Epic Games today released Unreal Engine 4.21 to bring developers greater efficiency, performance, and stability for any project on any platform. With this latest release, it's easier for users to work smarter, create faster, and produce world-class results with Unreal Engine.
Unreal Engine 4.21 builds upon proven tools for creativity and efficiency, adding even more mobile optimizations to both Android and iOS, up to 60% speed increases when cooking content, and more power and flexibility in the industry-leading Niagara effects toolset for real-time VFX. In addition, the new production-ready Replication Graph plugin enables developers to build multiplayer experiences at a scale previously impossible, and Pixel Streaming allows users to stream interactive content directly to remote devices with no compromises on rendering quality.
Updates in Unreal Studio 4.21 also offer new capabilities and enhanced productivity for users in the enterprise space, including architecture, manufacturing, product design, and other areas of professional visualization. Unreal Studio's Datasmith workflow toolkit now includes support for Autodesk Revit, and enhanced material translation for Autodesk 3ds Max, all enabling more efficient design review and iteration.
Key features across Unreal Engine 4.21 include:
Replication Graph: The Replication Graph plugin, which is now production-ready, makes it possible to customize network replication in order to build large-scale multiplayer games that would not be viable with traditional replication strategies.
Niagara Enhancements: The Niagara VFX feature set continues to grow, with substantial quality of life improvements and Nintendo Switch support added in Unreal Engine 4.21.
Sequencer Improvements: New capabilities within Sequencer allow users to record incoming video feeds to disk as OpenEXR frames and create a track in Sequencer, with the ability to edit and scrub the track as usual. This enables users to synchronize video with CG assets and play them back together from the timeline.
Pixel Streaming (Early Access): With the new Pixel Streaming feature, users can author interactive experiences such as product configurations or training applications, host them on a cloud-based GPU or local server, and stream them to remove devices via web browser without the need for additional software or porting.
Mobile Optimizations: The mobile development process gets even better thanks to all of the mobile optimizations that were developed for Fortnite's initial release on Android, in addition to all of the iOS improvements from Epic's ongoing updates. With the help of Samsung, Unreal Engine 4.21 includes all of the Vulkan engineering and optimization work that was done to help ship Fortnite on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and is 100% feature compatible with OpenGL ES 3.1.
Much Faster Cook Times: With the release of 4.21, the cooking process has been optimized, resulting in up to a 60% speed increase in cook times. Low-level code avoids performing unnecessary file system operations, and cooker timers have been streamlined.
Gauntlet Automation Framework (Early access): The new Gauntlet automation framework enables developers to automate the process of deploying builds to devices, running one or more clients and or/servers, and processing the results. Gauntlet scripts can automatically profile points of interest, validate gameplay logic, check return values from backend APIs, and more! Gauntlet has been battle tested for months in the process of optimizing Fortnite, and is a key part of ensuring it runs smoothly on all platforms.
Animation System Optimizations and Improvements: Unreal Engines animation system continues to build on best-in-class features thanks to new workflow improvements, better surfacing of information, new tools, and more.
Blackmagic Video Card Support: Unreal Engine 4.21 also adds support for Blackmagic video I/O cards for those working in film and broadcast. Creatives in the space can now choose between Blackmagic and AJA Video Systems, the two most popular options for professional video I/O.
Improved Media I/O: Unreal Engine 4.21 now supports 10-bit video I/O, audio I/O, 4K, and Ultra HD output over SDI, as well as legacy interlaced and PsF HD formats, enabling greater color accuracy and integration of some legacy formats still in use by large broadcasters.
Windows Mixed Reality: Unreal Engine 4.21 natively supports the Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) platform and headsets, such as the HP Mixed Reality headset and the Samsung HMD Odyssey headset.
Magic Leap Improvements: Unreal Engine 4.21 supports all the features needed to develop complete applications on Magic Leap's Lumin-based devices -- rendering, controller support, gesture recognition, audio input/output, media, and more.
Oculus Avatars: The Oculus Avatar SDK includes an Unreal package to assist developers in implementing first-person hand presence for the Rift and Touch controllers. The package includes avatar hand and body assets that are viewable by other users in social applications.
Datasmith for Revit (Unreal Studio): Unreal Studio's Datasmith workflow toolkit for streamlining the transfer of CAD data into Unreal Engine now includes support for Autodesk Revit. Supported elements include materials, metadata, hierarchy, geometric instancing, lights, and cameras.
Multi-User Viewer Project Template (Unreal Studio): A new project template for Unreal Studio 4.21 enables multiple users to connect in a real-time environment via desktop or VR, facilitating interactive, collaborative design reviews across any work site.
Accelerated Automation with Jacketing and Defeaturing (Unreal Studio): Jacketing automatically identifies meshes and polygons that have a high probability of being hidden from view and lets users hide, remove, or move them to another layer; this command is also available through Python so that Unreal Studio users can integrate this step into automated preparation workflows. Defeaturing automatically removes unnecessary detail (e.g. blind holes, protrusions) from mechanical models to reduce polygon count and boost performance.
Enhanced 3ds Max Material Translation (Unreal Studio): There is now support for most commonly used 3ds Max maps, improving visual fidelity and reducing rework. Those in the free Unreal Studio beta can now translate 3ds Max material graphs to Unreal graphs when exporting, making materials easier to understand and work with. Users can also leverage improvements in BRDF matching from V-Ray materials, especially metal and glass.
DWG and Alias Wire Import (Unreal Studio): Datasmith now supports DWG and Alias Wire file types, enabling designers to import more 3D data directly from Autodesk AutoCAD and Autodesk Alias.
For a full feature list and additional details, please visit: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-21-released
