New Features in Unreal Engine 5.4

It’s that time of year again! Unreal Engine 5.4 dropped last month, and as we’ve come to expect, it is a big update. In fact, so many features have been added or updated, it’s hard to consolidate the list down to just a few! In that long list, however, are a number of additions that are likely to interest developers in the interactive and immersive industry. In this post we’ll dive into several new features introduced with Unreal Engine 5.4, including new tools for creating complex motion graphics, procedural content generation, virtual production, and more.

Motion Graphics Mode

One of the biggest additions to 5.4 is the new Motion Graphics Mode, which provides a wide variety of tools focused on generating 2D/3D shapes, modifying their geometry and movement, creating non-linear animations and more. In this mode, the Outliner and various other user interface elements have been updated to complement the new set of tools.

With this update, UE appears poised to make waves in the motion graphics industry, which until now has relied on software tools that require lengthy frame-by-frame rendering processes to create the final product.

Cloners and Effectors

Cloners and Effectors are two new tools found in the Motion Graphics Mode that allow for cloning and animating geometry.

Cloners

The Cloner functionality is similar to cloning or instancing features found in other programs, allowing for geometry to be duplicated using a variety of different layouts, including grids, spheres, honeycomb patterns, and more. Each clone can be transformed and scaled independently, and there are additional options for how animation is applied.

Effectors

Effectors allow for procedural animation of clones. Along with the typical ability to animate scale, position, rotation and adjust magnitude, you can also apply custom falloffs and easing.

Effector Forces

Effector Forces bring more complex tools into the procedural animation possibilities: orientation, vortex, curl noise, and gravity forces are all available.

PCG Updates

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) has received a number of performance and workflow updates, including improvements to the Node Graph UX. Along with that, a lot of new PCG-specific nodes and operators have been added (see image below).

PCG Biome Core Plugin

Particularly exciting for PCG fans is the introduction of the Biome Core Plugin, a tool for procedurally generating biomes, which serves as an advanced example of the latest features in the PCG toolset. As it’s built with the PCG framework it’s highly customizable, and serves as a great starting point for learning about more complex applications of PCG.

Texture Graph

Up until now, creating textures (whether procedurally or by using scans/images) required the use of external software before they could be utilized in Unreal Engine. The new experimental Texture Graph Editor introduces a node-based system for generating or modifying textures within the program.

Virtual Production

Virtual Production tools haven’t been neglected, either! The Virtual Camera app (now renamed Unreal VCam) we’ve seen in previous posts now supports Android devices. Virtual Camera workflow support has also been added to macOS.

VR Scouting has seen some significant updates as well, including a brand new toolkit that supports OpenXR HMDs, which you can see in the GIF below.

Before we wrap things up, I just want to point out that this list is by no means a comprehensive look at all of the updates introduced in Unreal Engine 5.4. You can take a look at the full list here. I wasn’t kidding about there being a lot of new features!

Wrap-Up

Unreal Engine 5.4 has brought with it some great new features, updates, and workflow improvements. We’re excited to see what new possibilities these tools unlock for interactive and immersive developers as they make their way into everything from production-level projects to personal experiments over the coming months!