Epic Games Releases March 2011 Unreal Development Kit Beta

[Flak]

News from Epic Games - March 2011 UDK Beta released

March 9, 2011 – Epic Games, Inc. has released the March 2011 UDK Beta, the latest version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides access to the award-winning toolset used in blockbuster video games, 3D visualizations, digital films and more.


Epic recently presented a brand new Unreal Engine 3 real-time demonstration entitled “Samaritan,” which leverages DirectX 11 support, high-end rendering features, NVIDIA APEX physics technology and other engine upgrades. These new technical additions are now available in the March build of UDK. Check out coverage of “Samaritan” at Wired, TIME and IGN as well as the video.



Epic is committed to providing the UDK community with regular software releases at no charge, and the latest beta is available now at www.udk.com/download.
Important DirectX features now shipping with UDK include:

• Tessellation and displacement;
• Geometry shaders;
• Multisampled textures; and
• Shader Model 5.

High-end rendering features include:

• Image-based reflections that allow surfaces of any shape to reflect an approximate version of scenes, with varying glossiness across surfaces, anisotropic HDR highlights and anti-aliasing;
• Subsurface scattering (SSS) that simulates the light that scatters inside semi-translucent materials, making character skin come alive;
• Anti-aliased masked materials that super sample the edges of masked and alpha-tested materials, making character hair more look realistic than ever before;
• Deferred rendering with MSAA support;
• Bokeh depth of field providing close to film-quality DOF, with artist-controllable Bokeh; and
• High-quality dynamic shadows from many lights on the environment, such as shadows for point lights and other light sources.

NVIDIA’s APEX technology has also been integrated into the engine and ships with UDK.


In addition, Epic has raised the royalty-free revenue threshold for UDK commercial developers. Under the new license agreement, developers don’t pay any royalties until their total revenue exceeds $50,000 (US). Beyond that, developers keep 75 percent of each dollar they receive and Epic receives 25 percent. A great article to reference is here.


UDK projects can be promoted to the community in the Works in Progress forum and the Released Projects forum.


It’s easy to sign up as a commercial UDK developer online. Have questions? Check out our FAQ.
March Beta Upgrade Notes

DirectX 11 is now supported in UDK!

• Adaptive Bokeh Depth of Field (DOF)

• A Bokeh shape, which is controllable by artist, is used for lens flare.
  
  
  
  The red area is full quality, while the green is area partial quality and 4x faster.

• Dynamically shadowed image-based reflections

Rendering

• The ability to scale effects (such DOF and bloom) with the view size was added.
  
  • Post Process Effect -> Scale Effects with View Size
  
  

• The ability to use tiled normals on fluid surfaces and any material was added.

Unreal Landscape, UDK’s new terrain system!

• Support for ZBrush-style painting

• Support for tablet sensitivities
• Option to auto-update weightmap mipmaps while painting layers
• Perlin Noise in the Noise tool available
• Support for thermal and hydraulic erosion

NVIDIA APEX Support

• NVIDIA APEX technology enables artists to quickly generate physically simulated clothing and destructible environments. For more information on APEX, please visit: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/apex.html

Unreal Editor

• To enable the DX11 renderer in the editor:
  
  • View -> Preferences -> Enable DirectX 11 Rendering
  
  

• The ability to see which DOF layers are in focus is exposed through a new show flag.

• Image reflections are now toggleable via Unreal Matinee.
• The checkerboard background in the texture properties window can be toggled through a toolbar option.
• Importing morph targets from FBX files now uses multi-threading to speed up the importing process.
• The FBX importer now supports importing lightmap UVs from FBX meshes that have more than one UV set.
• The error reporting when loading packages and maps that have missing objects has been improved.
• Matinee now supports jumping on the visibility interp track.
• Double-clicking anim notifies within animations focus shifts and expands the notify in the properties panel.

Updated UDN Pages

• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Perfo...AndMemory.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Conte...ommandlet.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Perfo...Debugging.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MemoryDebugging.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/HotSp...eneration.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LevelOptimization.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PerfD...ironments.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGems.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Devel...rBrackets.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Devel...rLighting.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Devel...hObstacle.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Devel...ssEffects.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Devel...leEffects.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Landscape.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LandscapeCreating.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LandscapeMaterials.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LandscapeEditing.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Getti...dGameplay.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Gamet...icalGuide.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ScaleformImport.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DLLBind.html

Community Links

UDK on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/UnrealDevelopmentKit
UDK Forums: www.udk.com/forums
UDK Developers on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2493123
UDK on Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/UDK/183744733429
Epic Games on Twitter: www.twitter.com/EpicGames
Unreal Engine on Twitter: www.twitter.com/UnrealEngine


© 2011, Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, Unreal, Unreal Development Kit, UDK, Unreal Editor, Unreal Engine, UE3, AnimSet Editor, Unreal Content Browser, Unreal Frontend, Unreal Kismet, Unreal Lightmass, Unreal Matinee and UnrealScript are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

[micahpharoh]

it just keeps getting better

[CloDel Studios]

Wow, you guys are great, thanks for this great release. Time and time again, you just surprise me, yay for landscape.

[Diablo_Hellfire]

very very nice guys

[evilmrfrank]

Will Epic be releasing the Samaritan stuff so we can see how you guys implemented and used these things?

[xnasorcerer]

I can not create a Landscape, because its window is not showing all the options. Look:




Also, I am having this problem when using directx11:

[SeanO'Connor]

Very nice release, thank you Epic.

[micahpharoh]

I can not create a Landscape, because its window is not showing all the options. Look:

Also, I am having this problem when using directx11:

I'm having the exact same issues.

GTX 470

Edit: And I'm having some issues with the shots from the link gun disappearing when looking at a transparency, such as the water in VCTF-Necropolis

Edit2: Oh, and wireframe hasn't worked for me in the static mesh viewer or the skeletal mesh viewer

[xnasorcerer]

I have found out the reason for the wrong landscape panel size. I am using a 1920x1080 resolution, and I had windows 7 aspect visualization at 125 %. After changing back to 100%, I am now able to see the complete window.

[TheAgent]

I too would like to see the Samaritan demo. I originally thought it shipped with it.

Would help us understand how to use all these abstract features.

[micahpharoh]

Also, strangely, specularity doesn't seem to work at all for me anymore. Packages brought in from older versions suddenly have lost all specularity, and new materials I create to test have no spec at all either.

Seriously, create a new material, add a constant for diffuse and another for spec. There is no hot spot for me at all.

Edit: I just turned off DX11 and it works suddenly. A few more bugs to work out it sounds like.

[|*BILLY$CLINT*|]

I too would like to see the Samaritan demo. I originally thought it shipped with it.

Would help us understand how to use all these abstract features.

The features are not that abstract if you know a little bit about Direct X 11. To gain a better understanding of how all of this works I suggest that you download the Direct X SDK and look through the examples that come with it.

[maximsubbota]

Omg, awesome features, but I feel down because I don't know if I good enough to make these type of graphics. O.O

[Shaftling]

What are the changes for Beta 2?

[mktwo]

The only change I know of is that DX11-stuff shows up in the material editor now :3

Does anyone know if the bug with specular in the material editor preview in DX11 has been fixed? EDIT: No, it hasn't

[VibBeemiJerma]

If you want i can test some things for you?
Dual booting vista32 and leopard 10.5.6 now using the latest EasyBCD.
Using GUID for hdd...