Unreal Engine 5.6 Release Notes

What's New?

The release of Unreal Engine 5.6 continues to improve the UE5 toolset. This release delivers improvements in a wide variety of areas, including Rendering, World Building , Animation, MetaHuman, PCG, and more.

This release includes improvements submitted by our community of Unreal Engine developers on GitHub. Thank you to each of these contributors to Unreal Engine 5.6:

747929791, 21cBioC, aaronfranke, Absurdponcho, acren, afterwise, aknarts, AlbinBernhardssonARM, AlexanderVeselov-arm, AlexThiv, almax27, Andrej730, antialiased, avudnez, Bashlez, bavis-m, belchy06, ben-mkiv, benvlodgi, brasky, bruyn, BryceGattis, brycegbrazen, bunnylacey, cmartel, cray-arenanet, Damue01, devchagrins, dgiannetti-riot, Distantz, djbozkosz, djethernet1, dmergele, DoctorGoat, DoubleDeez, drandall-microsoft, dsb-rmiller, dtg-will-marshall, DulcheE, Duroxxigar, dyanikoglu, Ebrahim-Mottaghi-Rezaei, ele-ea, emr4378, endragor, epicfiresprite, erebel55, Eric2-Praxinos, F-Mu, felixweilbach, FishBone0, g-dewar, geordiemhall, grimpunch, gsnook, Gusten, hach-que, Hassaoui, I-m-None-user, ilkeraktug, iniside, javidcf, jbradbyrd, jerparent, JFxBertrand, JohnJFarrow, jokerro, jolanValteau, Jonartis, jorgenpt, joshuaGriffinSKYMAP, jpritchard1010, jseghers-hwg, karimluccin, KeithRare, kiruru002, kissSimple, klukule, KrakenParty, KristofMorva, kronok, kvathupo, KXOC, liaoKM, ligazetom, lightbringer, litruv, lizardthief, lostlont, lsandersljungberg, magforceseven, Maigo, marcussvensson92, MartinWickhamFB, marvelius, matt-edmondson, maximedup, mderzelle, michael-buschbeck-ms, mihxen, mike-praxinos, MileyHollenberg, mingyangan, miuliano, monsieurgustav, moppius, mpliskins, neocolis, nerites, nickdarnell, nicoell-threedy, nievesj, nollbit, nrs-mparker, opeeler, paco-ms, phyronnaz, PICO-XR, piotr-j, PW-Bpowell, q2a3z, rafeliaaa, rayza, Razzile, reapazor, riotcam, riotjserrallonga, rmatchett, sadunkit, scootpl, sk83rjosh, skylonxe, slonopotamus, smatcher, spl-5971354, Sqazine, srombauts, steelixb, StefanZimecki-Sharkmob, stephgoy, stevehei-ms, steven-main, SVasilev, systemicsmitty, tezenari, ThomasHill-SBL, tlabeyti, tompyne, toniseifert, troutzhang, Tt-Wes, tyryanosaurus, Victov, VladimirGavrilovSergeevich, Voulz, wuyakuma, x157, xophiix, ywake, zeroeightsix, zeroerrors, ZeroNinx, ZhengzhongSun, Zzzzzya

Rendering

Lumen Hardware Ray Tracing Optimizations

In Unreal Engine 5.6, Lumen Hardware Ray Tracing (HWRT) mode delivers even greater performance on current-generation hardware. These low-level optimizations ensure faster, more efficient rendering, bringing high-end visual fidelity and scalability that now matches the frame budget of the software ray tracing mode. This frees up valuable CPU resources on your target platform and overall helps achieve a more consistent 60hz frame rate.

RHI - Renderer Parallelization

Render Thread performance is very often the limiting factor for UE titles. This is because previously some operations were restricted to this particular thread, even though current platforms and graphics API provide methods for them to be done in parallel. We improved performance by refactoring the Renderer Hardware Interface (RHI) API to remove these constraints and fully utilize the multithreading capabilities of the target hardware.

RHI - Bindless Resources

Bindless resources are a low-level feature related to the management of textures and other types of data buffers in modern Renderer Hardware Interfaces (RHIs) such as DX12, Vulkan, and Metal. We added support for bindless resources to provide the means for more flexible GPU programming paradigms and additional features within the renderer, and as a requirement for full ray tracing support on Vulkan.

While not a direct user-facing feature, support for bindless might be of interest to some users writing C++ plugins and custom engine modifications relevant to rendering.

