According to the latest report, Unreal Engine 5.1 is now officially available. The latest update brings a lot of handy tools to developers. This update brings Nanite’s micro polygon geometry system. As per the report, Epic also promises that Unreal Engine 5 now supports 60fps games using Nanite and the lighting system Lumen. You can check the complete changelog which is mentioned below.
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Unreal Engine 5.1 Patch Notes
Updates to Lumen, Nanite and virtual shadow maps
- We have laid a solid foundation for the dynamic global illumination and reflection system Lumen, the virtualized micro-polygon geometry system Nanite, and the virtual shadow map (VSM), enabling games and experiences to run at 60fps on next-gen consoles and PCs with sufficient processing power Operational support is provided. This will allow fast-paced competitive games and detailed simulations to run without lag.
- At the same time, Nanite has also been updated to provide a programmable rasterizer that enables material-driven animation and deformation via global position offsets, as well as opacity masks. This exciting development allows artists to use Nanite to program object-specific behaviors, such as making Nanite-based vegetation leaves blown by the wind.
Greater developer productivity
- This version adds a series of features that can improve the efficiency of developers of games and other large interactive projects, helping the team to improve productivity.
- With virtual assets, we decouple metadata from object data, which will allow developers to synchronize parts of the content in source control systems such as Perforce on demand. Developers who don’t need access to full object data will experience a more compact workspace and faster synchronization. This feature will initially support texture and audio assets, and we plan to add support for more asset types in the future.
- Additionally, we’ve implemented automated Pipeline State Object (PSO) caching for DX12, which will simplify the preparation process required to ship games under DX12.
- All developers and creators will benefit from the ability to compile shaders on demand. When they are working in the Unreal Editor, or (optionally) during platform development iterations, they can compile only the shaders needed to render what is displayed on the screen. In large projects, this practice can save a lot of time and increase interactivity.
Improved world-building tools
- In this release, we continue to improve our large-scale open-world building tools, adding additional features, and refining the workflow.
- First of all, world partitions now support large world coordinates, and you will be able to create large-scale open worlds without losing precision.
- At the same time, we have improved the user experience around file and changelist management, filtering, searching, and viewing, and you can enjoy a faster source code control workflow in the world partition. Additionally, you can now more easily find content in the world from the changelist and vice versa.
- Not only that, but we’ve added HLOD (Hierarchical Level of Detail) support for water rendering and streaming, which means you can now create large water bodies with better performance and a smaller memory footprint.
Updates for virtual productions, broadcasts and live events
- Unreal Engine 5.1 brings significant improvements in performance and usability to in-camera visual effects workflows that are also suitable for broadcast and live events.
- Stage operators working in fast-paced, high-stress environments will welcome a series of enhancements, starting with the addition of a dedicated in-camera VFX editor that supports a range of workflows tailored to the tasks they need to perform. They no longer have to look for specific objects and controls through the outliner! The panel also features an improved lightboard system that previews the nDisplay wall and the lightboards on the wall, allowing operators to intuitively and efficiently create, move and edit lightboards, and save templates.
- Other major enhancements include Improvements to Color Correction Windows (CCWs), allowing you to apply adjustments individually to anything behind them, and also allowing you to apply color corrections per Actor, reducing the need for complex masks need.
- Working with media in-engine is significantly faster and easier: with the new Media Plate Actor, you can simply drag and drop shots from the Content Browser; Play back uncompressed EXR.
- At the same time, we completely overhauled the virtual camera, giving it a new underlying system to take advantage of Epic’s pixel streaming technology for improved responsiveness and reliability; the user interface has also been updated, and it now has a modern camera-centric design , the camera operator will feel more familiar.
- Learn more about what’s new in Unreal Engine 5.1 for media and entertainment in our dedicated blog post.
Improvements in animation, rigging, and modeling
- In this release, we’ve continued our efforts to improve and expand Unreal Engine’s built-in rigging, animation creation, and modeling toolsets, reducing the need to switch back and forth between DCC tools, which all creators can benefit from. Here are some feature highlights.
- The machine learning (ML) deformer, now in beta, allows you to train a machine learning model that will run in real-time in Unreal Engine through a custom Maya plug-in, creating approximate high-fidelity rigs for complex proprietary rigs (or arbitrary deformations) real model. Other improvements to character morphing include improvements to the deformer graph editor, which simplifies graph creation and editing.
- Control rigging, on the other hand, has been extended further towards fully programmatic rigging, with a number of updates to its core framework including a new construction event, the ability to generate rigging hierarchies through graphs, and an automatic Defines user events for creating and triggering binding events like “Align FK to IK”. With these updates, you can automatically create rigs for characters with varying bone ratios and attributes.
- We’ve also extended Unreal Engine’s multi-track nonlinear animation editor, Sequencer, with support for constraints, and exposed additional functionality through Blueprints and Python scripting. In addition, we have also refactored the user interface and user experience for it, which not only improves stability and scalability but also improves the workflow of animation creation and editing.
- Finally, improvements to the geometry tools include: new geometry scripting capabilities; improved UV editor to handle more complex assets; and additional mesh editing and creation tools.
Improvements to the audio system
- Now it’s faster and easier to produce professional interactive sounds, so sound designers can focus more time on the most important key areas of a project.
- Updates to MetaSound include more node types, support for multiple multi-channel output formats, and the ability to display real-time node connection feedback.
- We also introduced the Soundscape plug-in, which enables the procedural generation of ambient sounds.
AI toolset
- With this release, some of the artificial intelligence (AI) tools introduced with Unreal Engine 5.0 are out of the experimental phase: Smart Objects and State Trees are production-ready, and MassEntity is in beta.
- MassEntity is a gameplay-focused framework for data-oriented computing that allows you to efficiently populate large-scale worlds, creating crowds with tens of thousands of realistic AI agents. This version improves user experience, improves CPU performance, and optimizes memory usage. Additionally, MassEntity handlers now automatically use multithreading for processing.
- Smart Objects are objects that are placed on a level for the AI agent to interact with the player. Such objects contain all the information needed for this interaction. In this release, the stability and workflow of Smart Objects has been completely improved, making it easier for you to set up the definition of Smart Objects.
- A state tree is a general-purpose hierarchical state machine that combines selectors in a behavior tree with states and transitions in a state machine, allowing you to create efficient logic that is always flexible and orderly. Improvements in this version include improved Actor- and Blueprint-centric workflows, increased flexibility and modularity, and optimized memory.
Beyond that, there’s a lot more…
- These are just some of the new features and improvements in Unreal Engine 5.1.