine.

[KristofMorva (Kristóf Morva)]

@Tim_Hobson

It’s on our radar to document when it’s a more complete feature though.

Hey , are there any plans for the documentation of Variadic Blueprint functions? It sounds really interesting but was not able to find any examples in the source code.

[Jackyushishan]

sad, still no datasmith export for 3ds max 20121. no quixel bridge for UE4.25, no substance for UE4.25. For me, currently UE4.25 is useless for me!

[LNaej]

@Danjisan

I had the same issue with “lldb;3.1” and managed to “fix” it by removing it from the SetupAndroid.bat. ( Thanks LNaej ! )
I did not configure Google PlayStore either.
Using the HandheldAR Template I managed to Package for Android ETC2 with no warnings and no errors. I also tested it on my device and it worked fine.

Thanks for your feedback! Following what you said, I tried with the HandheldAR template and indeed the error is not there. However, in this template, OnlineSubsystemGooglePlay plugin is enabled. Will test on my project to see if it’s working with it.
I just checked the patch note and indeed the billing api support is new in 4.25, so maybe some default build settings is wrongly configured.

Update: well that’s it,** if OnlineSubsystemGooglePlay is there, it’s working.** Seems like a bug to me.

Update2: So, in Engine\Plugins\Online\Android\OnlineSubsystemGooglePlay\Source\OnlineSubsystemGooglePlay_UPL.xml there is the following code:

    <!-- gradle dependencies additions -->
    <buildGradleAdditions>
        <insert>
            dependencies {
            implementation 'com.android.billingclient:billing:2.0.3'
            }
        </insert>
    </buildGradleAdditions>

So the problem seems to be that either this code should be in the basic Android build setup, either if google play is disabled,** Engine/Build/Android/Java/src/com/epicgames/ue4/GooglePlayStoreHelper.java** (referencing the billing api in the first place and responsible of the android build to fail) should be left out of the build.

[Apollo1444]

Hi Epic team!
**SetupAndroid.bat doesn’t work! **(“lldb;3.1” is not available, at least for Android Studio 3.5.3; I wasted whole day installing and re-installing Android Studio, trying to figure out what’s wrong)

[LNaej]

@Apollo1444 remove “lldb;3.1” from line ~83 in SetupAndroid.bat, it should work.