Edit:
Actually another thought I just had is that if it's open to Scaleform as a plugin, maybe there will be other plugins that simplify this stuff.
Someone was working for CoherentUI integration in beta.
You can sure integrate Scaleform.
The issue is that Scaleform will cost you more than 3 years of UE4 subscription
Well no, my problem with my last project was the opposite. It was that we needed something very simple and Scaleform was just too much. It required us to learn their platform, and flash, and Unrealscript integration. Which was great if we were doing some fancy stuff, but it was a dead-simple UI. It sort of forced us to up the scope on what we wanted to do.
So I was hoping U4 would have something simpler out of the box.
Both, Blueprints are compiled in the end. If I remember correctly it's as fast at the Unrealscript.
I have only watched Hourences video and gathered some misc info here (still downloading) but as a programmer it seams to pretty much be a scripting language that is graph based instead of text based. It has the same constructs (functions, variables etc) and it extends the native classes in the same way unreal script did.
The biggest issue with very complex stuff might actually be organizing the graphs. There is no reason for it to be any slower than unreal script when it is compiled(other then potentially when using the debugger as it is visualizing stuff in the graph).
C++ code might be needed for optimization in some cases but it probably is only in the same cases where Unreal Script was also to slow.
Ok, so since the NDA is off, I would really love to hear about some things that were previously secret. Namely Networking and UI.
- Networking: Has this changed at all? None of the promotion videos I've seen in the past year touched on this. I'm specifically curious about how replication is handled with Blueprint now, and if they moved all the networking/replication stuff to Blueprint. 64 player limit has been removed, it still uses client/server architecture, and sending replicated events requires the variable or function to include (server, reliable) or (client, unreliable) or whatever you need. Its not hard to get up and running.
same architecture(pawn, actor, player controller) but you have more access to change things if you want, its pretty flexible.
- UI: Is it still Scaleform? If it is, I'm assuming the Kismet hooks moved into Blueprint, but what about the previous Unrealscript stuff?
Also, what about the old pre-Scaleform system? Is that completely gone now, or does UE4 has its own basic UI system?
Scaleform is gone, its been replaced with Slate, although you can integrate scaleform yourself if you want. Slate is a c++ architecture that is a pain in the ass to learn, but is pretty straightforward. Not available via blueprints and cannot be previwed in editor.
They are incredibly powerful. Unreal script is no longer a thing in uE4, and has been replaced with Blueprint. You can make full games, handle networking and replication, save games, inventories, or do more tool oriented stuff and build blueprints that improve your workflow or control visuals in your scene.
They can take a little time to learn and get into, but their power is incredible. Would suggest downloading the sample demos and games and dissecting them, they should all be pretty well documented.
Oh I see, I'd love to see something on that. Blueprint HUD sounds like exactly the term I was hoping would show up. We were trying to have something as simple as a Health-bar, or a text-field the player can type into, and it was a pain in the ass with Scaleform. Felt like trying to fry a chicken with a nuclear bomb. Definitely overkill.
64 player limit has been removed, it still uses client/server architecture, and sending replicated events requires the variable or function to include (server, reliable) or (client, unreliable) or whatever you need. Its not hard to get up and running.
same architecture(pawn, actor, player controller) but you have more access to change things if you want, its pretty flexible.
Not that I would ever dream of trying it, but could you do a persistent world now?
I'm not thinking of actually attempting it, just trying to gauge what's possible now.
I remember us looking into Phasing, and it was basically impossible in U3. I mean something like having the server only replicate a certain set of actors for certain players, and a different set of actors for certain other players.
Blueprint UI/HUD cant have interaction, basic healthbar or whatever is fine(and super easy) but no Inventory management, buttons, etc.)
As a side note, the whole Unreal4 engine UI was done in Slate, so its very powerful.
Not that I would ever dream of trying it, but could you do a persistent world now?
I'm not thinking of actually attempting it, just trying to gauge what's possible now.
I remember us looking into Phasing, and it was basically impossible in U3. I mean something like having the server only replicate a certain set of actors for certain players, and a different set of actors for certain other players.
If you feel like it, you can replace entire networking subsystem with your own.
ThinkDifferent (uLink) have ready integration for UE4. So doing MMO in UE4 indie version is feasble. Though it won't be cheap.
Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone, and priced so that we succeed only when you do. We've made our policies to be friendly and low risk. You can cancel your subscription at any time and keep using the engine, though without monthly updates.
So I can just pay $20, cancel it, and the engine's all mine? Without the updates of course.
Also, they say the engine requires alot of power. Can my HD 7770 + i7 860 do the trick? At least for just importing assets and lighting them?
If all of the above is true, then holy crap, this is a game changer!
Blueprints are crazy, I don't think a lot of people see how powerful they are yet, but that will change soon hopefully!
Here's something you could do with it:
Place an item in the scene, and select the top-mid and bottom meshes. Let is automatically drop it on the floor and place them neatly ( in this case a beam )
Now, create 4 of them, and simply move your object in the scene, the blueprint magic will still work!:
Go crazy with it!:
There is A LOT more of course, I'll be making some tutorials soon.
Dear ploycounters, I have a few questions, after I recovered from the shock:)
Ok, what about the animation pipeline? The video tutorials on ue4 site shows of maya, how about 3dsmax?
What is used for facial animations, is facefx still around?
Naturally, what about matinee replacement, is it still around or blueprint handles that as well?
Nope, there no FaceFx anymore. You can use 3DS Max or even Blender for exporting content (animation, static, etc.). The FBX file format is still used for importing content.
I've been using UE4 for about the last year now, and its pretty great.
I have to say all the negativity and whining about 20$ to license for a month is kinda crazy and irritating. That is an AMAZING deal, really.
20 dollars a month, 240 dollars a year. That compared to UE3 being 60 dollars when you bought Unreal Tournament. Or UDK and all its updates being 100% free. 20 dollars a month sure isnt an AMAZING deal, UDK for free with updates was an AMAZING deal
I'm glad you can still use the engine once you cancel your sub. Thats what I will end up doing. Pay 20 bucks, get the engine, cancel, wait like a year or 2 and then pay another 20 for all the updates. Monthly sub is just a way to nickel and dime people who are students and hobbyist. As someone who used UDK for just fun art I never found even a year of updates worth 20 bucks. Most of the updates are tailored towards indies making an actual game.
I will also be removing "Rendered in UE4" from anything I do from now on and just say "Rendered in Realtime". No more free advertising. I am personally just against unnecessarily charging students and hobbyists who use your software and give it a lot of free advertising.
20 dollars a month, 240 dollars a year. That compared to UE3 being 60 dollars when you bought Unreal Tournament. Or UDK and all its updates being 100% free. 20 dollars a month sure isnt an AMAZING deal, UDK for free with updates was an AMAZING deal
The major difference though is that UDK wasn't totally free for commercial use either, and carried its own license/royalty costs when used for profit.
UDK still exists, and people who want to continue to use it for non-commercial fun or skill development can continue to do so, even if Epic is no longer hosting/updating/supporting it.
For example, I have a Unity Pro license at home for which I pay $75/month, AND I'm tied into a 1 year min contract. This, by comparison, seems much better.
This new model is definitely tailored towards indie development vs hobbyist or students, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Its just providing an avenue for indies to get their hands on the latest tech from Epic WITH support, source code, etc. The fact that you can start/stop your subscription whenever you want and still get all the benefits is what is really great. So pay your 20$ now...and 20$ when you're ready to release.
well this is something unexpectedly huge, i didn't expect Epic to adopt such a radical approach, for those whinging about $20/mo subscription fee, if you look a few years back its really nothing, and 5% royalty seems reasonable, from what i read basically you only need to spend $20 to get a kick at one of the most powerful game engine, i mean its a entire engine, it costed thousands of thousands dollars couple of years ago to get such a complete package and it surely escalates the game engine market within a day. Unity is already doing something maybe Crytek will be following very soon, in the end of the day indie developers will be happy either way.
Noob question for you all , do I still have to bother with a 2nd UV map/channel for lightmass calculations? Or is there a way to use DX11 and bypass that step?
The second UV channel is used to bake lightmaps dedicated to the GI. So unless you don't want global illumination, you will still need this second UV set.
The second UV channel is used to bake lightmaps dedicated to the GI. So unless you don't want global illumination, you will still need this second UV set.
So wait, lighting information is not baked into the 2nd UV channel, just GI information?
Its a LOT more forgiving now though and normal maps are amazing and no longer have the kind of issues with mirroring of uv's that required a bit more foresight to work around that they did in UE3.
