Unreal Engine 4.27 Released

Improved in-camera VFX workflows

This latest version feature a number of improvements to the efficiency, quality, and ease of use of Unreal Engine’s in-camera visual effects (ICVFX) toolset. The company has recently teamed up with filmmakers’ collective Bullitt to further test these tools. A free sample project from the collaboration is now available for the community to download.

The new 3D Config Editor in 4.27 allows users to easily design their nDisplay setups for LED volumes or other multi-display rendering applications. All nDisplay-related features and settings are available in a single nDisplay Root Actor for easier access. There's also multi-GPU support for nDisplay to scale more efficiently also allowing users to maximize resolution on wide shots by dedicating a GPU for in-camera pixels, and to shoot with multiple cameras, each with its own tracked frustum. 

Unreal Engine’s Virtual Camera system has been improved now including support for more features such as Multi-User Editing. It also offers a redesigned user experience and an extensible core architecture. Developers can use Live Link Vcam, a new iOS app, to drive a Cine Camera in-engine using an iPad.

The update also introduces new Level Snapshots to easily save the state of a given scene and later restore any or all of its elements. It is now simple to return to a previous setup for pickup shots or for creative iterations.

Faster light baking

The latest version of the engine also offers enhancements to GPU Lightmass, including more feature support and increased stability. The engine uses the GPU rather than CPU to progressively render pre-computed lightmaps. The system is powered by the latest ray tracing capabilities with DirectX 12 (DX12) and Microsoft's DXR framework. 

The time it takes to generate lighting data for scenes that require global illumination, soft shadows, and other complex lighting effects has been significantly reduced. What is more, users can see the results progressively, so it is easy to make changes and start over without waiting for the final bake.

Final-pixel imagery

The 4.27 version of the engine adds a range of improvements to the Path Tracer making it a powerful tool for creating final-pixel imagery comparable to offline renderings. It supports physically correct and compromise-free global illumination, physically correct refractions, feature-complete materials within reflections and refractions, and super-sampled anti-aliasing.

Artists can use Movie Render Queue to render from multiple cameras as a batch process, without the need to use complicated Sequencer setups.

RAD Game Tools solutions integrated into Unreal Engine

RAD Game Tools became a part of the Epic Games family, and the Oodle Compression Suite and Bink Video codec are now built into Unreal Engine, so users can rely on some of the fastest and most popular compression and encoding tools.

Production-ready Pixel Streaming

Pixel Streaming is now production-ready bringing a number of quality improvements and an upgraded version of WebRTC.

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