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Unreal Engine 5.4 Unveiled at GDC 2024: A Roundup of New Features

Richard Hatherway

What to expect with UE5.4


The Unreal Engine team has been busy over the past year, and GDC 2024 was the venue for showcasing their latest creation: Unreal Engine 5.4 (UE5.4). This blog post summarises the exciting new features unveiled during the presentation.


Key takeaways


  • Better visuals, performance with rendering improvements.

  • Natural-looking animations with new motion matching tech.

  • Animate entire games within Unreal Engine.

  • Faster development cycles with build accelerator.

  • Enhanced sound design tools for immersive audio.


Rendering Innovations


UE5.4 boasts significant advancements in rendering, making your creations even more visually stunning. Faster alumin shadows ensure smoother performance, while variable rate shading optimises rendering based on what the player is looking at. Improved instance culling reduces the workload on your GPU, and the overall renderer has been fine-tuned for better performance across the board.




Revolutionising Animation with Motion Matching


Say goodbye to tedious animation processes! UE5.4 introduces a groundbreaking motion matching technology. This system dynamically selects the most fitting animation frame from a vast database, ensuring characters move realistically and seamlessly. It considers the character's current pose, past movements, and anticipated future actions, resulting in incredibly natural-looking animations. Fortnite has been using this tech in battle royale since December, and the results speak for themselves.


Sequencer Takes Centre Stage


The days of switching between Unreal Engine and external DCC tools for animation are over. UE5.4's Sequencer empowers you to rig and animate entire games directly within the engine. Lego Fortnite serves as a prime example of this capability, with its entire animation suite realised using Unreal Engine.


Enhanced Developer Productivity


For developers, UE5.4 brings a welcome boost in productivity. The Unreal build accelerator for distributed cold builds significantly reduces C++ compilation times, streamlining your development workflow.




MetaSounds Gets an Upgrade


Sound designers, rejoice! UE5.4 introduces AIO insights, a new profiling tool within MetaSounds. This experimental feature grants you deep insights into your soundscapes, allowing for better understanding, debugging, and ultimately, the creation of powerful and immersive next-generation audio experiences.


Procedural Content Generation on Steroids


The procedural content generation (PCG) framework in UE5.4 has received a major upgrade. New features like runtime RTH code generation, attribute set tables, and feedback loops empower you to create vast and unique worlds with greater ease. Lego Fortnite utilises this enhanced PCG framework to generate its massive amount of unique tiles and assemble them on the fly, procedurally building the world around you.


In summary, Unreal Engine 5.4 is a significant leap forward for game developers and content creators. With its impressive rendering advancements, revolutionary animation tools, streamlined workflows, and enhanced sound design capabilities, UE5.4 empowers you to bring your creative visions to life more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

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