Items tagged with Unreal Engine
Epic Games is an incredibly influential force in the gaming industry with its Unreal Engine (which is used in a wide range of games) and its own popular games like Fortnite. Its Unreal Engine is even used in the production of mega-hit TV shows like The Mandalorian. The company was founded in 1991, and has long been headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. However, even after expanding its HQ multiple times over the past three decades to accommodate its growing influence in the gaming/entertainment industries and workforce, the company is running out of physical space to expand. Needless to say, Epic has been looking for other alternatives in the area, and a prime opportunity...
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In life, sports, and the court of law, you win some and you lose some. Case in point (literally). Epic Games has, for the time being, lost its legal battle with Apple, in which the developer sought a preliminary injunction that would prevent the Cupertino company from continuing to ban Fortnite from the App Store, in its current state that sidesteps royalty payments from in-game purchases. However, Unreal Engine can remain. It is more of an Epic loss than an Epic win, so to speak, because Fortnite is the bigger play and the cause for this legal showdown between Epic Games and Apple. It started when Epic Games suddenly decided it was tired of paying Apple a 30 percent royalty for in-game purchases,...
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You win some, you lose some, and that is the way it just went with Apple and Epic Games over their public feud regarding Fortnite, Unreal Engine, the App Store, and in-app payments. In a lawsuit filed against Apple, developer Epic Games won a temporary restraining order effectively preventing Apple from banning it outright, so that it can maintain development tools like Unreal Engine. "Apple, are temporarily restrained from taking adverse action against Epic Games with respect to restricting, suspending, or terminating any affiliate of Epic Games, such as Epic International, from Apple's Developer Program, including as to Unreal Engine, on the basis that Epic Games enabled in-app payment processing...
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It's pretty incredible what today's smartphones can do, even if we mostly use them to upload lunch and dinner photos to Facebook. They can do so much more, though. For example, Epic Games just released a Live Link Face app for iOS that lets developers capture and stream high quality facial animation in real time from iPhone and iPad devices. This data can be imported onto characters in Unreal Engine 4.25. The actual tracking leverages Apple's ARKit and an iOS device's TrueDepth front-facing camera. "Designed to excel on both professional capture stages with multiple actors in full motion capture suits as well as at a single artist’s desk, the app delivers expressive and emotive facial performances...
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One of the key selling points of the Disney+ streaming service is The Mandalorian, a new series based in the Star Wars universe set 25 years prior to the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It is a remarkable epic, and as you might imagine, computer graphics play heavily into its creation. Fortunately for geeks like us, Industrial Light & Magic posted a nearly 5-minute video highlighting some of what goes into shooting an episode of The Mandalorian. At the heart of it all is a massive 270-degree semicircular video wall and ceiling. It spans 20 feet high and is 75 feet in diameter, and is powered by seven high-powered machines. "Digital 3D environments created by ILM played back interactively...
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Epic Games launched its Unreal Engine 4.20 and it is jam packed with new tools and optimizations developed for Fortnite to help developers create awesome experiences. That includes experiences in virtual reality and augmented reality, along with a whole bunch of optimizations and improvements for mobile, such as Android and iOS. In short, there's something for everyone here. Starting with mobile, the Unreal Engine 4.20 brings over 400 mobile optimizations developed for Fortnite on iOS and Android, making it much easier for developers to create and ship games, and also optimize gameplay across platforms. Developers will find improved Android debugging in Unreal Engine 4.20, along with mobile landscape...
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Epic Games is raking so much cash from Fortnite that it has decided to take a smaller slice of sales from creators in the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Instead of the previous 70 percent (developers) / 30 percent (Epic Games) split, Epic Games is reducing its cut to just 12 percent, effectively giving developers a raise to 88 percent. It gets even better. The new, more generous split not only applies to current and future sales, but past ones as well. Epic Games is retroactively applying the 88 percent rate to previous transactions that date all the way back toe the Unreal Engine Marketplace's launch in 2014. "Thanks to both the Marketplace’s growth and the success of Fortnite, Epic now conducts...
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The gap between real-life scenery and digitally produced visuals is continually shrinking, and one day we might not be able to tell the difference between the two. Working in that direction is Epic Games. Using its Unreal Engine, the development studio has created a digital human called Siren with realistic graphics and facial animation that is remarkably similar to that of a real human. "One thing we’ve been interested in over the years is digital humans. Two years ago we showed Senua, the Hellblade character. To this day, that’s pretty much state of the art. But we wanted to see if we could get closer to crossing the uncanny valley. She was great, but you could see that the facial...
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Earlier this week Microsoft and NVIDIA announced some major advances in real-time ray tracing using high-end gaming hardware. When Microsoft talked up its tech, the company noted that some of the major game engines out there would be integrating ray tracing, and that the new tech would be coming to video games. At the time of the announcement, all that Microsoft offered up was a single image from EA's Seed to give us an idea what games might look like. We now have a video to showcase the photorealism that future games using ray tracing tech will offer. The demo video is from Epic and ILMxLab, and it is based on Star Wars. The video almost looks like a trailer for a live-action Star Wars movie...
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When people think about Unreal Engine, they probably picture some of the industry's hottest game titles that have been built around it. If you need a quick reminder, that list includes a couple of notable series: Gears of War, Batman: Arkham, Mass Effect, BioShock, Ark: Survival Evolved, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, and Rainbow Six series, not to mention Unreal Tournament - to name just a few. Regardless, what you might not know is that Unreal Engine can be used for much more than games, and that's a message that Epic is hoping to get out there. The company's major target right now is with architecture, because its engine is perfectly suited for that kind of use - especially...
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When I first learned that Unreal Engine came out with its 4.8 release this week, I figured that it was a modest update. After all, 4.7 was released in February, so there hasn't exactly been much time to pack that much in. Well, if you have my kind of thinking, I'd highly encourage you to click the link below and peruse 4.8's release notes - the page just seems to go on forever. UE's developers say that 189 "great" changes were made in this release, with a major focus being on stability of the editor. That being the case, many bugs have been squashed, but despite that, the team still managed to get a slew of new features baked-in. At the top is support for some upcoming VR products; SteamVR/HTC...
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It's a great time to be an aspiring game developer. There are some big time resources available, such as access to Unreal Engine on a subscription basis for $19 per month, which was just recently announced at the 2014 Game Developers Conference (GDC). If you weren't enticed to subscribe before, perhaps the UE 4.1 update will push you over the top. It's the first major update to UE since its public launch last month, and with it comes official support for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, SteamOS and Linux. In other words, just about all of the major platforms are covered. For you console fans, if you're a registered Xbox or PlayStation developer (that includes members of the ID@Xbox independent developer...
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