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