Niagara Heterogeneous Volumes

Unreal Engine 5.6 is production-ready and brings further optimizations in downsampling and runtime performance on PC and 9th generation consoles.

• Bilateral upsampling is now employed when rendering at downsampled resolution.

• Expensive operations such as evaluating fog in-scattering and indirect lighting have been approximated to lower VGPR pressure and tighten the main ray marching loop.

• Calculation of indirect lighting is optionally performed within the lighting cache calculations to reduce ray marching complexity and lower VGPR usage.

• Fog in-scattering is optionally lifted out of the main ray marching loop and interpolated to improve real-time performance.

• Hardening of the Heterogeneous Volume component allows for more robust operation when running in-game.

• Beer Shadow Maps are optionally employed when mixing with translucent rendering; an approximation but more performant for real-time applications

Virtual Shadow Maps Optimizations

Virtual Shadow Maps in Unreal Engine 5.6 further improves on shadow performance and memory usage with optimized scene culling while increasing fidelity and artistic control.

Substrate Materials (Beta)

Substrate Materials are currently available as Beta in Unreal Engine 5.6.

Substrate is Unreal Engine 5's approach to authoring materials which replaces the fixed suite of shading models and blend modes, such as Default Lit and Clear Coat, with a more expressive and modular framework. All the features of legacy materials are supported, and more importantly, all the platforms which UE deploys to are supported. As we continue work towards Substrate as default, this release includes additional performance parity improvements when compared to the legacy material system.

First Person Rendering (Beta)

In Unreal Engine 5.6, First Person rendering is now Beta.

The First Person rendering method prevents player hands/weapons from clipping into in-world objects, and includes a separate field of view (FOV), which means developers can specify a FOV that differs from the rest of the world for their first person assets.

New First Person rendering functionality we added to UE 5.6 includes:

• Shadow Map Rendering (VSM)

• Ray Tracing Reflections and Shadows

• First Person Self Shadows (Screen space)

• First Person rendering is integrated with materials:

  • The Scene Texture node now includes the IsFirstPerson input data to be sampled in a material.

  • The First Person Output node provides per-vertex control over the first person effect. This optional output allows for interpolating between world space and anything considered to be in first person space. It is useful when there is a need to have some parts of the geometry be in world space to connect with the world , such as having the character’s feet on the ground.

  • The Transform Position node transforms arbitrary positions to first person space, which is useful for calculating where some point would end up on the screen when it’s rendered as first person.

Depth of Field - Petzval Bokeh

Unreal Engine 5.6 includes a new Petzval Bokeh setting for depth of field rendering, supported equally in real-time and Path Tracer renders. A falloff slider provides a way for you to control how quickly the effects ramp up (linear/exponential) from the centre to the edge.

GPU Profiler 2.0

Unreal Engine 5.6 introduces a re-architected Insights GPU profiler.

The goal is to unify existing profiling systems within the engine (Stats, ProfileGPU, Insights) to use the same data stream increasing its reported accuracy and consistency when profiling a scene.

We overhauled the way timestamps are collected for the GPU timeline and have all the RHI's produce this information in a common format. The new event stream and Insights API improvements surface more information in the new GPU profiling tools:

• async queue

• mGPU

• pipeline bubbles (GPU idle/busy states)

• cross-queue dependencies (fence waits)

Worldbuilding

Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin (Experimental)

We built the Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin to achieve faster streaming of actors that are immutable static geometry and that don’t impact gameplay. It uses a faster and more lightweight method for registering and unregistering static geometry to and from the graphic and physics scenes, without sacrificing existing World Partition features like Runtime Data Layers and HLODs.

It leverages the World Partition - Runtime Cell Transformer feature to define what can be considered for fast geometry streaming during the generate streaming phase that happens whenever you enter Play in Editor (PIE) and at cook time. This makes the process seamless and non-destructive.

To use Fast Geometry Streaming:

• Enable the FastGeo Streaming plugin in your project.

• Add a FastGeoWorldPartitionRuntimeCellTransformer World Partition Runtime Cell Transformer in the World Settings - World Partition Setup of your level.

• Enter PIE, or cook your content.

We recommend you adjust the AddToWorld / RemoveFromWorld and Fast Geometry Streaming time budgets based on profiling and the desired outcome for your project.

Streaming Performance (Experimental)

We improved overall engine performance when streaming world content in and out at runtime.

The list of core improvements below applies for every project and can be combined with the Fast Geometry Streaming plugin that addresses immutable static geometry. As these are considered experimental for 5.6, most need to be enabled and tested thoroughly in each project.

