Unreal Engine 5.4 offers updates for animation, rendering, and artificial intelligence

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Epic Games has released Unreal Engine 5.4 with new features and improvements for developers and game creators across industries. The latest version features the toolsets used by Epic to create well-known games such as Fortnite Chapter 5, Rocket Racing, Fortnite Festival and LEGO Fortnite.

"Unreal Engine 5.4 is here, and it's packed with new features and improvements to performance, visual clarity and productivity that will benefit developers and game makers across all industries," Epic Games said in an official statement.

Reconstructing the animation

One of the main areas of focus in 5.4 is animation, with Epic describing "significant updates" to Unreal's built-in toolkit. This will allow developers to quickly create characters and author animations right in the engine, without the need for third-party programs.

"With the new experimental Modular Control Rig feature, you can create animation rigs from clear modular parts instead of complex granular charts, and automatic retargeting allows for great results when reusing bipedal character animations," Epic explained.

The company claims that its animation creation tools have become "more intuitive and robust" as well as streamlined workflows. This includes new experimental tools, reorganized animator controls, updates to the constraint system, and a multi-layer feature to make it easier to add animation on top of clips.

Improved rendering

Nanite, Unreal's micropolygonal geometry system, has received an experimental tessellation feature to add fine detail during rendering. Programmatic variable rate shading with Nanite computational materials provides significant performance gains.

Epic has enhanced the Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) technology by improving stability, reducing ghosting, and adding new visualization modes to facilitate fine-tuning.

The company has redesigned the rendering systems to improve parallelization and performance at 60Hz. GPU instance cleanup enhances hardware ray tracing, which also received new primitive types and an optimized path tracer.

AI and machine learning

The Unreal Engine (NNE) neural network engine is moving from experimental to beta status with runtime and editor support. NNE allows pre-trained neural network models to be loaded and efficiently run for use in areas such as tooling, animation, rendering, and physics.

"NNE solves these disparate challenges by providing a common API that makes it easy to change backends as needed. We've also provided extension hooks so that third-party developers can implement the NNE interface in a plugin," says Epic.

Increased productivity

Several major features in 5.4 are aimed at improving developer productivity and iteration speed:

• Cloud derived data cache for sharing cached engine data among distributed teams
• Faster local caching using the new Unreal Zen Storage server architecture
• Multi-Process Cook (already ready for production) to utilize additional processor/ RAM for content preparation
• Unreal Build Accelerator (beta) for accelerating C++ compilation on distributed nodes

Media and entertainment updates

Virtual Camera toolkit for virtual production received production-ready status, Android support added. VR exploration received the OpenXR experimental toolkit.

The Motion Design experimental mode introduces special tools for creating 2D motion graphics based on feedback from TV presenters.

USD Importer allows you to import clothing and modeling parameters from applications such as Marvelous Designer to model clothing in Unreal in minutes.