Apr 10 - Apr 12, 2019

Unreal Fest Europe 2019

Taking place in Prague, Unreal Fest Europe is a three day conference for
Unreal game developers, big and small.

Unreal Fest Europe 2019 Recap

Hear what attendees had to say about the biggest European Unreal Engine event of the year as we go behind-the-scenes of the two-day conference in Prague.

Workflow on Fortnite

In this talk, Lead Engineer Ben Marsh discusses Epic's development infrastructure and workflow including how we set up our branches, how we get builds of the editor to our artists and designers, how we set up our build system and escalate problems to devs, and how UnrealGameSync became a core part of our workflow.

Architecting Content for a Live Service Game

In this presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019, Senior Game Engineer Joakim Ohlander explains how YAGER changed the Dreadnought progression system from around ~100 assets to ~5,000 in a very short amount of time, and how they are applying what they've learned to their new game, The Cycle.

Blueprints In-depth - Part 1

In this presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019, Epic's Sjoerd de Jong offers an in-depth look into Blueprints. Best practices, dos and dont's, and recommendations on how to utilize Blueprints to its full potential.

Blueprints In-depth - Part 2

In part 2 of Blueprints in-depth, Epic Games' Senior Engine Evangelist Sjoerd de Jong goes over crucial, but rarely covered topics, with a goal to level up a range of viewers - from those with a working knowledge of Blueprints to users that are fully and professionally proficient in our unique scripting language and all of its finer details.

Automated Testing at Scale in Sea of Thieves

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 presentation, Software Engineer Jessica Baker talks about Rare's new philosophy on automated testing to deliver Sea of Thieves as a constantly changing service. Jessica also shares some of her best practices to make writing thorough tests more of a tool than a chore.

Growing a Healthy UE4 Ecosystem - How Splash Damage Approaches Development

In this presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019, Valentin Galea, Lead Core Tech Programmer at Splash Damage Games, presents workflows and systems that empower developers whilst nourishing the next big company endeavour.

Hero AI - Gameplay Abilities Meet Behavior Trees

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 talk, Daedalic Entertainment Technical Director Nick Prühs outlines how the studio combined Gameplay Abilities with Behaviour Trees to allow the heroes in A Year Of Rain to automatically prioritize, target, and use abilities on friends and foes alike.

Overcoming Early Challenges in Unreal

This practical discussion led by Epic Games' Developer Relations Technical Artist Arran Langmead presents an overview of solutions to common issues that arise during a studio’s first six months on a UE4 project. Topics include general best practices, optimization guidelines, and how to avoid the common pitfalls of game development.

100 UE4 Tips and Tricks

In this fun, light-hearted session, the Unreal Engine European evangelism team explores dozens of interesting, useful and sometimes strange UE4 editor and content creation tips designed to speed up production (and provide a few laughs).

Backend Solution for The Cycle and Integration with the Epic Ecosystem

What does it take to construct your own backend from scratch and integrate it with the UE4 ecosystem? Backend Engineers Alexander Matsko and Mario Arnaldos describe a modern backend solution, in addition to how and why YAGER switched to using a microservices approach and developed its own backend.

Blueprints: Blending System Architecture and Creativity

Lead Technical Designer Michelle Chapman, details how Deep Silver Dambuster Studios uses Blueprints throughout all departments to create games, specifically in creating sandbox gameplay, missions, and narrative beats.

Causing Chaos: The Future of Physics and Destruction in Unreal Engine

Get a first look at the future of physics and destruction in Unreal Engine as Epic's Benn Gallagher and Jack Oakman walk through features that give content creators the tools they need to build highly interactive worlds that can be fractured, shattered, and demolished.

Introduction to Niagara

Niagara is Unreal Engine's next-gen VFX toolset - not just for particles but for VFX in general. Developer Relations Technical Artist Arran Langmead uses this introductory presentation to draw parallels between Niagara and Cascade while giving an overview of key concepts and the practicalities of making effects.

Advanced Niagara

In this talk, Epic's Arran Langmead delivers a deep dive into two use cases of Niagara, providing an overview of the development process and how each element is put together to create the final effect.

Enabling a Look Development Workflow for UE4: From Shoot to Final LookDev Scene

In this presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019, Ninja Theory's Principal Technical Artist Matt Stoneham shows how to fully harness Unreal Engine's power to create amazing visuals in real-time and produce assets that look consistently awesome across different lighting conditions.

