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unreal's newest update Unreal Engine 5.5
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just released and it is a big deal the
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reason why is the brand new lighting
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system called megga lights since the
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start of computer Graphics lighting has
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been the most important part of any 3D
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render or game physically accurate
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lighting can make the difference if an
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image is realistic or not when Unreal
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Engine 5 released it introduced a
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lighting system called Lumen which gave
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us realtime Global illumination Global
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illumination is Bounce lighting which is
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the extra light created from light rays
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bouncing off of surfaces for example if
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you have a room with a single light from
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a window the room shouldn't be pitch
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black instead the light from the window
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will bounce around and illuminate the
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rest of the room indirectly and the less
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light we have the less bounce lighting
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Lumen was a game changer when it
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released since it was real time before
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Lumin to get bounce lighting we had to
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wait for each frame to render now it is
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all instant and while this is great we
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still have an issue and that is each
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light source requires a lot of
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processing power to render a single
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light in unreal needs to calculate the
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bounce lighting and shadows from the
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lights perspective which is a very
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computationally expensive process this
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means that we are limited in the amount
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of Lights we can use if we use too many
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then our game's performance drops
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dramatically this was a huge limitation
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until now in UE 5.5 a new lighting
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system was introduced on top of lumen
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called megga lights which removes this
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constraint allowing us to have as many
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lights as we want to demonstrate in uifi
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five I in an environment that uses
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hundreds of individual lights I running
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at 5 frames per second my computer
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cannot process this many lights now with
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one button press in the settings I can
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enable Mega lights and boom instantly my
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frame rate jumped from 5 frames per
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second to 40 and what is incredible is
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that I didn't have to make any changes
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to my environment all I had to do was
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enable Mega lights and it worked right
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out of the box this is revolutionary it
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unlocks huge created possibilities that
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simply was not possible before now we
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can have near infinite lights perfect
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for environments like the ones you see
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on screen on top of that textured area
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lights can Now cast Dynamic light rays
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and soft Shadows this simply was not
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possible beforehand we can have
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realistic lighting from large dynamic
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area lights like TVs megga lights works
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perfectly with nanite geometry which
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lets us have infinite detail and polygon
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counts this means we are no longer con
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trained by most real-time rendering
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limitations we can have as many lights
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or high polygon objects that we want on
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top of a lighting upgrade for uee 5.5
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metahumans have gotten two big new
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features the face animations you see
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right now are not motion capture and
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they are not hand animated instead the
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face animations are generated by AI with
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a new audio driven animation feature all
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I did was upload the audio of myself
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talking and unreal automatically created
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the lip sync for me there was no camera
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needed for my face but of course the
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rest of my body is still motion capture
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you can imagine this will be helpful in
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a game with a lot of dialogue in
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addition to that we now have the option
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to use optimized metahumans which are a
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lot less computationally intensive and
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take up less memory than the default
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metahumans if you have tried metahumans
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before you know that they take up a lot
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of disc space the average metahuman is
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950 megabytes which is almost an entire
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gigabyte needed for each person since it
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uses a lot of AK textures and complex
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skeletal meshes while this is okay for
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cinematics for most games you probably
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don't want to waste an entire gigabyte
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for a character which is why we now have
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the option to download a gamef friendly
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optimized metahuman which instead of 1
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gab has been reduced to just 60
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megabytes and it still looks amazing the
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quality drop is not noticeable it is
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crazy how much characters have been
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optimized and it makes using them
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possible on less powerful computers
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unreal Sky system has been improved Dr
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ially by default umbr comes with a set
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of volumetric clouds which means they
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are real clouds that exist in the
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environment you can fly around them and
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they realistically interact with the
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lighting before volumetric clouds to
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create a sky we were forced to use a Sky
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Box which is a massive box or sphere
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that surrounds the entire world with a
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sky texture on it this was able to get
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the job done for most environments but
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as soon as we have a dynamic Sun that
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changes time and position it becomes
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obvious that the sky is a static texture
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this is why in recent years games have
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introduced Dynamic Skies with volumetric
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clouds that are physical objects in the
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environment they realistically interact
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with the world and lighting like any
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other object the best example of this
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was in Red Dead Redemption which has a
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full time of day and weather system
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every cloud you see are 3D renders none
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of them are textures the last version of
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un 4 introduced volumetric clouds and
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the atmosphere system this made creating
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realistic skylighting a breeze since it
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physically simulates the Earth's
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atmosphere and engine all you have to do
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is drag it into your world and you
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imately get real Sky moving the sun will
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change the atmosphere's light dispersion
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automatically updating the color in fact
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when using it if you move the camera far
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enough away you can see it simulating
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the atmosphere of an entire planet the
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only issue in my opinion was that the
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default clouds it came with looked
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terrible they feel like big Lobby
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mushrooms and less like something you
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would see out in the real world now the
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clouds have been updated here as before
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and here is after the clouds look a lot
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better and we have more control over
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them than ever before there's a slider
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to change the amount of clouds and we
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can transition the sky to become a
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chaotic storm another Improvement to the
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sky is a built-in time of day sequence
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real-time day transitions are pretty
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common in a lot of games if we wanted
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one in unreal we had to either buy one
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from the marketplace or create our own
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in the past I programmed a time of day
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system from scratch and it could get
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pretty complicated fast now ue5 has a
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built-in time of day that we can easily
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control from the toolbar the daytime is
