Want to lower your production costs and beat your deadlines, while dazzling your clients with photorealistic real-time interactivity and mind-blowing immersive experiences? With Unreal Studio 4.21, your job just got a whole lot easier.
The latest version of our free beta is bursting with new features to streamline your workflows and supercharge your presentations. Here are some of the highlights:
Datasmith for Revit
Building on the frictionless data import workflows for 3ds Max, SketchUp Pro, and a host of CAD formats we’ve previously released, we’ve extended Datasmith to add an exporter for Autodesk Revit. You can import the files it produces directly into Unreal Engine. Now you can connect the most popular BIM tool to the most popular real-time visualization solution—without the time-consuming process of using an intermediary solution.
Enhanced 3ds Max Material Translation
Unreal Studio 4.21 sees improved BRDF matching from V-Ray materials (especially for metal and glass); we’ve also added support for most commonly used 3ds Max maps, for improved visual fidelity and reduced rework. In addition, we’ve added the ability to translate 3ds Max material graphs to Unreal graphs on export, making the materials easier to understand and work with.
Jacketing and Defeaturing
Traditionally, it can take a bit of work and time to prepare and optimize a complex CAD model for real-time performance. With Unreal Studio 4.21, we’ve added new features such as jacketing, which automatically hides or removes unseen elements, and defeaturing, which lets you remove unnecessary details—like through-holes, blind holes, and protrusions—with a few mouse clicks.
Pixel Streaming
The new Pixel Streaming feature in Unreal Engine 4.21 lets you host a packaged Unreal Engine application—such as a product configurator or a training application—on a cloud-based GPU or on a local server, and stream the viewport directly to most modern web browsers on any platform, even mobile devices, at high quality. Clients can interact with the application and send back events to the Engine without the need to download or install any additional software.
Multi-User Viewer Project Template
Interested in exploring collaborative internal design reviews? Now you can easily connect multiple users together in a real-time environment, via desktop or VR, thanks to a ready-to-use project template for Unreal Studio 4.21. The template offers avatar replication, various navigation modes, and the ability to point with a virtual laser—simply drop in your design to get started.
Enhanced Live-Action Video I/O
There are now more options in Unreal Engine 4.21 for synchronizing live-action and CG elements, with new support for BlackMagic video cards; improved media I/O; and better ways to work with Genlock and Timecode. In addition, you can now record incoming video to disk as a Sequencer track, and capture final mixed audio to a single file when rendering out.
But wait, there’s more!
- More Datasmith Formats: We’ve added DWG, Alias Wire, VRED, and DELTAGEN to the range of files you can import into Unreal Engine.
- Improved MDL and AxF Import: We’ve simplified the workflow for importing and reimporting NVIDIA MDL and XRite AxF files. We’ve also improved the shading fidelity.
- Enhanced Mesh Clean-up: We’ve extended the range of operations you can perform directly within the Static Mesh Editor, instead of needing to go back to a source application.
- Variant Manager: Create and edit variants of your asset, and activate or deactivate them in the Unreal Editor or at runtime for design review or marketing of configurable products.
- Sun Position Calculator: You can now set the position of the Sun in Unreal Engine 4.21 based on your design’s intended location, and for a specific time and date.
Learn more about all the new features
Editor's note: In case you missed our announcement, Unreal Studio features are now rolled into Unreal Engine as of version 4.24. You can download Unreal Engine for free today.