ARK on iOS: Leveraging UE4 for 98% Content Reduction

In this presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019, you'll learn how War Drum Studios used Unreal to optimize 100 GBs of asset usage in ARK: Survival Evolved to just 2 GB on iOS. All while providing a high-fidelity experience with good frame rates with optimized materials and vastly different content techniques.

Beyond Authentic Pixel Art in Unreal Engine

Using examples from "The Siege and the Sandfox," Cardboard Sword's Design Director Chris Wilson demonstrates how modern rendering features can be used to deliver greater detail and dynamics than classic games could, all without compromising an authentic pixel art style.

Layered Materials for Environments

In this presentation by Senior Environment Artist Matthew Brady, you'll learn how switching to the (experimental) layered materials for environment assets on The Cycle has given YAGER the benefits associated with material functions in an easier-to-use interface. Creativity, speed, optimization and opportunity have all flourished using the system.

New Animation Features in Unreal Engine

Epic Games' Animation Programmer Jurre de Baare recaps all of the animation features built for Unreal Engine over the past year, including those created for Fortnite that have made their way back into the tools.

Refactoring the Mesh Drawing Pipeline for Unreal Engine 4.22

The Unreal Engine renderer has been refactored in the 4.22 release to pave the way for future improvements in ray tracing efficiency and GPU-driven rendering.

A Postmortem on Implementing AutoPlay in UE4

This presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019 covers the process and results of implementing a non-AI fixed-path AutoPlay system for a AAA action game in UE4.

Design, Production, Cosmetics and Ballistics for Insurgency: Sandstorm

This session will go over how developer New World Interactive organized its design and production meetings, how they developed and implemented the character cosmetics system, how their ballistics system works and why Unreal Engine 4’s Blueprints were instrumental in the development of these features and many others.

Engine Tools for Performance on Open World Games

A major problem that most developments face is maintaining a high frame-rate while getting the most out of visual quality. In this in-depth presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019, Epic's Mario Plamero and Andreas Suika explain how Unreal Engine 4 is focused on that purpose with several tools that are built into the engine to help developers achieve their objectives.

Fantastic Bottlenecks and Where to Find Them

This talk by Fractured Byte Technical Artist Roman Leshchenko breaks down the most common mistakes made by developers, render and content pipeline bottlenecks, some non-obvious consequences of obvious optimization techniques as well as ways of avoiding and mitigating these issues.

ARK on iOS: Coding and Design Tips for Truly Unreal Success on Mobile

ARK: Survival Evolved on mobile devices has been a resounding success, both commercially and critically. In this talk by War Drum Studios' Thomas Williamson, you'll find out some of the techniques that were used to adapt the title for mobile.

The Fusion of Nostalgia and Novelty in the Development of Octopath Traveler

This Unreal Fest Europe 2019 presentation explores the evolution of pixel art during the development of the RPG Octopath Traveler, released in July 2018, and the HD-2D art technology that achieved this unique look in UE4.

The Visual Logger: For All Your Gameplay Needs!

In this talk by Rare's Principal Gameplay Engineer Andy Bastable, you'll discover practical tips and examples from Sea of Thieves, where the Visual Logger helped craft great experiences while tracking down tricky bugs from across the network.

Tips and Tricks on Developing an Open World Game with Unreal Engine 4

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 session, members of the Frogwares team share their three years worth of experience developing an open world game with Unreal Engine 4, specifically focusing on the tools they made.

UE4 Raytracing for Games

Through a game focused practical example, Epic's Sjoerd de Jong shows how to control ray tracing in your scenes, discusses benefits and drawbacks to real-time ray tracing, and covers tips on performance, all focused on helping you make a smooth start with this amazing new tech.

Using Replication Graph For Optimizing Real-Time Strategy Games

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 session by Deadalic Entertainment's Technical Director Nick Prühs, you'll discover the different techniques used for profiling, evaluating and improving the network performance of A Year Of Rain, including the Network Profiler and Replication Graphs.

Async Loading Screens and Transition Levels: Make Your Players Wait Like A Boss

This engineer-oriented talk about assets loading management for good performance and smooth transitions by Epic Games' Support Engineer Axel Riffard goes over different methods to craft beautiful and highly optimized loading pipelines for your game, be it single or multi player.

Colour Management - A Bird’s Eye View for Digital Artists

Physically-Based Rendering, High Dynamic Range displays and wider colour gamuts are all part of modern game production. This Unreal Fest Europe 2019 presentation by Ninja Theory's Anand Hotwani explores how to fully harness the power of creating stunning digital imagery with these new tools and explains why a strong fundamental understanding of colour management is essential.

