The new Unreal Engine 4 release has been made public today, release 4.6, bringing with it a whole bunch of improvements to the game engine.

Among the updates are additional lighting options and improvements to materials; network demo recording and playback support; new assets in the Unreal Marketplace and updates to animation workflows. The full list of improvements are as follows:

New to 4.6

• User Interface: Easily add 3D user interfaces using the new widget component; navigate between UI elements using a joystick; and localize games faster using font families and composite fonts.
• Lighting: Emissive materials can now directly illuminate surrounding objects, and precomputed lighting and shadows are now supported on foliage objects and instanced meshes!
• Demo Recording: Also known as Network Replay Capture, you can now save an “instant replay” of gameplay, stream it, and share it. Use time-warping to slow down or speed up the replay.
• Multiplayer: It’s now possible to host, discover, join and leave Steam and LAN online sessions using Blueprint scripting. No coding required!
• Animation: Play multiple animation montages on a skeletal mesh at once; utilize blended root motion from numerous animations; and enjoy even more control over animation with Blueprint scripting.
• Materials: Material complexity can be pushed even further with support for up to 128 unique textures per material, a huge bump up from 13. High-quality characters, layered terrain and such will benefit from this enhancement.
• Large Worlds: Build a single world up to 20 kilometers across! Make your play space as large as desired by connecting worlds via the World Composition feature.
• Mobile Preview: Preview exactly how scenes will look on mobile platforms without ever leaving the Unreal Editor.
• Web Widget: The new Web Browser UI Widget enables you to host and navigate web pages right inside your game.
• Performance: Stream sections of precomputed navigation data in or out of memory on the fly.
• Workflow: Packaging and cooking content from within the editor is now faster than ever! Loads of C++ optimizations, including simplified class declarations and the improved Cast() function, will benefit code-based projects.
• Learning: Check out new content example maps in the launcher’s Learn tab! Other new additions in this depot include resources for in-game analytics, source control, localization, and many documentation updates.

Marketplace additions

• Medieval Inn and Tavern by Ennelia Studio
• 3D Cloud Models by Quantum Theory Entertainment
• VFX Weather Pack by Thomas Harle
• Military Pack Part 1 by Manufactura K4
• Hand Painted Textures Pack by 3DFancy
• FX Alpha Textures by UETools
• 50+ Vector Particles by W3 Studios
• Space Shooter/Sim Music Loops Pack by Stephen Lu
• Ultimate Rocks by Ultimate Assets
• Ambient Sound FX Collection by Storm Bringer Studios