Epic Games recently unveiled a number of new tools and systems for Unreal Engine 3 at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. Unreal Lightmass, a new global illumination solver, produces high-quality static lighting with next-generation effects. Lightmass leverages Epic’s new Unreal Swarm distributed computing framework, which enables lighting to be generated up to 10 times faster than before. The new Unreal Content Browser enables designers to quickly locate game assets with thumbnail previews, tag content with metadata, and easily manage asset collections. In addition, the Unreal Master Control Program (MCP) is a scalable statistics and data management back end that supports announcements, settings management, online population tracking, and data collection for hardware, profile, and game stats. Unreal MCP includes a set of tools for visualizing gameplay, and can be used for online and offline game components during development and after shipping a game. All of the new engine features are bundled with Unreal Engine 3 at no additional cost to licensees.

Scaleform and Epic Games have shipped the newest Scaleform GFx-Unreal Engine 3 integration kit in tandem with the latest QA-approved build of Unreal Engine 3 for all mutual licensees. The deep integration between the two products, along with Scaleform’s commitment to synchronize releases of its kit with recurring Unreal Engine 3 commercial code drops, marks a new achievement in middleware support and sets the example for Epic Games’ premiere Integrated Partners Program.

Scaleform GFx, the industry-leading user interface (UI) production tool for hardware-accelerated Adobe Flash-based scalable vector graphics and video, is fully integrated into the UE3 hardware-independent graphical rendering system, enabling artists to create scalable data-driven Flash UI elements for videos, menuing systems, overlays, HUDs and animated textures directly on 3D objects. The Scaleform GFx deep level of integration with Unreal Engine 3 includes ties with the Unreal Editor, UnrealScript, Unreal Kismet, packaging, threading, and most impressively, the Unreal Gemini renderer.

“Scaleform is the first Integrated Partner to offer a simultaneous release with an Unreal Engine QA-approved build,” remarked Dr. Michael Capps, president of Epic Games. “We applaud Scaleform for its commitment to maintain such great support for Unreal Engine 3 and our shared customers going forward.”

“We’ve invested heavily in making our integration with Unreal Engine 3 work really well, and want to ensure licensees have a seamless and smooth development process. Maintaining compatibility with every QA release of the engine is a top priority for us,” said Brendan Iribe, president of Scaleform. “Dozens of teams have adopted and successfully shipped hit titles with our UE3 integration kit. This joint effort between Scaleform and Epic signifies our commitment to deliver the highest level of timely and reliable professional support.”