Data-Driven Sound Design: How I Learned To Love Data Assets

Join Epic Games' Technical Sound Designer Dan Reynolds for a live demonstration showcasing the power of Data Assets for Sound Designers as he builds a preset and parameter modulation system for the Unreal Audio Engine’s Granular Synthesizer.

Digital Material with the Substance Tools and Unreal Engine

This session by Substance's Damien Climent and Luc Chamerlat highlights the use and advantages of the Substance ecosystem (including Substance Alchemist) to produce beautiful scenes and renders in Unreal Engine.

Integrating an FEM Physics System into Unreal Engine

This Unreal Fest Europe 2019 presentation by AMD's Eric Larsen covers the integration of an FEM-based physics system into an Unreal Engine plugin, introducing the FEM physics method, and covers aspects of integration. In additon, a demo with a variety of game objects that can be deformed and fractured interactively is shown.

Making the Most of Animation Blueprints

This talk by Epic Games' Senior Technical Animator Jeremiah Grant covers Fortnite’s use of animation Blueprints including the use of Blueprints for gluing together character parts after retargeting, dynamic solutions for low LODs, and faking dynamics in higher LODs with procedural animation techniques.

UE4 Pixel Streaming

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 talk, Epic's Alistair White and Stuart Hill explain how Pixel Streaming works, how to get started with it, and some of the applications of the technology.

Using Plugins to Share Code Among Several UE4 Projects

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 presentation, Cyanide's Lead UE Programmer Colas Markowski explains how the studio optimized its prototyping and preproduction workflow by creating a plugin that handles and shares common code and basic data between projects - allowing everything to be either overridden in code or tweaked from Blueprints.

Aggregating Ticks to Manage Scale in Sea of Thieves

This Unreal Fest Europe presentation by Rare's Senior Software Engineer Jon Holmes covers the techniques employed to efficiently manage the scale of Ticking Components and Actors within Sea of Thieves while also diving into a few real-world examples of how the team optimised these systems and detailing how it all plugs in neatly inside Unreal Engine 4.

Using UE4 to Develop for Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest

This Unreal Fest Europe 2019 presentation by Oclus VR's Software Engineer Loren McQuade shows how to configure, build, deploy, debug, and profile your UE4 project for Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest. This talk assumes you are familiar with PC development on UE4, and focuses on considerations to keep in mind developing a VR application for Oculus HMDs.

Vulkan! Powering AAA Experiences on Android

This Unreal Fest Europe 2019 session provides insight into the latest and greatest upcoming Vulkan features, Unreal Engine contributions from Samsung, practical optimization advice based on AAA game experiences (Fortnite, PUBG mobile, etc.) and the future of cutting-edge graphics development on Android.

We’ve Got Your Back: Engineering Optimization Ease

Whether you’re expanding to additional hardware or just trying to hit framerate, optimization is an integral part of development. In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 talk, Intel's Kelly D Gawne covers the features and optimizations Epic and Intel have collaborated on to make the inevitable easy.

Using the Gameplay Ability System

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 presentation, Matt Edmonds of Splash Damage Games takes a qualitative look at the Gameplay Abilities System (GAS) to help decide if it’s right for your team or project. Then, he switches gears to deliver some quantitative examples to help drive the workflow home.

Using Python to Streamline Asset Workflows for a Small Team

A small team with huge asset demands require a smooth, streamlined import and conditioning pipeline. In this presentation from Unreal Fest Europe 2019, Principal Technical Artist Marcus White discusses how Unit 2 Games created a Python-based workflow in Unreal to improve development workflows for their game Crayta.

Panel - Being an Artist on a UE4 Team

This panel discussion from Unreal Fest Europe 2019 gathers art leads from studios working on a variety of games, who share their experiences and techniques for increasing productivity on UE4 teams. Topics include artists' workflows, team collaboration, performance, and custom and third-party art tools.

Panel - Getting More Design Done in UE4

This panel discussion from Unreal Fest Europe 2019 explores ways to increase productivity as a designer working in UE4. A panel of UE4 design experts shares their thoughts on a broad range of topics, from daily workflow and team collaboration to prototyping and design-related engine features like Blueprints.

Panel - UE4 Pipelines, Teams and Tools

In this Unreal Fest Europe 2019 session, top technical leads from Epic share what they've learned and how they set up their teams for success, on topics such as effective engine upgrade strategy, build pipelines and tools, automated testing, and efficient team collaboration.