Following its release earlier this year, Epic Games has unveiled the new Unreal Engine 5.1.
The new update features substantial improvements to many Unreal Engine 5 elements including Lumen, Nanite, and more.
Speaking of Nanite, Unreal Engine 5.1 features a Programmable Rasterizer for material-driven animations and deformations. Lumen and Virtual Shadow Maps (VSM) has also received updates to support games and experiences running at 60 FPS, with the former seeing improvements in dynamic global illumination and reflections system.
Unreal Engine 5.1 is here! Explore the latest updates to Lumen and Nanite, enhanced world building tools, and improvements to virtual production workflows.
Download today: https://t.co/9Rgd3A9GGW
— Unreal Engine (@UnrealEngine) November 15, 2022
The update also adds in Virtual Assets and automated Pipeline State Object (PSO), with the latter helping in simplifying the process needed to export a game in DX12. There is also an on-demand shader compilation, which significantly saves time with increased efficiency.
Unreal Engine 5.1 also features enhanced world building tools like the World Partition, which now supports Large World Coordinates. This helps in creative big worlds without losing any precision. Furthermore, the new HLOD (Hierarchical Level of Detail) support for water rendering and streaming now allows users to create massive water bodies as well.
With regards to virtual production and broadcasts, Unreal Engine 5.1 has a new dedicated In-Camera VFX Editor that can be tailored for any jobs by the user. Additionally, there is also an improved Light Card system, which helps users to create and manage light cards easily. Other features include Color Correction Windows, new Media Plate Actor, revamped VCam and more.
Finally, with Animation, Epic Games has introduced the Machine Learning (ML) Deformer, which is currently in beta. The ML Deformer facilitates in the simulation of film-quality deformations like flexing muscles, bulging veins and more.
To know more about the new features in Unreal Engine 5.1. check out this deep dive.
