Unreal Engine 4.16 Preview

[mechanicalsnowman]

Hi mechanicalsnowman.

I've reviewed your crash reports, and the results are unusual. For unknown reasons, they are missing some important data (the callstack) which sometimes results when the crash isn't occurring in engine code. I do see that your engine version is non-vanilla, meaning using plugins or modified source code; is that accurate?

The only information included in your crash report is the error message, which matches closely (but not 100%) with https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-43546. Are your assets using morph targets?

Hey Stephen, my 4.15 is from the launcher and non-modified, but I'm using a version of Victory plugin that I compiled myself, I wonder if I broke something.

The assets I tried to open included skeletal meshes using morph targets, skeletal meshes without morph targets, and static meshes. Afaik, static meshes can't use morph targets, so I'm guessing my crashes are unrelated to that error.

This is the only time I've had trouble migrating to a new engine version, and also the only time I've compiled a plugin for UE4, so I have a feeling they are related. Will try to revert any changes I made ad see if it helps, thanks for the reply

Edit: K so, I converted my project back to deferred rendering from Forward before migrating it to 4.16 and things seem to open fine now. In retrospect, everything that crashed were assets that opened the asset preview window with the preview lighting scene, since materials and textures would open fine. Have no idea whether it was the fault of the asset preview scene, but that is definitely a correlation.

[Chaoss]

What's up with the distance field bias behaving differently than it did in previous versions?

I agree I'm having problems with DFAO as well, Bias doesn't appear to be working.

[mechanicalsnowman]

Wow, cloth is freaking RADULAR, just had a play using Alan's demo video as a guide.

Thanks so much for making it so that we don't have to use Apex, hopefully this gets out of experimental really soon. Couple of things,

A blender user mentioned this, the paint vertices visualization is 90 degrees. I use MayaLT which is also Y-up, so hopefully compatibility gets added for assets from those softwares

Any ETA on documentation? New to cloth in general, and was wondering about parameters to change cloth weight / thickness / hardness etc to sim different materials.

[Tim Hobson]

Wow, cloth is freaking RADULAR, just had a play using Alan's demo video as a guide.

Thanks so much for making it so that we don't have to use Apex, hopefully this gets out of experimental really soon. Couple of things,

A blender user mentioned this, the paint vertices visualization is 90 degrees. I use MayaLT which is also Y-up, so hopefully compatibility gets added for assets from those softwares

Any ETA on documentation? New to cloth in general, and was wondering about parameters to change cloth weight / thickness / hardness etc to sim different materials.

No ETA, but I've written and submitted my first draft of it to go through our review process. Hopefully not too long, though.

The changes to the different Cloth Properties shouldn't be any different than how APEX handled it. Once you have your Cloth asset setup and assigned to your mesh and material, you can navigate to the Asset Details panel and under Cloth you'll see your cloth asset that you created. Expand this and set the properties you'd like.

Really the only significant change to the APEX Cloth pipeline that has changed is the ability to create the clothing in UE4 now. The rest should line up with what you're used to for the most part.

[HEGI]

PREVIEW 3 CRASH

Having r.SupportStationarySkylight=False crashes the editor when trying to open a static or skeletal mesh in the content browser.
I submitted the crash report of course, but thought to post it here aswell.

Fatal error: [File D\Build\++UE4+Release-4.16+Compile\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\RenderCore\Private\RenderingThread.cpp] [Line: 798] 
Rendering thread exception:
Fatal error: [File D\Build\++UE4+Release-4.16+Compile\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Private\Materials\MaterialShared.cpp] [Line: 1851] 
Couldn't find Shader TBasePassPSFCachedPointIndirectLightingPolicySkylight for Material Resource GridMaterial!
		RenderMeshShaderMap 1, RenderThreadShaderMap 1
		GameMeshShaderMap 1, GameThreadShaderMap 1, bShaderWasFoundInGameShaderMap 0
		With VF=FLocalVertexFactory, Platform=PCD3D_SM5
		ShouldCache: Mat=1, VF=1, Shader=0 
		MaterialUsageDesc: LightingModel=MSM_DefaultLit, BlendMode=BLEND_Opaque, SpecialEngine=0, TwoSided=0, TSNormal=1, Masked=0, Distorted=0, WritesEveryPixel=1, ModifiesMeshPosition=0, Usage={}

[nikolobin]

As for Base Human Control Rig I have issue with eyes. Don't know how to resolve it.

