Unreal Engine 4 feature 2

Unreal Engine 4.5 Is Now Out, Ray Traced Distance Field Shadows Showcased

Epic Games has announced that the latest version (4.5) of Unreal Engine 4 is now available. Unreal Engine 4.5 includes eagerly-awaited features such as animation retargeting, automatic C++ hot reload, light map UV generation and streaming video textures. In addition, this new version of Epic’s engine supports real-time ray traced soft shadows and screen-space subsurface scattering.

Epic Games has also released two new videos, showcasing the newly supportedĀ real-time ray traced soft shadows.

You can read more details about this latest version of Unreal Engine 4 at Epic’s official website.

Enjoy!

6 thoughts on “Unreal Engine 4.5 Is Now Out, Ray Traced Distance Field Shadows Showcased”

  1. Crytek implemented variable penumbra in the DX11 update for Crysis 2. Variable penumbra is an effect I also see here, it means that a shadow starts out sharp and gets fuzzier over distance. Imo it adds greatly to the scene so good job to Epic for catching up in that regard. But why ray-traced? What else can this technique do that Crytek’s can’t?

      1. yes, they do.

        Judging from those showcase videos, I’d say Unreal’s implementation yields much superior results, especially with that indoor lighting scene.

      2. I couldn’t tell you anything about Ryse. I know that Crysis 3 did some very strange things to squeeze the last bits of performance out of the last-gen consoles. The indirect lighting was actually prebaked and I’m guessing so were the shadows atleast on consoles and lower settings. Maybe not prebaked but atleast running at a low rate, not updated every frame.

        Was there variable penumbra? Only on “Very High” settings, just like Crysis 2. Sadly the shadows are very blurry on High and Very High IIRC so personally I prefer medium shadows. Variable penumbra is a nice effect in theory but when you start out with already blurry shadows at the “roots” then making them even blurrier along the way doesn’t add much. Variable penumbra only really works for high-contrast scenes where the shadows get to undergo the full spectrum from totally sharp to totally blurred imo.

  2. Wait ,first off ,is SVOGI back? i know for a fact that they decided to remove it from ue because sony paid them ,the ps4 couldnt run it and they didnt want the ps4 to look back ,so Epic decided to completly remove it.
    now there is a newer version with new features but no svogi???

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