Unreal Engine 4.14 Preview

[hls333555]

Mobile games ship with Vulkan support and can now be enabled or disabled using device profiles, with fallback to ES 3.1 and ES2


How can I enale that?is there a step by step tutorial?Thanks a lot!

[Tim Hobson]

Are we going to get some toggles for contact shadows? Right now they also work on stuff like grass and small foliage and it looks horrible without any means to turn them off for those types

Like other screenspace features, I don't believe there will be options to disable it for some actors while leaving it on for others.

[Chesire]

Like other screenspace features, I don't believe there will be options to disable it for some actors while leaving it on for others.

Thanks Tim. How are we supposed to use contact shadows then? In the video it's clearly shown as a viable addition to landscape and foliage (besides characters) but in practise the results I'm getting look so out of reality, I already consider this new feature a total write-off. Basically anything which relies on alpha masks struggles badly, even with the smallest of ray lengths. Am I missing something?

[patrikspacek]

UE4 developers... please add widescreen VR preview window to this version for Vive! The square window is terrible. Thanks!

[Kalle-H]

Thanks Tim. How are we supposed to use contact shadows then? In the video it's clearly shown as a viable addition to landscape and foliage (besides characters) but in practise the results I'm getting look so out of reality, I already consider this new feature a total write-off. Basically anything which relies on alpha masks struggles badly, even with the smallest of ray lengths. Am I missing something?

Could you show screenshot?

[Chesire]

Could you show screenshot?

Here you go. Single Directional Light set to moveable. Added the 'Contact Shadow Length' setting for each in red.
Assets from the 'Open World' collection.
Please tell me this is NOT supposed to look like this.

[Tim Hobson]

Thanks Tim. How are we supposed to use contact shadows then? In the video it's clearly shown as a viable addition to landscape and foliage (besides characters) but in practise the results I'm getting look so out of reality, I already consider this new feature a total write-off. Basically anything which relies on alpha masks struggles badly, even with the smallest of ray lengths. Am I missing something?

Here's the difference that Contact Shadows can make with a masked grass piece from Content Examples in the PivotPainter map.



This is using a very low contact shadow lenght of 0.01. Since contact shadows are screenspace you get some artifacts similar to what you would see in Screen Space Reflections behind and object, however with contact shadows you want to keep the ray length as short as necessary. Just enough that you get the nice contacts generated and possibly some minor artifacting near the edges. It's not meant as a replacement for other shadowing methods though so keep the lengths as low as you need for the best results like pictured above. This value can shift depending on your level, the content, and what the look of your game is targeting. Obviously, it may not be a feature for every game, but for some it can help ground some of the smaller details or areas that wouldn't be shadowed really well .

If you have additional questions about the feature or issues, it's probably better to post on AnswerHub and link the question here for the staff or community to jump in and help.

[Chesire]

Here's the difference that Contact Shadows can make with a masked grass piece from Content Examples in the PivotPainter map.



This is using a very low contact shadow lenght of 0.01. Since contact shadows are screenspace you get some artifacts similar to what you would see in Screen Space Reflections behind and object, however with contact shadows you want to keep the ray length as short as necessary. Just enough that you get the nice contacts generated and possibly some minor artifacting near the edges. It's not meant as a replacement for other shadowing methods though so keep the lengths as low as you need for the best results like pictured above. This value can shift depending on your level, the content, and what the look of your game is targeting. Obviously, it may not be a feature for every game, but for some it can help ground some of the smaller details or areas that wouldn't be shadowed really well .

If you have additional questions about the feature or issues, it's probably better to post on AnswerHub and link the question here for the staff or community to jump in and help.

Thanks again Tim. Please see my image above yours.

[unrealCyborg]

Unreal is doing very well I'm jealous, is there any chance PhysX 3.4 come along with Flex?

[DEV_Ethan]

I'm having issues opening a map that has a landscape material using material layer blends, don't have time to debug but I'll post again if I find the cause

[Sleeper.]

Is there an estimation date for the full release for 4.14? I'd love to get started with Forward Rendering in my actual project.

