In nuce: Epic Games has released the latest version of its Unreal Engine – Unreal Engine 5.1 has been released. This is according to a blog post on unrealengine.com from 15 November this year. Unreal Engine is a game engine or render engine. Many of the newly added improvements build on the functions that were introduced with the release of the previous version, Unreal Engine 5.0. The corresponding blog post states that the update lays the foundation for games with Nanites and Global Illumination to run at 60 FPS – both on games consoles and on the PC.
In toto: Below are some of the most interesting new features that come with the release of Unreal Engine 5.1.
- VFX Editor: Aimed at creative professionals in the field of virtual production. It is a dedicated in-camera VFX editor that has been customised for VFX-specific workflows.
- The Deformer Framework is described as one of the most important newly added functions. Character rigs are created with the help of machine learning, eliminating the need to evaluate complex rigs. The Maya ML Deformer plug-in is used for this (see unrealengine.com/marketplace).
- Nanites: Two-sided materials are now also supported. This is joined by a programmable rasteriser that allows material-controlled animations to be created via World Position Offset. As an example of such a material-controlled animation, cgchannel.com mentions leaves blowing in the wind. Anyone who wants to know how Nanites work and how they can be used to create complex geometries in real time can access the free e-book “Nanite for Educators and Students” (Digital Production reported on 17 October this year).
- Lumen: Two-sided foliage shading models are now supported. This should make the lighting of plants look even more realistic. For an intensive training course on Lumen, we recommend taking a look at the three-hour course by digital content developer Charleston Silverman on The Gnomon Workshop (Digital Production reported on this on 5 September this year)
- World Partition System: According to the blog post, Large World Coordinates are now supported, which makes it possible to create huge worlds – without sacrificing detail. Furthermore, the Hierarchical Level of Details (HLOD) system has been enriched with the ability to render water.
Click further: All further information can be found in the blog post on unrealengine.com or in the release note on docs.unrealengine.com . We have taken the lead image for this news item from the same blog posting.
Sources: cgchannel.com ( message from Jim Thacker), unrealengine.com ( blog posting on the release), docs.unrealengine.com ( release note on the release)