UpdateStreamingState

• Asynchronous UWorldPartitionStreamingPolicy::UpdateStreamingState
  

  To enable: wp.runtime.UpdateStreaming.EnableAsyncUpdate = true

• UWorld::InternalUpdateStreamingState
  

  Optimization removes un-necessary calls.

Asynchronous physics state creation/destruction

• Asynchronous physics state creation (InitBody) and destruction 
  

  To enable in Chaos: p.Chaos.EnableAsyncInitBody = true

  To enable in level streaming: LevelStreaming.AllowIncrementalPreRegisterComponents = true AND LevelStreaming.AllowIncrementalPreUnregisterComponents = true

• Asynchronous Landscape Heightfield Collision Component physics state creation 
  

  To enable in Chaos: p.Chaos.EnableAsyncInitBody = true

  To enable in level streaming: LevelStreaming.AllowIncrementalPreRegisterComponents = true

• Asynchronous physics state creation and destruction improvements

• Multiple AddToWorld/RemoveFromWorld
  

  Maximizes the time limit allowed for AddToWorld and RemoveFromWorld when asynchronous physics state creation and destruction are used.

  Requires: p.Chaos.EnableAsyncInitBody = true AND LevelStreaming.AllowIncrementalPreRegisterComponents = true AND/OR LevelStreaming.AllowIncrementalPreUnregisterComponents = true

  To enable in level streaming: LevelStreaming.MaximumMakingVisibleLevels = AND LevelStreaming.MaximumMakingInvisibleLevels =


InstancedStaticMeshComponent CalcBounds

• Caching bounds to eliminate most of the time rebuilding the bounds for InstanceStaticMeshes that don't change.

PrecachePSOs

• UPrimitiveComponent::SetupPrecachePSOParams
  

  Implemented a new dedicated function to get bUsesWorldPositionOffset

• UStaticMeshComponent::OnRegister
  

  Detect if the component world transform changed and that PrecachePSOs was already called.

DoesPackageExist

• FPackageName::DoesPackageExistEx
  

  For the level streaming, instead of testing before requesting the package, let the request execute and handle the error EAsyncLoadingResult::Failed in the completion callback ULevelStreaming::AsyncLevelLoadComplete.

AddPrimitive

• Async AddToWorld/AddPrimitive 
  

  To enable: LevelStreaming.AsyncRegisterLevelContext.Enabled = true

  To setup: LevelStreaming.AsyncRegisterLevelContext.PrimitiveBatchSize = AND s.LevelStreamingAddPrimitiveGranularity

RemoveFromWorld Incremental EndPlay

• Improved time slicing of UWorld::RemoveFromWorld
  

  To enable: s.LevelStreamingRouteActorEndPlayForRemoveFromWorldGranularity = (0 = disabled)

Render Asset Streaming (Texture/Mesh Streaming)

• FRenderAssetStreamingManager::IncrementalUpdate

  • Parallelized processing
    

    To enable: r.Streaming.AllowParallelRenderAssetStreamingManagerIncrementalUpdate = true

  • Caching
    

    To enable: r.Streaming.EnableTexturesSamplingStreamingCache = true

  • Other optims
    

    Use: r.Streaming.WorkerCountForParallelRenderAssetStreamingManagerIncrementalUpdateto control the maximum number of workers to use when usingr.Streaming.AllowParallelRenderAssetStreamingManagerIncrementalUpdate

Unified/Shared Time Budget for ProcessAsyncLoading and UpdateLevelStreaming

• Time budget for ProcessAsyncLoading and UpdateLevelStreaming
  

  Runs the async asset and level streaming at the end of the frame from HandleUnifiedStreaming which also handles high priority streaming. UpdateLevelStreaming will have less time if there are hitches in ProcessAsyncLoading, and time unused by UpdateLevelStreaming will be used to process more loaded assets. This also includes performance and timing fixes for functions like RemoveFromWorld which were not correctly computing the elapsed time in some cases. To Enable: s.UseUnifiedTimeBudgetForStreaming 1.

World Bookmarks

World Bookmarks is a system to help navigation within a level and across multiple worlds while working in the editor. You can open the new dedicated World Bookmarks outliner through the Window > World Partition > World Bookmarks top menu item in the editor.

A World Bookmark is an asset you can share or keep locally. The camera transforms and FOV, loaded regions and locations volumes, data layers states and editor context, are all saved inside World Bookmarks when created or updated and restored on load.