[Stephen Ellis]

Is there an estimation date for the full release for 4.14? I'd love to get started with Forward Rendering in my actual project.

About two or three weeks from now.

Cheers

[William K]

I’m sorry guys but for the first time since I signed up in these forums, permit me please to give you a little bit of rant.

This is not to offend anyone, or to open a can of worms, but I just felt like getting something out there after watching the latest live stream and a few others in between.

It concerns this VR trend that’s going on. Now, maybe there are some serious VR evangelists out there who may come at me with pitchforks and spears, not that we have anything against VR on the contrary more categories of games to work on in the future. But it is undeniably upsetting for some of us when in brief something like the following happens:

You guys spent relatively a long time talking about how you can do VR landscape editing inside unreal editor, but when it came to the production features we wanted to see talked about (and in our humble opinion would benefit a real world environment comparatively speaking), such as things for characters, like talking more about Physx improvements in 4.14 in more detail, (upcoming IK stuff perhaps), skinning improvements, cloth, about morph targets and a bunch of other things that were on that list before the stream ended, you simply “ran out of time”.

Now maybe at some point in the future of course all these points will be further clarified. But we couldn’t help but notice that a significant portion of your time in these very precious live stream videos are sometimes spent on things like VR landscape editing at the expense of those other important features, I would love to know how this benefits a real world production environment when any experienced artist can paint that landscape before the person puts the headset on. And if in reality someone is going to be putting a headset on to paint a landscape like that in a tight production pipeline then he or she would most probably be in trouble with the upper management for “slacking”, or with their colleagues who would be busting their butts to get the job done and would hold this person’s ears tight and drag him back to his chair to start working again.

I’m not saying these are bad features or it should not be talked about. However talking about these at the expense of much much more important features that need to be talked about especially when time is limited and tutorials are scarce, seems to many of us, if you would excuse the term and with all due respect of course, a “VR PR stunt” and to many if we dare call it as it is “a gimmicky feature” sorry if this sounds a little out of place. And to us a wasted precious time from the Epic staff presenters who can share their knowledge with us on more important points even if it's for 5 mins, which can go a long way.

I’m sorry maybe some of us are seeing this differently and hoping for maximum amount of solid info within this given limited time, maybe we are in the minority or behind the times : ), but we just couldn’t help it and we wanted to get this point out there.

Thanks again though for the effort of the team at Epic and all you guys, please don’t think that we don’t appreciate everything you are doing for the community. I just wanted to speak my mind and on behalf of many as well who feel this way from my colleagues and otherwise.

For the record if the Staff members themselves feel obliged and genuinely excited to share these features on stream despite the above then of course it is their full right. Also all this (however we think is significant or insignificant within production) may be within the direct interest of Epic itself and their target line and goals for various reasons (whether it’s PR, production or otherwise) we respect all this entirely, just sharing a thought for the moment.

[hls333555]

Mobile games ship with Vulkan support and can now be enabled or disabled using device profiles, with fallback to ES 3.1 and ES2


How can I enale that?is there a step by step tutorial?Thanks! [MENTION=9]Stephen Ellis[/MENTION]

[Stephen Ellis]

You guys spent relatively a long time talking about how you can do VR landscape editing inside unreal editor, but when it came to the production features we wanted to see talked about (and in our humble opinion would benefit a real world environment comparatively speaking), such as things for characters, like talking more about Physx improvements in 4.14 in more detail, (upcoming IK stuff perhaps), skinning improvements, cloth, about morph targets and a bunch of other things that were on that list before the stream ended, you simply “ran out of time”.

Hi William K. Thanks for the feedback. I think the main reason you may get this impression from the Twitch streams is because Mike Fricker (who speaks on the Preview/Release streams) is currently focused on VR development, so he's talking on the topic he is most familiar and enthusiastic about, and is providing less information on the areas he's less involved. This isn't a company-wide directive, just the case of a person discussing what they know. I'll share your feedback with our Community team coordinating these Twitch steams to see if we can mix it up.

Mobile games ship with Vulkan support and can now be enabled or disabled using device profiles, with fallback to ES 3.1 and ES2. How can I enale that?is there a step by step tutorial?

I'll get that information shared here.