Any ideas?

Edit: I needed to create control rig in skel mesh asset and resave sequence.

btw. any chance to have more control over head bones? eg mouth, eyes for dialogue animations/poses. I think this is doable in current system but no idea how to start.

Feedback: When exporting from Sequence it would be nice to tell which frames should be exported. (all frames, from-to) Basically I'm using this tool for prototype poses and possibility to export exact frame is great.

This seems like a bug. If it's not mapped, it shouldn't do anything, which I don't think you mapped eyes here?

>>any chance to have more control over head bones? eg mouth, eyes for dialogue animations/poses.

Not yet. It's very simple rig right now and we're working on new production level system.

>>Feedback: When exporting from Sequence it would be nice to tell which frames should be exported. (all frames, from-to) Basically I'm using this tool for prototype poses and possibility to export exact frame is great.

Good to know. Thanks for the feedback.

[mechanicalsnowman]

No ETA, but I've written and submitted my first draft of it to go through our review process. Hopefully not too long, though.

The changes to the different Cloth Properties shouldn't be any different than how APEX handled it. Once you have your Cloth asset setup and assigned to your mesh and material, you can navigate to the Asset Details panel and under Cloth you'll see your cloth asset that you created. Expand this and set the properties you'd like.

Really the only significant change to the APEX Cloth pipeline that has changed is the ability to create the clothing in UE4 now. The rest should line up with what you're used to for the most part.

Ooh found it, great, thanks!

[DanielW]

What's up with the distance field bias behaving differently than it did in previous versions?

DistanceFieldBias has been removed, and a new property DistanceFieldSelfShadowBias added, which works differently. Generally speaking you need a larger DistanceFieldSelfShadowBias value to get the same visual effect. We are getting much more effective DFAO self-shadow reduction in Fortnite with the new setting.

Distance field self shadowing controls for hiding world position offset self-shadow artifacts
* Removed static mesh build settings DistanceFieldBias, which shrunk the distance field, breaking AO and shadows
* Added DistanceFieldSelfShadowBias, which prevents occlusion close to the surface only, maintaining shadows on the ground and AO on the ground

[xN31]

Still unable to package for Win64 with the Steam Audio plugin enabled in preview 3. Anyone else having the same issue?

I opened a bug report for the issue here:
https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...n-enabled.html

[JohnnyGuitar]

DistanceFieldBias has been removed, and a new property DistanceFieldSelfShadowBias added, which works differently. Generally speaking you need a larger DistanceFieldSelfShadowBias value to get the same visual effect. We are getting much more effective DFAO self-shadow reduction in Fortnite with the new setting.

Thanks for the reply! Looks like I made the right move cranking up the new variable and tweaking my skylight accordingly.

[StrangerGwenn]

Reported a nasty bug where material functions become unusable : https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...-ue-35362.html

[hippowombat]

Dunno if it's normal behavior as this is my first time using them, but creating instances of HISMs at runtime yield the correct meshes but with the default editor material instead of the assigned material applied in the latest preview of 4.16.

Confirmed both ISMs and HISMs revert to the default editor material in 4.16 Preview 3, I have a bug report for it here.

[freeman_valve]

Still unable to package for Win64 with the Steam Audio plugin enabled in preview 3. Anyone else having the same issue?

I opened a bug report for the issue here:
https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...n-enabled.html

We are aware of the issue and have a fix coming in 4.17.

[Rodnino]

We are aware of the issue and have a fix coming in 4.17.

Is there an estimate when 4.17 will be ready to be released? It's currently on Preview 3 of 4.16, how many previews are there usually? About to start on a big project, wanting to use the new audio engine/ steam audio but have to make a decision soon on how to proceed. Thanks

[SyberBlade]

I just watched the pre-recorded stream about UE4.16 preview. it was a great stream exposing all of the little details!

[Inquiry] One feature i noticed by chance in the video was the "asset audit window". Because my project's performance actually has dropped to a big low (28-30 fps) and i don't know how to get the performance back up. I'm pretty sure my assets are fine, but my blueprints however i think might not be optimized correctly. I was thinking is there a way to have your blueprints audited as well? to know what process are taking up system recourses. i'm not sure if this has already been asked.

thank you if anyone could shed some light on this.