Users can set their "home" bookmark within their editor preferences and can specify a default bookmark for each level in the level settings to always load in the best desired ready-to-work context at any point in time. You can also copy World Bookmarks as text to share to other applications or use them in bug reports.

World Bookmarks can be categorized, searched, and accessed from the World Bookmarks outliner or the editor's Open Asset dialog.

Sub-World Partition HLODs

You can now make HLODs of sub-world partitions visible, even if their owning level is not streamed in, using a new Build Standalone HLOD option set in the sub-world partition level under its World Settings - World Partition Setup options.

When enabling this option, HLODs generated for the level will be stored as separate HLOD levels then injected in the editor and embedded in the main world partition level during the streaming generation step when entering Play In Editor (PIE) and at Cook time.

Landscape - Batched Merge

Before Unreal Engine 5.6, all modifications to the Landscape would trigger a global merge of all layers leading to GPU out of memory issues when working at scale. Batched merge, enabled by default in 5.6, fixes scalability issues when working with large landscapes by sub-dividing it into multiple distinct areas when applying updates.

Batched merge works with any basic landscape edits and with the landscape patches plugin. Some systems relying on BP brushes are not fully supported in batched merge and will still lead to a global merge, including landmass and water brushes. Some of these brushes might be updated in subsequent releases to take advantage of this feature, but currently when they are used, batched merge will work like global merge and will therefore be subject to similar GPU out of memory issues. Consider not using BP brushes if possible to avoid that situation.

To disable batched merge: landscape.EditLayersLocalMerge.Enable 0

To enable batched merge: landscape.EditLayersLocalMerge.Enable 2

To tweak batches size: landscape.EditLayersLocalMerge.MaxResolutionPerRenderBatch (Default batch size is 1024 x 1024, which provides a good balance between memory and efficiency)

Landscape - Level Instance and Data Layers Support

Editing landscape within a level instance is now supported, whether it is located inside the level instance being edited or outside in the main world.

You can re-assign partitioned actors such as Landscape and Foliage to different data layers by applying the current editor context through the right click menu.

Celestial Vault

The Celestial Vault plugin is a new implementation of the Day Sequence feature that provides a full day/night cycle where all the celestial bodies (sun, moon, planets, stars and deep sky) are accurately located based on date/location ephemeris, with accurate lighting units. It uses a data-driven model making it suitable for Earth sky simulations, as well as for fictional constellations. 

Character and Animation

Sequencer Organization

Unreal Engine 5.6 provides tools and actions to promote higher level organization, to help users better manage complex cinematics with large hierarchies of shots/subsequences and cross sequence bindings. Additionally, we are cleaning up Sequencer's usability on snapping and editor muting.

• An Outliner-style panel for a hierarchy of sequences

  • Customizable columns to view properties and toggle actions on shots and subsequences.

  • Search and filtering.

• A new type of binding called Proxy Bindings to easily reference bindings in parent, sibling, or child subsequences.

• Mute and Solo track options are now editor-only options that are not saved on the asset.

  • Deactivate track option still gets saved on the asset.

• Snapping options clean-up.

Seamless Gameplay Transition for Cinematics (Experimental)

In collaboration with the new Unreal Animation Framework, Sequencer will be able to seamlessly transition character animations in/out from gameplay. This will be provided as a new experimental plugin that users can enable called Sequencer Anim Mixer.

• Mix tracks that produce an animation pose in a priority order.

• Create custom animation tracks in C++.

• A new Stitch track that uses motion matching to determine the best animation to transition from dynamic gameplay animation (UAF only).

• Better control and support for root motion animations

• Supports animation blueprints and Unreal Animation Framework.

Gameplay Camera Integration in Sequencer (Experimental)

With the introduction of the Gameplay Camera System in Unreal Engine 5.5, Gameplay Camera Rigs will be supported in Sequencer. This will bring the power of user-generated procedural cameras for cinematic authoring:

• Use Gameplay Camera Rigs and animate parameters directly in Sequencer.

• Use Gameplay Camera Directors directly in Sequencer.

• Assign Gameplay Camera Rigs and Directors as a part of the Camera Cut.

Relative Time Scaling for Sequencer (Experimental)

Localized audio in cinematics is used in many narrative interactive experiences. In Unreal Engine 5.6, we are expanding Sequencer's abilities to scale relatively based on localized audio, thus allowing sequences to match the timing from different languages.

• Audio Track supports previewing of changing languages.

