Epic Games has made the next-generation Unreal Engine 5 tool officially available for all designers after introducing it in 2020. The news was made during the company's recent State of Unreal virtual event, and it declared that the Unreal Engine 5 is now suitable for "production-ready use." So, let's get into the specifics right now.
The Unreal Engine 5 engine is now available for download
Epic Games has announced that Unreal Engine 5.0, which was previously available in Early Access and Preview, is now available via the Epic Games launcher. When it comes to the primary features of Unreal Engine 5, the tool has two: Nanite and Lumen.
Lumen is a new dynamic lighting system that allows developers to provide indirect lighting to virtual settings that adapts to changes in geometry as well as direct lighting in real-time. This allows developers to easily build and adjust lighting effects within the Unreal Editor without having to construct lightmap UVs, wait for lightmaps to integrate, or put reflection captures. During the creation process, the developers will be able to examine the final illumination that their gamers will experience while running the game on a target platform.
Nanite, on the other hand, is a novel "virtualized micro polygon geometry system" that allows game and virtual environment makers to include minute geometric elements. Developers will be able to dramatically cut the time required to create detailed virtual surroundings by combining the technology with Virtual Shadow Maps (VSMs).
Example video taken by Epic games. Get full details here.
To render at a considerably lower resolution, developers can use Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) technology, which is a built-in, platform-independent, high-quality upsampling method. The render, on the other hand, will be on par with pixel fidelity to frames at higher resolutions.
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Aside from this, Unreal Engine 5 has various new open-world toolkits, such as a new Environment Partition system that automatically splits a virtual world into grids for easy control. The One File Per Actor (OPFA) method allows for the construction of numerous versions of the same environment and allows multiple developers to work on the same part of a virtual map at the same time without interfering with the changes of others.
In addition, the application has a variety of built-in characters and animation capabilities to assist creators in creating the greatest games for consoles and PCs. An improved editor UI, in-editor modelling, UV editing, baking, and other features are also supported. To read more about the other features of Unreal Engine 5, visit Epic's official blog article.
In terms of games built on Epic's Unreal Engine 5, CD Projekt Red just announced a new Witcher title that will employ Unreal Engine 5. In addition, Epic has released two example projects: the Lyra Starter Game and the City Sample from The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience. These are now available for free download on Epic's official website and will serve as a starting point for developers to construct immersive gameplay experiences and virtual environments.
So, if you're a developer, today is a big day since you'll be able to download and use Unreal Engine 5 for your forthcoming projects. To utilise the utility, go to Epic's official website and download the Epic Games launcher. Also, please share your ideas in the comments section below.
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