Epic Games has recently released the first preview of the upcoming Unreal 4.21 release. Let’s check out the list of updates and changes to see what’s new.

Animation Updates:
- Animation Compression Updates. AnimCompression now uses a whitelist of optimal codecs to avoid trying permutations that are unlikely to be selected.
- Animation Notify Improvements. Native Notifies have been added in Engine for dynamics and cloth management.
- Maintain Original Scale of Root Motion.
- Added Caching and Autocomplete for “Sync Market Names.
- Animation Sequence Framerate. Added animation sequence framerate to the Editor Viewport and Content Browser tooltip.
- Enable Auto Blend Out on Anim Montages. Anim Montages now have the option to enable or disable Auto Blend Out. This option is enabled by default.
- Live Animation Blueprint Recompilation is now non-experimental.
- CCDIK Skeletal Control Node. CCDIK Skeletal Control Node is now available within the AnimGraph of Animation Blueprints.
- Default Coordinate Space for Animation Editors is now Local Space
- Min LOD Notification.
- Skeletal Mesh: Set Master Pose Component Force Update
Audio Updates:
- Submix Envelope Follower (New Unreal Audio Engine Only). Users can now set an Envelope Follower Delegate on their Submixes allowing amplitude analysis of individual channels for that submix.
- New Sound Submix Effect: Filter. Users now have the option of adding a multimode filter to their Submixes allowing dynamic filter effects on a single Submix.
- Sound Submix Effect Reverb Dry Level. The Submix Effect Reverb now supports Parallel Wet and Dry Levels allowing users to dial in specific Wet/Dry ratios making the Effect usable as an Insert-Style Effect as well as a Send-Style Effect.
- Optimizations to Source Effect API. The Source Effect API has been optimized to process a full buffer of audio rather than frame-by-frame.
Core Updates:
- Cooker Performance. They have improved performance of the Unreal asset cooking process. The team has optimized various low-level code to eliminate unnecessary operations and refactored the handling of unsolicited assets in the CookOnTheFlyServer class so that it scales better.
Desktop Updates:
- Linux Platform Get Media Player. From 4.21 on, you can use bundled WebMMedia plugin to play back .webm VPX8/9 videos.
- Linux Crash Report Client Has a GUI. They’ve added support for the Crash Reporter GUI to now pop up when a crash occurs! This enables you to help make Linux better by quickly and easily reporting crashes that you encounter.
You can find the full list of updates here.