Unreal Engine 4.24: on the trajectory toward film-quality experiences by Jose Antunes

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1 High fidelity conversion for the masses

The new version of Unreal Engine continues the journey to help creators build the most realistic worlds, with multiple improvements submitted by the community of Unreal Engine developers.

Now available for download, Unreal Engine 4.24 marks the retirement of Unreal Studio, with its features folding into Unreal Engine, for free. With this move, Unreal Engine is now a one-stop solution, whether you’re working in game development, architecture, film, television, automotive, training & simulation, or any other industry.

Unreal Engine 4.24 continues on its trajectory toward film-quality real-time experiences, with new character, landscape, and environment tools and continued enhancements to ray tracing. Plus, with the entire Unreal Studio feature set rolled in, first-class USD support, and new Visual Dataprep, Unreal Engine 4.24 offers new efficiencies for working with the data in your pipeline.

What this means is that users can now create even more convincing interior and exterior scenes for games and visualization with new tools for nondestructively creating and editing open-world landscapes that adapt to other scene elements; gorgeous atmospheric skies; and Screen Space Global Illumination that scales across console and desktop platforms.

Epic Games, the team behind Unreal Engine says that with this new version “we continue our journey to help you build the most realistic worlds with tools that make you more productive than ever. Teams of any size should be able to create believable worlds and experiences that draw users in and keep them engaged. We have added numerous tools and improved workflows across the board to help you bring your vision to life.”

High fidelity conversion for the masses

The new nondestructive, layer-based Landscape workflows enable users to build more interesting and engaging outdoor environments where the terrain automatically adapts to other elements in the world. The Sky Atmosphere component generates a physically-accurate sky that can be updated dynamically depending on the time of day, and it can be viewed from the ground or from the air to create realistic-looking planetscapes. The new experimental strand-based hair and fur system brings characters to life with realistic, flowing hair. With Screen-Space Global Illumination, you can achieve natural light-filled spaces using fewer resources.

Datasmith is now available to all Unreal Engine users, bringing high-fidelity, whole-scene conversion to the masses! The new Visual Dataprep makes automating data preparation workflows more accessible so smaller, design-focused teams can benefit from them. The Live Universal Scene Description (USD) Stage Actor creates a direct link to the USD file on disk for faster iteration and better collaboration. Project creation workflow now includes a wizard-style workflow centered around the industry or type of project you are creating so you only see relevant settings and tools.

This release includes 98 improvements submitted by the incredible community of Unreal Engine developers on GitHub! Visit Unreal Engine’s website to know more about the tool from Epic Games.