The new release ships with a slew of lighting and material improvements, network demo recording and playback support, and huge updates to animation workflows, including root motion blending and multi-montage support.
The new Mobile Preview rendering mode enables developers to edit scenes as they would appear on a mobile device. UI creation with Unreal Motion Graphics has been greatly enhanced, with the ability to place interactive UI widgets right into 3D scenes. There are also many improvements to mobile and console platforms, along with hundreds of other new features and bug fixes.
TLDR on big 4.6 improvements:
- User Interface: Easily add 3D user interfaces using the new widget component; navigate between UI elements using a joystick; and localize games faster using font families and composite fonts.
- Lighting: Emissive materials can now directly illuminate surrounding objects, and precomputed lighting and shadows are now supported on foliage objects and instanced meshes!
- Demo Recording: Also known as Network Replay Capture, you can now save an “instant replay” of gameplay, stream it, and share it. Use time-warping to slow down or speed up the replay.
- Multiplayer: It’s now possible to host, discover, join and leave Steam and LAN online sessions using Blueprint scripting. No coding required!
- Animation: Play multiple animation montages on a skeletal mesh at once; utilize blended root motion from numerous animations; and enjoy even more control over animation with Blueprint scripting.
- Materials: Material complexity can be pushed even further with support for up to 128 unique textures per material, a huge bump up from 13. High-quality characters, layered terrain and such will benefit from this enhancement.
- Large Worlds: Build a single world up to 20 kilometers across! Make your play space as large as desired by connecting worlds via the World Composition feature.
- Mobile Preview: Preview exactly how scenes will look on mobile platforms without ever leaving the Unreal Editor.
- Web Widget: The new Web Browser UI Widget enables you to host and navigate web pages right inside your game.
- Performance: Stream sections of precomputed navigation data in or out of memory on the fly.
- Workflow: Packaging and cooking content from within the editor is now faster than ever! Loads of C++ optimizations, including simplified class declarations and the improved Cast() function, will benefit code-based projects.
- Learning: Check out new content example maps in the launcher’s Learn tab! Other new additions in this depot include resources for in-game analytics, source control, localization, and many documentation updates.
In addition, the Unreal Engine Marketplace is full of new releases! Assets landing today include:
- Medieval Inn and Tavern by Ennelia Studio
- 3D Cloud Models by Quantum Theory Entertainment
- VFX Weather Pack by Thomas Harle
- Military Pack Part 1 by Manufactura K4
- Hand Painted Textures Pack by 3DFancy
- FX Alpha Textures by UETools
- 50+ Vector Particles by W3 Studios
- Space Shooter/Sim Music Loops Pack by Stephen Lu
- Ultimate Rocks by Ultimate Assets
- Ambient Sound FX Collection by Storm Bringer Studios
The engine behind Fortnite, Tekken 7, Kingdom Hearts 3, RiME, Crackdown, ABZU, Dead Island 2, The Flame in the Flood, EVE: Valkyrie, Adrift, Dreadnought, Hellblade, Fable Legends, and dozens of other games of all genres and sizes is available at $19 per month, plus it’s free for students and schools.
To learn more, visit the official Unreal Engine website.