Alexey Savchenko, Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine 4
Future plans
By Aleksey Savchenko

Introduction
 My name is Aleksey Savchenko; I’ve been in industry for around 16
years.
 I’ve been working on about 20 titles on leading roles, 12 of which are
on Unreal Engine 3 and 4 with primary expertise fields as producer and
narrative designer.
 I’ve worked in Boolat, GSC Game World, Vogster, the last seven years
an executive producer in Black Wing Foundation, from January 2015, a
technical evangelist at Epic Games and from April 2016 – a Licensing
Manager at Epic Games.
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Contents
1. What’s new in UE 4.12:
 Sequencer.
 Unreal VR Editor (Preview) and Daydream
VR Support.
 Cooking Blueprints to C++ (Preview).
 Platform SDK Updates.
2. Plans for UE 4.13.
3. Best practices. Paragon.
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What’s new? Sequencer. Overview
Sequencer combines the power of a non-linear
editor with 3D animation editing to allow you to
produce in-game cinematics as well as a
sequence of shots for film, television, and
previsualization.
 Rearrange shots like a traditional non-linear
editing package.
 Create alternate takes of a shot and rollback
with ease.
 Make per-shot tweaks and spawn shot-specific
actors.
 Designed for collaboration.
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What’s new? Sequencer. Intuitive User Interface
The user interface design is inspired by the best of Matinee and traditional 3D software
packages. The interface allows you to view, edit, and organize your animation data in a clear and
concise manner. 3D content creators will find the interface intuitive and familiar.
 Automatic track creation based on actor
type.
 Standardized keyboard shortcuts.
 Auto-keyframing.
 Embedded track and key editing/creation
widgets.
 User-definable track coloring.
 Keyframe shapes and colors defined by
interpolation behavior.
 Folders and labels for organization.
5

What’s new? Sequencer. Cinematic Cameras and Viewport
A new cinematic camera actor coupled with new camera rig actors provide filmmakers as well as
novices with the ability to create realistic camera shots with ease. A new streamlined viewport
allows you to view a sequence of shots for dailies in filmmaking.
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 Cinematic Camera Actor with properties to
mimic real-world cameras.
 Customizable lenses and filmback settings.
 Focal length.
 Look-at tracking.
 Camera Rig Crane and Camera Rig Rail Actors.
 Cinematic Viewport .
 Embedded timeline and transport controls.
 Frame numbers indicating shot in and out cut
points.
 Overlays and framing helpers for composition.

What’s new? Sequence Recording
Sequence recording allows to record
gameplay and immediately place the
recorded elements into your shot. You can
even make a recording while playing back
a previous recording.
 Record gameplay into skeletal
animation, transform, event, and audio
tracks.
 Automatic track generation for re-
editing the recording.
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What’s new? Unreal VR Editor (Preview) and Daydream VR Support
The new "VR Editor" mode allows to navigate and edit
levels while immersed in virtual reality! You can select
and move objects, and even grab the "world" itself and
freely drag, rotate or scale your entire level! With
motion controllers in VR, you have one-to-one control
over objects and your perspective.
We're happy to announce that 4.12 support Google's
new Daydream platform! Daydream is an exciting new
mobile VR platform that brings high quality VR
experiences to Daydream-certified phones. UE4
includes full support for the platform, including the
motion controller that comes with every Daydream set.
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What’s new? Cooking Blueprints to C++
To reduce the VM overhead that
goes into executing Blueprints,
we’ve added a feature that lets
you package Blueprints into
native source code.
This feature is still experimental
and should not yet be relied
upon for shipping games.
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What’s new? Platform SDK Updates
 Xbox One: Upgraded to March 2016 XDK.
 Playstation 4: Upgraded to PS4 SDK 3.508.031.
 HTML5: Updated to Emscripten 1.35.0.
 Android: Updated to NDK 11c. New CodeWorks for Android 1R4 installer replaces
previous AndroidWorks 1R1 (located in Engine / Extras / AndroidWorks).
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Other Cool New Features and Improvements in UE4.12
 Planar Reflections and High Quality Reflections
 Dual-Normal Clear Coat Shading Model
 OSVR Support (Preview) and Vulkan Mobile Renderer (Preview)
 High Quality Mobile Post-Processing and Improved Shadows
for Mobile
 GPU Particles on High-end Android and iOS devices
 Grass and Foliage Scalability
 Web Browser Widget for UMG on iOS
 Twist Corrective Animation Node
 Full Scene Importer and Actor Merging
 Embedded Composite Animations
 Network Replication Optimizations
 Custom Data in Network Replays
 Audio Localization (Preview)
 Landscape Collision Improvements
 And many more!
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Plans for UE 4.13
 Improved Render for mobile platforms
 Platform SDK Updates
 Improve UMG/Sequencer integration
 Optimize Blueprint -> C++ conversion
tool
 Physics Performance improvements
 General bandwidth improvements
 Import/export FBX animation data
into/from Sequencer
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Best Practices. Paragon
Animation:
Improved the 3 main stages of animation processing:
 Tick (GameThread)
 Update (Generate Blend Weights)
 Evaluate (Decompress and Blend Anims)
Animation processing takes ~23x less time.
Significance:
 LOD system relies on distance, but during big
fights is becomes less beneficial.
 Significance system is defined by game logic (who
is more important now?)
 Depending on object's significance appropriate
LOD is picked.
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Character Movement:
 Reduced number of components -> Less transforms to
update.
 AI use nav mesh on servers for collision.
 Can disable client collision resolution for certain LODs.
Character Physics:
 PhysX too heavy, lots of bodies - very complicated
scenes
 Wrote our own small rigid body solver "AnimDynamics"
- No collision support.
- No game thread work.
- No interaction with other physics objects.
- Very simple, fast updates.
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Clothing:
 Using Nvidia's APEX as clothing solution.
 Worked closely with Nvidia to improve
performance.
 Clothing calculations take ~10-15x less time
than 4.10
Particles:
 Improved particle initialization, pre-compute
as much as possible.
 Added auto attach and detach particle systems
when activating/deactivating
- Cuts down on transform updates.
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GPU:
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion:
 Early Z Pass.
Deferred Decals:
 Separate buffer (DBuffer)
 CustomDepth/Stencil and Deferred Decals
to visualize abilities on individual characters.
 Full screen pass to highlight characters
behind walls.
 Environment decals
Effects, targeting.
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LODs:
 Artists create 5 LODs for skeletal meshes.
- Start with high-poly
- Bake maps from high-poly on low-poly
 HLOD (Simplygon)
- Merge meshes
- Merge materials
- Baked material attributes
 Triangle count:
- No LODs - 16.6 million
- Regular LODs - 2.3 million
- HLODs - 1.79 million
 Draw Calls:
- No LODs - 3940
- HLODs - 3400
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Shadowing:
 PreShadows - dynamic objects moving
in a static environment should receive
environmental shadows.
 Shadows from phys. asset on skeletal
meshes - cheap decision.
Performance improvements:
 Screen Space Subsurface Scattering
 Separate Translucency
 Particle Cutouts
 Blood and Eye Adaptation
 User Interface (SMeshWidget)
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Questions
Aleksey.savchenko@epicgames.com
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Alexey Savchenko, Unreal Engine

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Alexey Savchenko, Unreal Engine