Epic Games: Feb.2010 Unreal Dev Kit beta

CARY, N.C. (February 9, 2010) – Epic Games, Inc. has released the February 2010 UDK Beta, an updated version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), the free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides uncompromised access to the award-winning game development toolset.

Epic is committed to providing the UDK community with regular software releases at no charge, and the latest beta is available now at www.udk.com/download.

An extensive list of new additions and improvements included with this version is available at:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/BuildUpgradeNotesFeb2010General

February 2010 Beta

New UDK Features and Tools
• New color picker
o Update in real time, e.g., change color and see level lighting update as you drag!
o Properly deal with HDR colors
o Capture from the entire screen – even your desktop!
o http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ColorPicker.html
• Screen door fades
o New screen door dissolve effect for fading primitives (SM3+ only)
o Actors can fade in/out based on their MaxDrawDistance
– Static meshes, ProcBuildings, Skeletal Meshes and SpeedTrees are supported
o Static Mesh LODs can and Massive LODs can cross-dissolve between each other
o To enable this feature:
– Set ‘bAllowScreenDoorFade’ to True in [Engine.Engine] .ini file
– Set ‘bUsedWithScreenDoorFade’ on materials that should fade
• New package backup system to prevent lost work due to a crash
• Snap to recovery feature for post process overrides allows you to choose a snap directly to the level pp settings instead of a gradual recovery
• Whole scene dynamic shadow for dominant directional lights around the camera which blends out to precomputed shadows based on distance

UDK Improvements
• Dramatically improved Navigation Mesh simplification
o 50-60% reduction in polygon counts, with corresponding 50-60% reduction in memory footprint
o Faster at runtime due to less nodes to traverse, etc.
o Makeup of mesh is much improved with edges that span obstacle to obstacle and provide more accurate width representation of the geometry
• Matinee improvements
o Multi-select support for Matinee groups and tracks
– Users can now copy and paste many tracks at once in Matinee
– Multiple Matinee groups can now be moved into a folder in a single action
o Curve Editor new feature: Movement axis locking
– Hold down the Shift key before dragging a key to lock to an axis
• Kismet improvements
o Added Kismet “And” gate
– Fires its output once, only after every linked input has fired at least once
o Ctrl + Enter now adds line breaks to Kismet comment boxes
•http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/KismetReference.html
• CameraAnim Improvements
o Greatly improved CameraAnim handling and blending of post-process values
• Static mesh LOD improvements
o Screendoor fade between static mesh LODs for supporting materials based on time
– Static meshes are forced down the dynamic rendering path while transitioning
– Static mesh dynamic rendering path now uses the same LOD heuristic as the static path
– Screendoor fade even works on dynamic shadows from the static mesh
• Necessary to avoid popping due to LODs shadowing each other
o Lightmap resolution is now halved for each static mesh LOD level
• Moving UTGame native code to UDKBase native package
• Volumes, static meshes and triggers now have more apparent collision hull wires

Optimizations, Upgrades, and Fixes
• Bink update fixes the #3 most common UDK crash
• SpeedTree applications upgrade from 5.0.0 to 5.0.2
o Fixes an incompatibility with tablet drivers
o Exports the G channel of normal maps correctly for use with UE3
o A few other minor fixes
• Static mesh component vertex color memory savings
o Painted vertex colors now use half as much memory
• Save System overhaul to unify map and content package code paths and enhance usability for content creators.

New UDK training videos from Eat3D
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Eat3D.html

Updated UDN Documentation
•http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VisibilityCulling.html
•http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LitTranslucency.html
•http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CustomLighting.html
•http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentCooking.html
• http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentBlog.html

Additional documentation, code samples and more are available at the Unreal Developer Network (UDN):
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitHome.html

UDK community links: 
LinkedIn user group: www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2493123
Facebook:www.facebook.com/pages/UDK/183744733429

© 2009-2010, Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, Unreal, Unreal Development Kit, Unreal Editor, Unreal Engine, AnimSet Editor, Unreal Kismet, Unreal Lightmass and UnrealScript are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.