The second UV channel is used to bake lightmaps dedicated to the GI. So unless you don't want global illumination, you will still need this second UV set.
I'm confused then. Per Epic's documentation,
Force No Precomputed Lighting - This essentially deactivates Lightmass's ability to produce light and shadowmaps, forcing the level to only use dynamic lighting.
It's still plenty affordable for a hobby, but Epic pretty much killed their own gateway to their previous popularity. There are probably a countless number of people who bought a game Epic made and decided to dick around in the editor for fun one day and ended up in the game industry. Now only people with a pretty good idea they already want to work in games might give Unreal a shot, but they might not even look at Unreal now. It might work out for them, but it's a pretty bold move.
Its a LOT more forgiving now though and normal maps are amazing and no longer have the kind of issues with mirroring of uv's that required a bit more foresight to work around that they did in UE3.
Force No Precomputed Lighting - This essentially deactivates Lightmass's ability to produce light and shadowmaps, forcing the level to only use dynamic lighting.
Would this not force fully dynamic lighting, thus eliminating lightmaps?
It means you can use dynamic lighting with no GI without building lights. You still need a second(or a single UV layout with no overlapping surfaces) if you want to use Lightmass to get nice baked shadows and GI. It is a lot faster and cleaner than UDK's solution though.
It means you can use dynamic lighting with no GI without building lights. You still need a second(or a single UV layout with no overlapping surfaces) if you want to use Lightmass to get nice baked shadows and GI. It is a lot faster and cleaner than UDK's solution though.
I understand. So, as long as I have a proper UV layout it can recycle that and I don't have to go through the extra step of having a second channel with independent spaced UV islands like in ue3 to prevent bleeding?
Replies
Yup. I'm thinking exactly that.
Edit:
Actually another thought I just had is that if it's open to Scaleform as a plugin, maybe there will be other plugins that simplify this stuff.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/Slate/index.html
The search system doesn't return anything. Probably broken for the moment.
Someone was working for CoherentUI integration in beta.
You can sure integrate Scaleform.
The issue is that Scaleform will cost you more than 3 years of UE4 subscription
So I was hoping U4 would have something simpler out of the box.
I have only watched Hourences video and gathered some misc info here (still downloading) but as a programmer it seams to pretty much be a scripting language that is graph based instead of text based. It has the same constructs (functions, variables etc) and it extends the native classes in the same way unreal script did.
The biggest issue with very complex stuff might actually be organizing the graphs. There is no reason for it to be any slower than unreal script when it is compiled(other then potentially when using the debugger as it is visualizing stuff in the graph).
C++ code might be needed for optimization in some cases but it probably is only in the same cases where Unreal Script was also to slow.
I can't find docs for it, but in the essence Blueprint HUD is using simple Canvas, and you setup HUD data using Blueprint
It is actually very simple, though need a bit of preparation and thinking ahead, when you plan you want to expose for your HUD.
They are incredibly powerful. Unreal script is no longer a thing in uE4, and has been replaced with Blueprint. You can make full games, handle networking and replication, save games, inventories, or do more tool oriented stuff and build blueprints that improve your workflow or control visuals in your scene.
They can take a little time to learn and get into, but their power is incredible. Would suggest downloading the sample demos and games and dissecting them, they should all be pretty well documented.
Not that I would ever dream of trying it, but could you do a persistent world now?
I'm not thinking of actually attempting it, just trying to gauge what's possible now.
I remember us looking into Phasing, and it was basically impossible in U3. I mean something like having the server only replicate a certain set of actors for certain players, and a different set of actors for certain other players.
As a side note, the whole Unreal4 engine UI was done in Slate, so its very powerful.
If you feel like it, you can replace entire networking subsystem with your own.
ThinkDifferent (uLink) have ready integration for UE4. So doing MMO in UE4 indie version is feasble. Though it won't be cheap.
Also, they say the engine requires alot of power. Can my HD 7770 + i7 860 do the trick? At least for just importing assets and lighting them?
If all of the above is true, then holy crap, this is a game changer!
Yes for the subscription.
Check the official FAQ for the recommend hardware.
plug ins for your editor.
-ability to drop props to the ground and move them around over the terrain and they adjust to the terrain below them.
-snap props to verts/surfaces, etc
so much more. i haven't really done much but I have seen the insane value in them.
