The Unfeatured Features of Unreal Engine in 2024 | Unreal Fest 2024

Ever caught yourself thinking "Oh, I didn't know Unreal could do that.." Well, hopefully no more! Join Senior Technical Artist Chris Murphy as he covers tips, tricks and some of the lesser known features of Unreal Engine in 2024.

[Mohammed_Omar_U]

Scene Construction
1:10 Environment Light Mixer - Quickly setup lights in a map
1:53 Cube Grid (Modelling tools) - Quick level design prototyping
2:43 Draw Spline Tool (Modelling tools) - Creates BP and modify spline
3:39 Landmass Erosion
5:00 RVT (Runtime Virtual Textures) - Smooth blend mesh in environment
6:14 Texture Variation Node - Break tiling texture in material
6:41 Landscape Physics Material Node - Custom fx for gn or different footstep sounds
7:51 Water System Overrides - Modify from project settings
8:32 Console Water Variables - VSM Filtering (Virtual Shadow Map)
9:17 Property Coloration Viewmode - Ctrl+Click on any property in details and it will grab all from the scene!
10:10 Render Resource Viewer - View what eats up the VRAM
10:59 Local Exposure - Blend between different exposures in the same view
12:13 Location Volume - Named markers for an area in map partition (Shared between team)
13:15 Use Pinning - Prevent actor from streaming out
13:30 Custom Filters - Regular expression used as filters
14:02 Source Control - In-engine source control
15:04 Diffing Selected - Not just blueprint, works on other asset types too
15:17 Diffing Selected - Use step to jump between changes
15:43 Diffing Selected - Lock and Unlock Panning/Zooming
15:54 Review Tool - Perforce only, Inspect specific changelist
16:32 Custom Validation - Setup in BP and C++ to prevent errors

Working with Nanite
17:34 Nanite Tesselation - Off by default enabled using cvars
18:48 Nanite Landscape
19:09 Nanite Landscape Displacement
19:50 Nanite Vertex Color - Store data and reduce texture overhead
20:53 Nanite Spline Mesh - Spline Mesh Actor
21:24 Nanite Spline Mesh - 'Max Edge Lenght Factor'
22:08 Nanite Foliage 'Preserve Area' - Maintain visual consistency
22:42 Nanite Mesh can be controlled by WPO (World Position Offset)
23:20 Nanite setup troubleshooting WPO using 'Pixel Programmable Visualizer'
24:14 Nanite Overdraw mode
25:20 VSM Nanite Overdraw (Virtual Shadow Map)
26:01 Nanite Overrides - Selector in the material graph if mesh uses nanite
26:30 Nanite Overrides - Disallow nanite with translucent material
26:45 Level instances - Group nanite assets as placeable assemblies
28:08 Level instances - Actor Filters
29:16 Level instances - Easily break them to base actors
29:47 Level instances Zoo - Showcase your assets easily as they are instances

PCG (Procedural Content Generation)
30:10 PCG Intro
30:34 PCG Data Asset Support - Convert level instance to PCG data assets
31:58 PCG Sample landscape layer data - Painting landscape layer and PCG filling it with rocks
32:32 PCG Discard points on irregular surface
33:23 PCG Spline Water Data - Gets information from water system like stream speed
33:52 PCG Hierarchical Generation - Logic processed based on distance (PCG LOD?)
33:35 PCG Biomes Plugin

Custom Tools
37:15 Interchange - Custom ruleset and import popup when importing certain assets
37:46 Geometry Scripts - Intro
38:06 Geometry Scripts Booleans - Cut holes in any mesh
38:28 Scriptable Tools Mode - Add your custom click, drag, etc.. tools
38:57 Toolbox Plugin - Custom button belt that does whatever you program