• Audio Sections can be assigned for dynamic scaling with localized audio.

• Any element in the Sequence will scale based on the driven Audio Section's timing.

• Localized Skeletal Animations will also change based on the Audio Track's Preview Language.

Retarget Operation Stack

For Unreal Engine 5.6, we converted IK Retargeter's framework to a stack of operations you can reorder. This expands IK Retargeter to have custom operations for better art directable behaviors:

• An updated editor UX to better author retarget behavior.

  • Order any set of retarget operations together in the op stack.

  • Access individual operation properties.

• Offset the pose with FK adjustments in between or after retarget operations.

• Write custom operations into the op stack.

• No dependency on IK rigs to author a retarget.

• Better runtime optimizations, new scripting and retarget profile APIs.

Tween Tools

Tween Tools are an integral part of an animator's toolbox. We have re-styled the look of them and added functionality to improve their usefulness. While we only had these in our viewport before, we now have also embedded them directly to the top toolbar of the curve editor, giving quick access. You can use some new hotkeys to either drive them indirectly by holding a modifier, switch between various sliders, and even toggle Overshoot mode on/off.

• New look and style

• New Overshoot mode

• Now embedded in the Curve editor toolbar

• New hotkeys

  • Indirect manipulation

  • Toggle sliders

  • Choose sliders

  • Toggle Overshoot mode

• New Slider

  • Time offset

Motion Trails

Motion Trails are a great way to visualize and adjust your arcs and spacing directly in the viewport. In Unreal Engine 5.6, we have rewritten them to be more useful and performant. You can now activate them using a new icon directly in the viewport with all the options next to the icon. We also unified them to work on both actors and character controls, as well as to understand constraints and space switching.

• Improved performance.

• Unified system which also works on actors.

• Customizable new styles and looks:

  • Dashed

  • Time

  • HeatMap

• New viewport toolBar icon.

• New pinning system:

  • Can offset trails.

  • Can put trails in other spaces.

• The ability to select and adjust keys in the viewport.

• Works with space switching and constraints.

Sequencer Curves

We made improvements to our Curve editor with this release. It is faster and more performant, and it is highly tuned for the artists visualizing and manipulating their key frames.

Fixes

• Performance - drawing / display

• Key selection added to the Undo stack

• Marquee selection accuracy

• Fixed normalized mode with zooming

• Tune the 'Shift' constraint axis while moving keys

• Pasting keys should always replace.

• Improvements to the Retime tool

  • Scrubbing hotkey now works

  • Adding/removing anchors is now in the Undo stack

• More sensitive zoom speed

New

• Key value indicator

• Redesigned tool bar

  • Consolidated icons

  • Embedded Tween Tools with editable hotkeys

    • u+lmb = drive slider indirectly

    • shift+u = toggle sliders

    • ctrl+u = toggle overshoot mode

  • New Euler Filter icon added to top bar

• Lattice tool

  • Move edges

  • Double click to flatten edges

  • Double click box to flip selected keys vertically

  • Skew corners

  • Works properly with user adjusted handles (flattens and flips)

• User-adjusted handles work better with all of our scaling tools.

• Smart key snapping (ctrl-h)

• Paste relative (alt-v)

Animation Fixes and Updates

We improved Channel Box, with new selection methods, multi cell scrub ability, as well as giving users the ability to type and do math operations on multiple selected cells. It also now supports multiple object selection and manipulation.

We updated the Constraints system to now bring greater control and flexibility to your animation workflow. With new pre-select parent functionality, enhanced evaluation for smoother performance, and a host of additional improvements, setting up and managing constraints is now faster, more intuitive, and more reliable.

Finally, the Anim outliner is where your controls for your rigs are listed. We improved access to these controls and gave you more display options for them.

• Anim details

  • Multi select and scrub values on multiple items

  • Type values and do math on multiple items

  • Multi-object and multi-cell support

  • Fractional display options

  • Paint select option

  • Multipliers available while scrubbing values

    • SHIFT+LMB drag = *10

    • CTRL+LMB drag = /10

• Constraints

  • Improved evaluation engine

  • Constraints double key improvements

  • Ability to select parent before constraint creation

    • Drag and drop from the outliner

    • Use arrow to fill in the parent

• Anim Outliner

  • Grouped control rigs

  • Focus on selection

  • Improved support for modular rigs

    • Controls ordered by module option

    • Flattened module list option

    • Ability to toggle the display per module

• Anim Layers

  • Keep item selection when changing layers

  • New icons and hotkeys for ZeroKey and passthrough keys

Scaled Proportioned Retargeting

We expanded IK Retargeter's abilities to retarget different scale proportioned characters. These abilities and more can now be more easily applied to character skeletons that are compatible or have a similar Skeleton Hierarchy.