[ame="
Ok, what about the animation pipeline? The video tutorials on ue4 site shows of maya, how about 3dsmax?
What is used for facial animations, is facefx still around?
Naturally, what about matinee replacement, is it still around or blueprint handles that as well?
Here's something you could do with it:
Place an item in the scene, and select the top-mid and bottom meshes. Let is automatically drop it on the floor and place them neatly ( in this case a beam )
Now, create 4 of them, and simply move your object in the scene, the blueprint magic will still work!:
Go crazy with it!:
There is A LOT more of course, I'll be making some tutorials soon.
Nope, there no FaceFx anymore. You can use 3DS Max or even Blender for exporting content (animation, static, etc.). The FBX file format is still used for importing content.
I wonder if that plug in will work for Maya LT.
Thanks, so what's the deal for facial animation? Morph targets?
Well, facefx was useful...
some really nice work on this map too, but the chromatic aberration is a bit too much.
20 dollars a month, 240 dollars a year. That compared to UE3 being 60 dollars when you bought Unreal Tournament. Or UDK and all its updates being 100% free. 20 dollars a month sure isnt an AMAZING deal, UDK for free with updates was an AMAZING deal
I'm glad you can still use the engine once you cancel your sub. Thats what I will end up doing. Pay 20 bucks, get the engine, cancel, wait like a year or 2 and then pay another 20 for all the updates. Monthly sub is just a way to nickel and dime people who are students and hobbyist. As someone who used UDK for just fun art I never found even a year of updates worth 20 bucks. Most of the updates are tailored towards indies making an actual game.
I will also be removing "Rendered in UE4" from anything I do from now on and just say "Rendered in Realtime". No more free advertising. I am personally just against unnecessarily charging students and hobbyists who use your software and give it a lot of free advertising.
UE4 looks pretty though
I don't know if this was posted already, but someones posted this to the crytek board:
http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?p=1203124#p1203124
Yeah, for some perspective the Silicon Knights vs Epic lawsuit revealed that they paid $750,000 to license UE3.
5% ??
Wow that changes everything
Epic trying REALLY hard getting people on their side it seems
It was 20% before if I remember right
Cannot believe it right now
Thank you for giving me more work to do...Epic...
The major difference though is that UDK wasn't totally free for commercial use either, and carried its own license/royalty costs when used for profit.
UDK still exists, and people who want to continue to use it for non-commercial fun or skill development can continue to do so, even if Epic is no longer hosting/updating/supporting it.
For example, I have a Unity Pro license at home for which I pay $75/month, AND I'm tied into a 1 year min contract. This, by comparison, seems much better.
This new model is definitely tailored towards indie development vs hobbyist or students, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Its just providing an avenue for indies to get their hands on the latest tech from Epic WITH support, source code, etc. The fact that you can start/stop your subscription whenever you want and still get all the benefits is what is really great. So pay your 20$ now...and 20$ when you're ready to release.
So wait, lighting information is not baked into the 2nd UV channel, just GI information?
It's sooooo much better now for environment art.
I'm confused then. Per Epic's documentation,
Force No Precomputed Lighting - This essentially deactivates Lightmass's ability to produce light and shadowmaps, forcing the level to only use dynamic lighting.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/index.html
Would this not force fully dynamic lighting, thus eliminating lightmaps?
Not if you're a hobbyist.
It's still plenty affordable for a hobby, but Epic pretty much killed their own gateway to their previous popularity. There are probably a countless number of people who bought a game Epic made and decided to dick around in the editor for fun one day and ended up in the game industry. Now only people with a pretty good idea they already want to work in games might give Unreal a shot, but they might not even look at Unreal now. It might work out for them, but it's a pretty bold move.
Yay, I'm hoping no more issues with specular seams at uv edges, a fully synced normal map tangent workflow, no more issues with specular seams when rotating modular pieces ( http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/964248-Specular-issues-with-baked-lighting ), etc.
It means you can use dynamic lighting with no GI without building lights. You still need a second(or a single UV layout with no overlapping surfaces) if you want to use Lightmass to get nice baked shadows and GI. It is a lot faster and cleaner than UDK's solution though.
I understand. So, as long as I have a proper UV layout it can recycle that and I don't have to go through the extra step of having a second channel with independent spaced UV islands like in ue3 to prevent bleeding?