Unreal Engine 5.7: Billions Of Triangles, In Real Time

Amazing day, Unreal Engine 5. 7 is officially  finally here. It is an all in one solution for   creating animations, virtual characters,  video games, movies, you name it. This   is a blockbuster release, and we will look at 3  incredible things it can do. And before we start,   don’t forget - all this is available for  free for most people and applications. One,   let’s start with my favorite! This is  Substrate, a material creation system,   and the realism it can bring to  our screens is next level. Why? Well, first, unreal can run a light simulation,  with millions and millions of light rays hitting   this object, and Substrate tell us how  the material should respond to that.    That already sounds like science fiction, but  here is where it gets better: you can set up   this imaginary object with whatever material  properties you can imagine. And even better:   you can do multiple layers of this. That  is where realism gets to the next level. With Substrate you can define a piece of metal as  the core of the object, and put a smooth colored   coat over it. And then, simulate how light  is bouncing between these layers. Incredible. For the longest time, this sounded  like a fun little science experiment,   lots of research papers that I absolutely love,  but let’s be honest - it was still was not   practical enough for the industry. And get  this, Substrate is now finally production ready.    I am a light transport researcher by trade  and I spent so many years learning about these   multi-layer simulators, and to see the papers  finally come alive for millions of people,   for free. I am floored. Loving this. Note that  we are not affiliated with them in any way. But two, all this light simulation isn’t  worth anything if the underlying geometry   is not detailed enough. I don’t just want a bunch  of spheres, I want a fully detailed forest with   all kinds of plants everywhere. That’s what the  new Nanite Foliage helps with. This can render   millions of tiny little elements on your screen,  but it also does something we call level of detail   really well. Level of detail means the engine  quietly swaps between simpler and more complex   versions of the same object depending on how far  you are from it. If you are far away, just render   a few triangles, you don’t need so much detail  anyway. And whenever we go closer, it suddenly   swaps in the more detailed geometry. Okay, but  this concept has a flaw. It is clear as day to   all of you Fellow Scholars that we have these  popping artifacts here when the swaps happen. Now, hold on to your papers Fellow Scholars, and  have a look at the new system, so, did you see   it? Did you see a pop? Not a chance, right! And  that’s the point. Under the hood, there is lots of   magic to help your machine calculate as little as  possible, and it swaps the geometry so seamlessly,   you don’t even see it working. And yet, it saves  you tons and tons of resources. Brilliant work! But we are not done yet. Not even  close! So, we have good light transport,   and good geometry. But that is still not  nearly enough to get a good looking scene.    What about light sources? Well, there is a  nice surprise there too. Dear Fellow Scholars,   this is Two Minute Papers with Dr.   Károly Zsolnai-Fehér. Dr. Carroll. Light sources is where everything  starts after all, is it not? Now,   three, this is MegaLights, this is  a system that gives you hundreds and   hundreds of these beautiful lights in a black  market scene, each of which are casting their   own shadows. And all this in real time.   And we are talking proper soft shadows.   And it just got better, it can give you  directional lights, shadow-casting particles,   and shadowing on hair. Also, higher visual  quality, better performance, and less noise. This is incredibly difficult, because during  a light simulation, each of your rays has to   find a light source. But most rays don’t  do that, it’s like throwing thousands and   thousands of darts into the darkness,  hoping to find a small glowing target.    There are so many ray tracing papers on how to do  this more efficiently, and you see a masterclass   of that in Unreal Engine. And with megalights  finally moving from experimental to beta this

release. Much more stable than before, still not  final. But I am so happy to see that the papers   are coming alive and are put into the hands  of millions of us Fellow Scholars. So cool! But we are not done yet. This was a  Scholarly look at three core technologies,   but these 3 amazing other features also  really caught my eye. Let’s have a quick look. One, amazing update to Metahuman.   Metahuman is a realistic person creator,   if you will. This is a culmination of a ton of  papers that we talk about here. For instance,   the hair has to be simulated correctly, often  strand by strand. The appearance of skin has to   be correct, and deformations to the skin also  have to be simulated correctly. And earlier,   they showcased Metahuman Animator, where  we can scan ourselves, and enter a virtual   world as a video game character. And this  character is able to mimic our gestures too. Now, I was thinking that all  sounds fantastic, but now,   put your mouth where your papers are! Let us  do it in real time. That is the real test. And,   here it is. I can’t believe it. Live  Link Face lets you capture your facial   expressions in real time through a camera  and put it on the video game character. Two, you now have better ways to get a great  virtual haircut, you just pull these sliders   around and you can assemble a completely new  one. And, you can also animate it as if it   were the body of a character with these  little imagined joints. Really cool idea. Three, more realistic physics interactions  for characters, so you can feel like a   real computer graphics researcher and do  these…perturbation tests that we love to do. Once again, just thinking that all this is  free for most people and projects. Goodness.    It is all available through the link in the  video description. Check it out, and let me   know in the comments what crazy projects you  use Unreal Engine for. I’d love to hear that.    And make sure to check out Lambda too, they are  amazing and they make Two Minute Papers possible.