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able to transition to night with a
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Sunset and the moon and stars become the
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main source of light at night time all
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of its properties are handled by the
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timeline so we have complete control and
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we can animate it there is a really
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great feature called vertex painting
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which lets us paint on meshes and blend
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between different materials it gave us a
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lot of creative control in the editor
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but it stopped working on Nite meshes
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five .5 introduces the new nanite mesh
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painting which brings back the same
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feature for material blending and it
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works perfectly with nanite displacement
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you can see the geometry changing in
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real time thousands of polygons are
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being generated automatically with this
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we have complete control over the Nan
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geometry of our environment and it opens
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up new 3D workflows there is no sponsor
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for this video but if you like it make
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sure to subscribe for more Unreal Engine
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videos in the future it would mean a lot
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because the Channel's almost at 500,000
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subscribers in the last version of
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Unreal Engine 5.4 it introduced the
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motion design Editor to make the process
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of creating animations easier it was
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specifically made to help users of other
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programs like after effects or Cinema 4D
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transition to Unreal as part of this
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editor in UI 5.5 we get a new material
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designer that allows us to create an
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animate complex materials with a layer
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system directly in the engine since
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Unreal Engine 3 the engine has been
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based off of a node system a lot of
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programming is done with nodes instead
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of code even the material editor uses
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nodes this is great because it gives us
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a near infinite amount of possibilities
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we can create our own Advanced Materials
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but the majority of our materials are
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not going to be that complex materials
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for the most part are simply made up of
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four textures a base color roughness map
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metallic map and normal the complexity
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of a node-based material editor isn't
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necessary this this is why in 5.5 we
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have a new alternative to the material
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editor because the material designer now
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supports creating physically based
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materials with a layer system very
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similar to the layer system you would
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find in other programs like photosho and
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substance designer this kind of workflow
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is very familiar to most computer
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graphic artists and can be a lot easier
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than stringing a bunch of noes together
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with the material designer you can
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select any object and create a material
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new to this version is each Channel like
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the color roughness and metallic have
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their own layers for example in the
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color Channel I could change the first
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layer to be a solid color then add a new
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layer on top of it with a texture mask
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to hide part of it and then I can edit
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the layers of the roughness separately
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to break up Its Reflection with grunge
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and scratches this can also edit
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existing materials if you have all the
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textures just drag it in and it will
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automatically know what textures belong
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to each Channel we can start using the
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layer system to modify it quickly
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there's been General improvements to
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Lumin lighting across the board this
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update Hardware raate tracing is now
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significantly faster with the goal of
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achieving 60 frames per second on
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current gen consoles Global illumination
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now supports hit lighting which produces
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more physically accurate bounce lighting
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my favorite feature is a new noise
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reduction algorithm for reflective
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surfaces previously when it came to
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metal surfaces the reflections can look
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really noisy now in UE 5.5 that noise
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has been almost completely removed every
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new version of unreal is a huge leap
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forward for graphics unreal's animation
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tool called sequencer got some upgrades
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in case you don't know sequencer is U
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5's timeline which is where we create
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and key frame all of our animations now
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we have access to Advanced deformers
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like luses which are featured heavily in
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other animation programs like blender
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with these deformers we can morph the
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geometry in real time for example moving
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any of these points we'll change the
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statue's geometry we can also animate it
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to create some crazy deformations on
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characters and object s that previously
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we couldn't do there's also a squash and
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stretch tool and you can program your
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own deformation tools for specific
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animations the sequencer user interface
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is much more usable with What epic is
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calling a dynamic interface most of our
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cinematics end up having a lot of tracks
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so we can now isolate certain tracks to
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just focus on them hide other tracks or
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filter for specific objects for example
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seeing all the lights currently being
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animated added in 5.5 is animation
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layers on individual controls this means
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that we can quickly edit existing
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animations by adding new animations on
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top of them without changing the
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originals this functions exactly the
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same as they do in Maya for example this
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vampire scream looks weird because the
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head is looking down not facing the
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camera by selecting the head and adding
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a new animation layer I can move the
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head up to face the camera now the
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animation is a lot better and I can
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control how strong or how much effect
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this layer has color grading is much
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more straightforward with a user
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interface that is very similar to
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Dedicated color grading programs like Da
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Vinci resolve previously all of our
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color grading adjustments had to be done
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in the post-process settings and it can
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be very confusing making such fine
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adjustments in a small window now all
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the core settings to edit the color like
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the saturation and white balance are
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exposed in an easy to use window the
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path Tracer is now production ready
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which means it is fully featured and no
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longer in beta it finally supports
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volume metrics which are your fog and
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clouds previous L we couldn't use
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volumetric clouds in the path Tracer we
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were stuck to textures now everything is
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supported and it has a new denoiser
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which makes rendering images faster this
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just touches the surface you can check
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out the release notes to see everything
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added to the engine also don't forget to
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like And subscribe for more unreal
00:11:47
videos unreal is more important than
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ever because half of all next string
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games are being made in ui5 there is no
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better time to learn on real engine than
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now luckily for you I have an entire
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free course right here on YouTube
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which goes over the essentials to learn
00:12:01
u5 you can learn how to create this
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world you see right now you can check it
00:12:05
out Link in the description below
