Testing Out UE5's Procedural Content Generation Framework at Runtime

Elhoussine Mehnik showcased a couple of experiments with Unreal Engine 5.2's new toolset.

Elhoussine Mehnik, a Senior Gameplay Programmer widely known for his amazing experiments with Geometry Script, a plug-in for UE5 that provides the ability to generate and edit mesh geometry via Blueprints and Python, enabling dynamic mesh editing, slicing, applying Boolean operations, and more, has recently decided to deviate from his Geometry Script projects and test out Unreal Engine 5.2's novel Procedural Content Generation (PCG) framework.

For those unaware, the PCG framework was first shown by Epic Games at GDC 2023 and officially introduced as an experimental feature with the release of Unreal Engine 5.2. The toolset includes both in-editor tools and a runtime component, allowing the user to define rules and parameters to populate large scenes with Unreal Engine assets and greatly accelerating the process of creating large worlds by making it more efficient and convenient.

As part of his experiments, Elhoussine tested out the framework at runtime, using it to generate a lush forest and game level. Another use case tried out by the developer consisted of utilizing PCG at runtime to generate points on the landscape and then using the output result in Environment Query System (EQS), a feature within the Artificial Intelligence system in Unreal Engine that is used to collect data from the environment.

And here are some of Elhoussine's earlier works, you can check out more of the author's projects here:

Earlier, aspiring Programmer and Game Developer Renan Macedo also showcased the capabilities of the PCG framework, showing how it can be used to set up a highly-realistic and detailed 3D forest scene:

If you would like to learn more about UE5.2's Procedural Content Generation framework, here are a couple of great tutorials that will help you get started:

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Testing Out UE5's Procedural Content Generation Framework at Runtime

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