What’s New in Megascans
Improved Quality Tiers
Megascans assets on Fab now feature quality tiers. Instead of LODs and texture resolutions, quality tiers now target specific hardware limitations. This approach clarifies the intended use case for each tier and the platforms on which they will perform optimally.
All 3D assets and surfaces (except 3D Plants) are categorized into four quality tiers, each tailored to its target platform:
- Tier 0 (Raw) - 8K Cinematography & Visual Effects
- Tier 1 (High) - 4K High-End Games ( PS5 & PC )
- Tier 2 (Mid) - 2K Indie or Background Assets
- Tier 3 (Low) - 1K UEFN - Mobile, Switch and UEFN
Megascans 3D assets and Surfaces include a new quality tier optimized for UEFN specifically, allowing users to leverage Megascans content tailored for this platform. This tier ensures an enhanced user experience through cleaner topology and efficient UVs.
AO Texture Upgrades
Previously, only Surfaces included AO maps, but now all 3D assets ship with them as well. This upgrade provides a more consistent look across the assets and allows users to leverage asset-specific AO maps for various applications.
Improvements and Upgrades
Cleaner Texture Bakes
We have significantly reduced texture artifacts, resulting in higher quality textures and improved shading.
Upgraded Metallic Assets (3D Assets & Surfaces)
Megascans with metallic characteristics have been revamped for enhanced visual accuracy and fidelity on Fab. This makes assets with metallic elements appear more realistic, with shading that displays greater complexity and nuance.
Here are a few improvements we’ve made to metallic content:
- Accurately masked Metalness maps are now available
- All Albedo maps are now called basecolor
- Scientifically estimated metallic values are being used
- Metalness + Basecolor workflow is fully supported
- Diffuse + Specular workflow is also supported
Standardized Mesh Shapes
We’ve standardized the meshes for improved kitbashing and procedural content generation. This gives a more consistent mesh shape for the assets across the content library.
Nanite Mesh Improvements
All Nanite tier meshes have been aligned for improved kitbashing:
- Assets have large reconstructed areas
- Assets are reprocessed to integrate with each other more efficiently, easier to kitbash and push into each other with significantly fewer open backfaces
- Overall reusability increased
With these changes, assets are much more versatile than before, and are easier to integrate in Procedural Content Generation (PCG).
The termination point of assets has been adjusted for reworked assets to be more placement friendly, with fewer gaps and odd undulation at the bottom of the asset so that there are fewer gaps and holes when placed in context with other assets. This adjustment reduces bugs and visual issues that come from environment dressing or procedural placement.
Workflow Improvements in Unreal Engine
(only applicable when you download Megascans through Unreal Engine Fab Integration)*
Standardized channel packing
New and improved master materials
Master Material improvements
-
Additional texture support in all Master Materials. Support for materials such as Glass, Metals, Moss, Ice/Snow and Fabrics.
Vegetation Upgrades
Technical Structure
Simplified Variations
To optimize user experience, we decided to reduce the overall number of plant variations and delete similar-looking ones. This will not only help with a clean and organized content browser but also speed up your workflow and reduce your application’s memory footprint. We believe that with the newly added shader features, you can use our plant library in a more procedural way and rather change the appearance of an individual plant via the shader rather than with more provided variations.
Quality Tiers in Geometry and Shader
We now deliver plants based on preferred quality levels. Each tier has different LODs including a billboard mesh. The Nanite version only has one mesh. All shader features are automatically adjusted for each quality tier.
No Opacity - Nanite Version (Raw)
Despite the higher footprint in mesh size, rendering assets in UE5 with no opacity mask applied is generally faster. We have added a pure mesh version for all plants that no longer rely on an opacity mask. This will allow more efficient rendering inside UE5.
Shader Improvements
Vegetation Wind
Fully scalable foliage animation that works on low to high-end platforms. Everything is controlled with one Unreal Engine Blueprint.
Simplified Wind
- With the latest adjustment in the vertex colors, we have created a new foliage wind that is scalable and also maintains a realistic wind behavior.
- It is split into a ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ animation. These can be mixed according to the desired level of detail.
- With the addition of different randomizer functions, we are now able to offset the animation of plant parts in many different directions.
- Simplified wind is intended for use on low-end technology.
Simple Wind
- Our simple wind is based on noise patterns that can be changed in the global foliage actor. Particularly, grassy fields in nature show an iconic rolling wave wind effect in nature, which you can recreate with this wind setting.
- Simplified wind is intended for use on low-end technology.
- Simple wind is intended for use on mid to high range technologies.
Global Foliage Actor
One Blueprint to rule all vegetation placed in your scene. By having the most important parameters in a single Blueprint, artists can modify complex environment properties in a single actor instead of having to edit each plant’s material instance.
You can find this actor inside your content browser under FAB/Megascans/Plants.
Health
The ability to quickly adjust your whole foliage ecosystem to fit into a specific scene has the potential to significantly improve your workflow. Instead of going into each material instance, you can quickly adjust the health of vegetation via our Global Foliage Actor. All effects are randomized for each placed actor, leaf, and cluster of plants.
This effect is deactivated by default to save performance, so make sure to turn it on in the plant material instances where you would like to see it before adjusting it in the Global Foliage Actor.
Color Variation
Adjusting color variation can be done via our Global Foliage Actor, and you can decide what type of tinting you prefer for each plant. We integrated tinting of whole variations or individual plant components, like leaves. Similar to most other functions, you can mask out branches to change only the color of leaves. All effects are also fully randomized based on the position of the instance in the world.
This effect is deactivated by default to save performance, so make sure to turn it on in the plant material instances where you would like to see it before adjusting it in the Global Foliage Actor.
Growth Effect
We have added a way to procedurally add a growth or aging effect to our plants. Freshly grown leaves usually have a different color and translucency. All effects are randomized for each placed actor, leaf, and cluster of plants. It is a great way of adding realistic depth to the plant or tree.
This effect is deactivated by default to save performance, so make sure to turn it on in the plant material instance.
Advanced Base Color Tint Function
Most leaves in nature have different color and roughness values on the front and back faces. This is because the front faces of leaves are typically coated with a thin wax layer that reflects sunlight and prevents them from drying out. With our latest set of features, you can now not only change the color of the backface of the leaf but also the roughness values.
Sometimes artists want to change the color of the leaves or stems of a plant instead of tinting the whole plant. With the addition of a branch mask generator, which is based on the new vertex color, you can now adjust the tint colors of a plant more accurately and efficiently.
For any questions or support regarding the content, please contact us through this web form!