Bells and Whistles
40:10 Animation Analysis - Works in blendspaces and sets values based on analysis rules
40:58 Harmonix Plugin - Create custom MIDI Sequences
41:54 Soundscape Plugin - Procedural audio in the environment without hand placing them
42:29 Data Channels - Detected by Niagara and spawns effects using one single Niagara asset
43:07 Niagara Simulation Stages - Output to Render Texture and do cool stuff
43:40 Niagara Caching - Caching to quickly play it back anytime later
44:12 Color Picker - Create your theme colors and save them (Can be shared between teams)
44:53 Translucency Overlay Material - Setup custom shadows using translucency pass
45:22 Post Process Material Chain Plugin - Output PP to RT to PP to... (RT = Render Targets)
46:15 Slate Post Buffer - Render scene with UMG to texture
47:00 Console Variable Tool - Window > Console Variables and it shows all
47:18 ABTest - 'abtest' before any console command and it will alternate between them automatically
47:42 Use '?' in console command for description
47:56 Texture Graph - Create procedural textures inside Unreal
48:21 Data Flow - Sets geometry collection and ruleset for destructible objects
48:52 Physics Control Component - Add physics on top of existing animations
49:13 Cheat Manager
49:38 Blueprint C++ Header Preview - Generates C++ header based on blueprint
49:56 Gameplay Tags - Can be used without GAS and it makes things easier
50:48 Leet mode '-leet' - Run the project with this command and it replaces text with leet

[Mittzys]

Whenever I hear Chris Murphy's voice I know it's gonna be good

[TrevorGall]

It's criminal that there wasn't more time allocated to this talk (along multiple other talk). Chris Murphy's talks are a gold mine of informations !

[PrismaticaDev]

Ripper talk, so many useful features that are undervalued amongst the flagship features.

[scottcourtney]

I'm awestruck by the fact that one person knows so many of these gems across so many parts of the engine. Brilliant video, but watching it once isn't enough. In a perfect world, one would revisit this about once a month and try to pick up five or six of these tips at a time.

[vanvelt]

Chris Murphy talks always are worth watching. Can‘t get enough of this ❤

[patrikbaboumian]

Chris! I've been waiting for your contribution :D Here we go!!!

[mrphu.]

Never miss a stream with *Chris Murphy* in it.. just like its used to be *Zak Parrish* .. as always jam-packed with a lot of extremely useful tips and techniques

[ghstproject]

I'm getting "who is this guy" vibes from this!
He just goes through that presentation like he is doing this daily in front of millions of people! Also all of these super good tips in there! That is a cool video!

[andreik]

Every talk Chris gives he surprises me :)

[wvilela]

I don't know if I'm happier or sadder to see a lot of solutions that gave me so much headache this year. But it's great to know that they know exactly what problems we face and where they can improve, and it's amazing how much better it gets with each update.

[earlnuclear]

Loved the last year talk, and this one is fantastic as well.

[johnwalkerlee]

WOW. This video is a treasure trove! Signal to noise is 10000!

[JohnLogostini]

Thanks for that max edge length tip I is what was stopping me from using nanite splines

[aprivatechannel]

Ignore, just a list for myself on stuff I wanna get more information on
1:08 - Light Mixer
1:50 - Cube Grid
2:40 - Draw Spline Tool
3:38 - Landmass Erosion
6:13 - TextureVariationNode
6:41 - Landscape Physical Material Node
7:50 - Water System
8:34 - VSM Filtering
9:18 - Ctrl + Click trick
12:12 - Location Volumes
13:31 - Custom Filters
14:04 - Version Control Extra's
16:33 - Data Validation
21:09 - Spline Mesh Actor
22:11 - Perserve Area
22:42 - WPO
26:09 - Nanite Overrides
26:46 - Assets to Level Instances
30:34 - PCG + Level Instances
32:33 - Subgraph in PCG
33:51 - Hierarchical Generation in PCG
37:15 - Custom Import and Export framework
38:30 - Scriptable Tools
38:55 - Toolbox Plugin
40:11 - Animation Analysis
40:58 - Harmonix Plugin
41:54 - Soundscape Plugin
42:28 - Data Channels
43:08 - Niagara Simulation Stages
43:40 - Niagara Caching
44:13 - Color Picker
47:00 - Consol Variables Tools
48:23 - Data Flow
48:50 - Physics Control Component
49:14 - Cheat Manager
49:38 - Blueprint C++ Header Preview
49:58 - Gameplay Tags

[sentinel]

Leet speak command has made my day. Thank you for this great presentation!

[KillerSneak]

Really love Chris Murphy’s talks, Iinformative and fun to watch at the same time 👍💪

[atlanteum]

So much information about so many topics packed into one video. A MUST-WATCH presentation -

[sarahlynn]

Wow one of the best videos I've watched this year.

[ScenegraphStudios]

This is all amazing - but that COLOUR Picker blows our minds!!!! Every day is a learning day