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The UNIGINE team has released the new and improved version of its game engine – UNIGINE 2.18 – introducing a slew of optimizations, visual effects and animation improvements, editor changes, VR enhancements, and more.
When it comes to optimizations, the release continues polishing version 2.17's integration of DirectX 12 and Vulkan, including further stabilization and new functionalities. The optimizations introduced in the update were designed to remove spikes in the creation of static meshes and read-only textures, reduce RAM consumption, and achieve up to a 2x boost in Subsurface Scattering speed.
Regarding VFX improvements, the release includes updates to Exposure and White Balance Correction, incorporating curve-based correction and a Metering Mask feature. A more advanced denoiser has been introduced, significantly reducing both ghosting and noise. Furthermore, 2.18 unveils a new local tone mapper with a mask generated based on the entire image, resulting in more visually appealing results.
The release allows for an increase in the maximum number of active morph targets per surface for DirectX12 and Vulkan, now set to 100 by default and potentially even more. Furthermore, UNIGINE 2.18 extends FBX model import settings – at importing Morph Targets you can now decide on the approach to the normals import.
Furthermore, the release introduces animation retargeting, marked as experimental in this version. This feature enables one to share and reuse animations between models with different proportions but using similar skeletons or having similar bone hierarchies and slightly different T-poses.
ObjectMeshSkinned now incorporates basic Inverse Kinematics (IK) support for bone chains (IK chains), providing a means to manipulate joint rotation based on the location of an end-effector. The IK Solver strives to find a rotation that aligns the final joint with the given effector location to the best possible extent.
In addition, UNIGINE 2.18 unveils a new Drone Simulator demo project that showcases the rendering of UAV imagery on UNIGINE in both desktop and VR modes. The demo incorporates a basic physical flight model, enhancing the immersive flight experience. Furthermore, it presents various camera modes to simulate different points of view, connection types, and sensors.
Other new features include:
VR improvements
- VR support has been moved from plugins into the core of the UNIGINE Engine - making its use much more convenient (unified API, easier initialization, less files in the project).
- OpenVR and Varjo integration with support of modern graphics APIs — DirectX 11, DirectX 12, and Vulkan — right out of the box.
- Updated VR template – VR controller models are now automatically loaded from OpenVR, so you don't need to add them to the project manually.
Editor Changes
- Fullscreen Viewport
- More Visualizers And Helpers
- Improved World Nodes Hierarchy
- Batch Rename
- Updated Cleaner With Similar Assets Search
Other Changes
- New event system instead of callbacks.
- OpenSSL support.
- Added support for graph-based materials (*.mgraph) for building generation into the Sandworm tool.
- Updated FPS counter.
- New rope simulation samples.
- Landscape Terrain Improvements: 65% faster decompression, from 7% to 74% compression speedup (depending on the selected algorithm).
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Landscape Auto Material is a flexible autopainting material for Unreal Engine 4 Landscape component. When you are drawing the topology of your landscape, proper material layers are drawn automatically!