• Global scaling of Source motion to better pin IK Goals

• Relative pinning for prop/IK bones

• Copy Pose From Mesh logic inside the IK Retargeter

• Pose Input pin for the Retarget Pose From Mesh node

• Separate Blend to Source for Translation and Rotation

Control Rig Physics (Experimental)

Bring an unparalleled amount of realism and believability to your digital animations. Quickly and easily add Physics motion procedurally to animations and Control Rigs.

• Procedurally create physics setups with nodes for characters within Control Rig.

• Create Physics Based Modules for Modular Control Rig.

• Animate and Pose with physics using Sequencer.

Sculpt Morph Shapes

Create and sculpt morph targets directly within the Skeletal Mesh editor using Unreal Engine’s built-in modeling tools. Easily edit pre-existing morph targets, and quickly sculpt shapes during runtime.

• New Sculpt mode in the Skeletal Mesh editor

• Create new shapes or edit old shapes.

• Connect shapes to a control rig for use in animation.

Geometry Cache

You can now bake skeletal mesh animation to a geometry cache. This enables interchange of geometry data between different software packages, such as Houdini, through USD.

• Output actual render geometry captured through GPU readback.

• Capture multiple samples per frame if needed for caching at a high framerate.

Rig Locomotor (Experimental)

A plugin to help you make procedural walking rigs inside Control Rig, such as a spider walking along various geometry at runtime.

• New Locomotor plugin for use with Control Rig.

• Locomotor node.

• Controlled using a controller for player-controlled mechanisms, or used procedurally for background characters.

• Works on characters with any number of limbs.

Mutable Customization Macro Libraries and Streaming

Macro libraries provide a way for you to reuse Mutable graphs.

• Share subgraphs between different customization options for better maintainability, changeability, and development efficiency.

Improved Mutable streaming of customizable meshes.

• Customized meshes will integrate directly in the UE streaming system for faster generation at the optimal LOD using less CPU and memory resources.

MetaHuman

MetaHuman for Unreal Engine 5.6 continues to evolve the MetaHuman suite of products, offering new capabilities and features in various areas, including creation, animation, and styling. 

In this latest version, MetaHuman Creator ships with Unreal Engine, allowing you to create MetaHuman characters with significantly improved visual fidelity and a completely new parametric body system. MetaHuman Animator is able to solve facial animation in real time from a much wider range of single-camera devices, while animation from audio adds head movement and creative control over the emotional state.  

For the first time, MetaHumans and their compatible assets can be traded on Fab, allowing more creators to share their work and engage the marketplace. 

MetaHuman for Maya and MetaHuman for Houdini provide capabilities to continue authoring MetaHumans on these platforms, whilst the EULA has been updated so that MetaHumans can be used in any engine.

MetaHuman Creator

In Unreal Engine 5.6, the MetaHuman Creator workflow moves into Unreal Engine, enabling you to create and author MetaHuman characters directly in the editor by using the new MetaHuman Character asset.  A new parametric body system combined with an improved visual fidelity gives even greater flexibility to create the likeness you want.  You can now use your own MetaHuman-compatible groom and clothing assets directly in MetaHuman Creator, meaning your characters can look better than ever before.  

And, to show what’s possible with these new features, we’ve provided a new set of MetaHuman preset characters ready for you to use.

MetaHuman Animator

You can now solve animation in real time from a wide range of single-camera data sources (including webcams), mobile devices, or audio input.  Integrated with Live Link, real-time animation can be used to preview a character in MetaHuman Creator, or animate a character placed in a level while editing. 

Animation solved offline from audio-only input can now include plausible head motion, while also allowing you to influence the mood.

The new MetaHuman Animator Depth Processing plugin is required to solve animation from depth data (iOS or stereo camera pair) or use a MetaHuman Identity.

MetaHuman Capture

To support real-time animation in MetaHuman Animator, the Live Link Face (Beta) application is now available to download from the Google Play Store for Android devices with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (or later) chipset. The Live Link Face application on iOS (available on the App Store) has also been updated to generate animation in real time on the device.  

Meanwhile, Live Link Hub is now used to ingest performance data for solving animation offline in MetaHuman Animator, simplifying virtual production and performance capture setups with streamlined data management, regardless of device.

