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Unreal Development Kit - August Beta Available NOW

by Rainier on Aug. 23, 2011 @ 6:01 p.m. PDT

Epic Games launched the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides access to the toolset used in blockbuster video games, 3D visualizations, digital films and more.

Get the Unreal Development Kit August 2011 Beta off WP (1.5GB)

Epic Games, Inc. has released the May 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.

This month, we would like to highlight Q.U.B.E., a promising UDK-powered game created by former classmates turned independent developers. Q.U.B.E. is a first-person game that presents a series of brain-teasing puzzles, ranging from physics-based challenges and 3D jigsaws to platform-based trials. We wish Toxic Games much success with their first commercial release.

Have something cool to show us? 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.

August 2011 UDK Beta Upgrade Notes

New Movie Capture System

  • Integrated Unreal Matinee and in-game movie capture
  •   Matinees can be captured to AVI via a new button on the Matinee toolbar
  •   A running game can be captured to AVI via the console commands "StartMovieCapture" and "StopMovieCapture"

Material Functions

  • Material functions allow snippets of material graphs to be saved separately and shared between multiple materials
  •   Functions can be exposed to the function library, which is a new categorized window in the material editor
  •   Many new material functions have been added to the engine's function library

Material Editor Improvements

  • An improved error display lists error node type and highlights offending node in red
  • Now supports marking by shift-clicking connectors, which allows making connections across large materials without dragging
  • Landscape shader compiler time improvements in the material editor
  •   In test case, compilation time was 2.25 times faster

Culling Foliage Instances Based on Distance

  • New ‘StartCullDistance’ and ‘EndCullDistance’ parameters for culling foliage instances based on distance
  •   At ‘EndCullDistance,’ entire clusters of instances are coarsely culled using ‘MaxDrawDistance’
  •   From ‘StartCullDistance,’ a per-instance opacity value from 1-0 is generated in vertex color alpha, for use by the material to fade out the foliage

Adaptive Tessellation

  • Users can now dynamically tessellate meshes based on screen space size.

Unreal Editor Improvements

  • New slider for Alpha in the Mesh Paint dialog
  • Improved editor startup
  •   Greatly improved editor startup times due to faster Game Asset Database downloads
  •   No longer steals keyboard focus when starting up
  •   Shows better status information while starting up
  • New ‘Cancel’ button available in Slow Tasks and progress dialogs
  • Users can now select all Actors referenced by Kismet in All Levels
  • New ability to set and jump to bookmarks to editor viewport and Kismet toolbar drop-downs
  • Improved foliage window scrolling behavior – only the mesh list scrolls, with the painting parameters fixed
  • LOD UV settings in Static Mesh Editor are now maintained after importing a new LOD
  • SpeedTrees can now be placed while in StaticMesh mode
  • ‘Undo’ and ‘redo’ are now supported for changes to DrawScale boxes on the status bar below editor viewports
  • New option in editor preferences menu that, when enabled, causes BSP to auto-update after modifying a brush
  •   Option also togglable through the ‘Alt+Ctrl+U’ keyboard shortcut
  •   Geometry should still be rebuilt prior to playing the level

Unreal Matinee Improvements

  • Users can now name Matinee director tracks, and optionally display custom names in the game viewport
  • Now includes an Export Animation Track Info option, which exports the director track and animation sequences along with all keyframe data to a simple text file

Other Improvements

  • Unreal Cascade
  •   New ‘WarmupTickTime’ member allows users to specify update time for warmup ticks
  •   New Initial World Offset Particle Module includes seeded and not seeded versions
  •   Support for 'Color' instance parameters when retrieving particle parameters via ‘GetColorParameter’
  •   Auto-activated particles are no longer reset when resetting all particles in a level
  •   Set particle velocity from movement generated by the orbit module
  •   Mobile: Removed forcibly setting particle system LOD levels to the lowest detail
  • AnimSet Viewer
  •   New FoV slider (fully settable range 5 - 170), FoV reset button, and FoV viewport info
  •   New drop-downs in toolbar enable viewing specific chunks and sections of a skeletal mesh
  •   Removing prefix from selected AnimSequence now supported
  • iCloud document saving for iOS now supported
  • Support for using alternate bone weights in SkeletalMeshes simplified using Simplygon now supported
  • Material vertex shaders now support local to world transform translation.
  • The SkinXX syntax for SkeletalMeshes is now supported in the FBX pipeline with or without materials

Updated UDN Pages

UDK Community Links

System requirements

Minimum:

  • Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
  • 2.0+ GHz processor
  • 2 GB system RAM
  • SM3-compatible video card
  • 3 GB Free hard drive space
Recommended for Content Development:
  • Windows Vista 64 SP2
  • 2.0+ GHz multi-core processor
  • 8 GB System RAM
  • NVIDIA 8000 series or higher graphics card
  • Plenty of HDD space
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