[APPLAUSE]
NICK PENWARDEN: Thank you, Tim.
Hi, everyone.
I'm excited to get to show you some of the new experimental features
we've been working on for Unreal Engine 5.2.
Let's take a look.
All right.
So last year, we added several new features to the engine
to support foliage rendering.
And the Fortnite team used those features
to ship Battle Royale Chapter 4.
At the same time, Jacob over there and the team at Quixel
were experimenting with what's possible for photo-real foliage
environments as well as testing out the latest functionality that we've
been building for Unreal Engine.
So Jacob's here with us today in the Unreal Editor.
Let's explore the environment.
And what better way to do that than off-roading?
And what better way to off-road than in a Rivian R1T?
Now, Rivian uses Unreal to power their instrument cluster,
including 3D visualization of their vehicles.
So we work with them to bring the R1T to life in this experience.
Let's head on out, Jacob.
JACOB: Sure thing.
On my way.
NICK PENWARDEN: All right.
So we're building tools for interactive and dynamic worlds.
So here, we have chaos physics simulating rocks
that tumble as we drive over them.
Leaves bend out of the way.
And we also added some real-time fluid simulation.
We worked with the team at Rivian to set up Unreal's Chaos Vehicle model
to simulate the suspension of the truck
and how the electric motors drive each individual wheel.
Chaos also simulates how the tires compress and deform.
And MetaSounds enabled the team to precisely resynthesize
the sounds of the electric motors and mix them
with the ambisonics of the jungle.
So Rivian provided us with a highly detailed model
of the truck, about 71 million polygons
that we're able to render in real time thanks to Nanite.
Now, the Rivian not only looks incredibly
realistic because of Lumen and Nanite but also its materials.
And today, we're introducing Substrate, our new material
framework.
[APPLAUSE]
And to better demonstrate it, let's swap the paint out for opal.
Now, of course, you can't order a Rivian with opal body panels.
But Opal was the internal codename for this project
and also a really great demonstration of Substrate's capabilities.
The base layer models the iridescence, refraction,
and reflections that occur inside of an opal.
And on top of that is a layer representing the polished surface
and how light is absorbed as it travels through that clear layer
of varying depth.
And now, we can add back on the dust and dirt layers.
And notice how the reflection changes when interacting with the dust layer
and that there are no artifacts along the transition from dirt
to dust to opal.
So Substrate is more expressive, enabling artists
to create materials like this with different shading models
and compose and layer those materials as they see fit.
All right, let's head on out, Jacob.
JACOB: On my way.
NICK PENWARDEN: All right.
In terms of performance, Substrate materials
that are similar to the current Unreal Engine shading model
cost about the same.
But now, artists have the freedom to author more complex materials
for extremely detailed use cases like in cinematics and in film.
So we're going to drive under this fallen tree here.
And everything that you've seen up to this point
was painstakingly hand-built by the environment team Quixel.
Everything since that fallen tree has been
built using our brand new experimental suite
of procedural content generation tools, entirely an engine
that are flexible, deterministic, and artist-driven.
Our guiding principle in building these systems was to empower artists
to make tools for artists.
So Jacob's going to go ahead and add a procedural assembly to the world.
And the cool thing is that it communicates--
thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah.
Pretty cool.
And the cool thing is that it communicates
with other nearby procedural elements in the scene like the creek bed.
So let's say a designer comes by and wants to direct the player
to drive to the left.
Jacob can simply move the assembly to the right.
And everything updates to accommodate that change.
Game design is iterative.
So let's say the designer comes back, wants
to give the player the choice of going left or right again.
Jacob can simply move the assembly back over.
Now, the artists who created this assembly also added some additional
handles that Jacob can use to art direct where rockslides occur.
It allows them to customize the piece a little bit more,
make it a little easier for the Rivian to drive by.
So we started by handcrafting that original part of the level
to set the visuals and art direction for the entire piece
and then built out procedural tools that
allowed the team to create a much larger playspace much more quickly.
Now, let's see how we can use these procedural tools to make larger
sweeping changes to the environment.
So, Jacob, let's start by removing some of the trees in this area.
JACOB: Absolutely.
That's easy enough actually.
NICK PENWARDEN: All right.
A little too much.
Let's add some trees back in.
JACOB: OK.
NICK PENWARDEN: And let's also add in some cliff formations.
Give it a little bit more variability.
So the procedural systems are all deterministic.
As Jacob is experimenting with different sets of input parameters,
once he finds a set that he likes, he can always go back to it
and get out exactly the same results.
And the procedural systems aren't just placing trees and rocks
but also fog cards, bugs, birds, everything that's needed
to bring this environment to life.
And everything that you've seen here works at scale.
This environment is four kilometers by four kilometers.
If we hide all of the procedural elements,
we can see that original hand-built area about 200 meters by 200 meters.
We believe that there will always be the need
for hand-building environments.
So we design these procedural systems to be
tools for artists that work in concert with hand-built content.
Both Substrate and the new procedural tools
will be available in experimental form in 5.2.
And everything you've seen here is running
in the Unreal Editor in real time on a developer machine
with an Intel 13900K CPU and Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU.
So, Jacob, thanks for being here and helping us out today.
JACOB: Thank you very much, Nick, for having me.
It's been a pleasure.
[APPLAUSE]