MetaHumans on Fab

With this release, we’re establishing the MetaHuman channel on the Fab Marketplace, allowing you to buy and sell MetaHumans and MetaHuman-compatible grooms and clothing, made easy by a validation and packaging tool (MetaHuman Manager) provided in Unreal Engine.

The sale and purchase of MetaHumans on the Fab Marketplace are governed by the Unreal Engine EULA, Fab EULA and the Fab Distribution Agreement.

MetaHuman for Maya

A new plugin for Maya 2022-2025, MetaHuman for Maya provides three new tools for authoring and working with MetaHuman characters directly in Maya.  

The Character Assembler tool loads MetaHuman Characters exported from MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine, ready for preview and animation.  

The new Expression Editor tool enables you to fine tune the facial expressions of your characters, taking advantage of the same tools used to create many of our own MetaHuman characters.  

And lastly, a new Groom Exporter grants the easy export of XGen grooms as MetaHuman-compatible hairstyles for use with MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine. 

The Groom Exporter is supported by a Groom Starter Kit available on Fab.

MetaHuman for Houdini

A new plugin for Houdini 20.5, MetaHuman for Houdini provides a collection of HDAs for creating MetaHuman-compatible grooms, ready for export and use with MetaHuman Creator in Unreal Engine.  

This plugin is supported by a Groom Starter Kit available on Fab.

Editor and UI Systems

Content Browser

We redesigned the Content Browser to enhance the organization and viewing of assets, with smoother thumbnail resizing. In addition, it now works seamlessly in both horizontal and vertical orientations.

Viewport Toolbar Navigation

Access essential tools quickly with the redesigned Viewport Toolbar. We updated the Viewport Toolbar for faster, more intuitive access to key settings like camera controls, view modes, and scalability options. The Toolbar now resizes dynamically, ensuring the most relevant tools are displayed even with a small viewport size.

Editor modes like the Selection Mode or Modeling Mode now have Section Menus and their Quick Access tools directly integrated into the Viewport Toolbar.

Asset editors also benefit from the new design for a consistent Toolbar experience across the Unreal Editor.

Developer Iteration

Incremental Cooking (Experimental)

Incremental Cooking, experimental in UE 5.6, enables you to iterate faster on your target devices by reducing overall cooking time. With cooked output now stored in Zen Server, the cooking process automatically analyzes asset changes, and only cooks new updates made to your project's assets. This works across all native engine assets including Blueprints and World Partition tiles.

UBA Cache Server (Experimental)

Perform fast, deterministic, and scalable turnaround on CI build runs by caching outputs from C++ builds to avoid doing redundant work.

Zen Server: Cooked Output Store

In Unreal Engine 5.6, using Zen Server for storing cooked output is now production ready.

Previously cooked output data was stored as loose files on disk introducing filesystem process overhead. When enabled in the project settings, platform cooked data will now be stored in a local and/or shared Unreal Zen Storage Server and (optionally) Cloud DDC storage.

Storing cooked data directly in Zen Server provided better conditioning and network I/O performance. It is also a prerequisite to take advantage of the new features such as the Zen Loader path for cook process, Zen Streaming for target iteration (Beta), and incremental cooking (Experimental).

Zen Server - Streaming to Target Platform (Beta)

Zen Streaming is now Beta in UE 5.6. It enhances productivity by eliminating the time-consuming steps of full packaged builds and copy/install deployments, streamlining content iteration and testing on your target platform. Cooked data is streamed from Zen Server over the network/direct connection to your target device. Cooked data is cached locally on your target devices to reduce re-streaming previously-loaded data. Optionally, you can also stream packaged (.pak) cooked data to your target platform.

New Project Launcher UI (Beta)

Unreal Engine 5.6 introduces a new Project Launcher user interface (Beta) which we completely redesigned for improved usability and efficiency, making it faster to create and manage device launch profiles. The legacy project launcher interface still remains available in this release as we work towards production readiness for this new interface.

The new streamlined interface enables quick selection of the builds, cooking, and device deployment configurations, including new Zen Server functionality for importing cooked Snapshots, Zen Streaming to Target and Incremental cook.

Zen Server: Snapshots (Beta)

In Unreal Engine 5.6, cooked snapshots are now in Beta.

Cooking relies on a persistent state on the build agent in order to not re-cook the same data again. There is no guarantee that the exact same agent will be assigned the next cook job.

The Zen Server Snapshot stores the state of the cook job so it can be restored quickly and re-used for a new job on another build agent resulting in a faster, incremental build farm cook.

UBA Shader Compilation on macOS and Linux

Unreal Build Acceleration for the UE 5.6 release now supports distributed shader compilation for macOS and Linux host build machines.

Unreal Build Accelerator (UBA) is a local and distributed compilation solution for C++ and shader compilation used in conjunction with Unreal Build Tool and/or Horde’s Remote Build (compute task) system.

Procedural Content Generation (PCG)

GPU Grass and Micro-Scattering

We added support to PCG GPU compute for sampling the Landscape RVT and Grass maps directly on GPU in order to build efficient and customizable runtime grass spawning. We added RVT Priming with control over range and a specific mip level to use in order to run PCG GPU compute with the RVT rendered beforehand.

We added Copy Points GPU compute support and a new option to Copy Points by matching indices to distribute multiple high density micro-details PCG Data Assets over their respective target points through a single operation which provides for efficient spawning on GPU at runtime. You can use this approach to add high frequency details over larger meshes such as moss on rock and trees while keeping disk space and performance within budget.

GPU Compute Performance

Unreal Engine 5.6 introduces multiple performance improvements when using PCG GPU Compute, including:

• Support for lazy readbacks when going through subgraphs, gather and grid size nodes to avoid heavy GPU to CPU roundtrips.

• Buffers size automatically adjusts by going through a lightweight, instance count-only, CPU roundtrip. This makes possible filtering out points and spawning of static meshes through attributes on GPU, without having to fallback on worst-size buffers, thus greatly improving instance counts written to the GPU Scene and preventing overflow.

• Compile-time optimizations and validations.

• Reduced main thread usage.

• Earlier release of transient resources from video memory.

GPU Hierarchical Generation

Provides the means to pass data from the GPU to downstream GPU nodes, executing in smaller grid sizes, for graphs using both hierarchical generation and GPU compute.

GPU Data Interfaces

Textures (Read/Write)

Textures data interface supports reading from and writing to textures on the GPU using Get Texture Data, Base Texture Data inputs and outputs, and specific PCG GPU compute HLSL kernel declarations. We also added pre-configured Texture Processor and Texture Generator HLSL operators.

Static Meshes

Static Meshes data interface supports accessing and sampling mesh vertices and triangles on the GPU using Get Static Mesh Resource Data, Mesh Resource data inputs and outputs, and specific PCG GPU compute HLSL kernel declarations.

Runtime Virtual Textures (RVT)

RVT data interface supports reading from any existing RVT and RVT layout on the GPU using Get Virtual Texture Data, Virtual Texture Data inputs and outputs, and specific PCG GPU compute HLSL kernel declarations.

We added RVT Priming with control over range and a specific mip level to use in order to run PCG GPU compute with the RVT rendered beforehand.

Landscape RVT and Grass Maps

The Get Landscape node can be used to retrieve the Landscape RVT automatically for GPU Compute. A Generate Grass Maps node is also available so you can specify which grass maps should be prepared to use in the GPU Compute kernel.

Point Data - Structure of Array

Reduced overall memory consumption when working with PCG.

The new default UPCGPointArrayData point data stores properties and attributes in a Structure of Array (SoA) representation making it more optimal especially when working with large amounts of points and attributes. This significantly improves memory usage for both in-editor and runtime use cases.

Execution Efficiency

In Unreal Engine 5.6, we improved the PCG Framework execution efficiency for both offline in-editor and runtime use cases with these changes:

• Graph execution multithreading is now enabled by default.

• The performance impact of dynamic dispatches such as Loops is heavily reduced.

• Moved a lot of execution and scheduling code off the game thread.

• Per-Data CRC caching is now enabled by default, reducing the amount of work if only some data has changed within the collection.

• Better resource reuse through stronger CRC stability.

• Improved scheduling overhead.

• We added frustum culling options in the runtime generation scheduling policy.

• We added world streaming dependencies options for runtime use cases.

• You can now control the limit on concurrent generation during runtime generation using pcg.RuntimeGeneration.NumGeneratingComponents.

• We added a preparation stage for octrees, landscape cache, and more.

We adjusted the default PCG Editor and Runtime frame time budget considering these performance improvements to reduce the overall impact of the framework while executing graphs. You should change and fine tune the PCG Frame Time budget (in milliseconds) for specific project needs and budgets for both editor and runtime execution using pcg.EditorFrameTime and pcg.FrameTime respectively.

Biome Core V2 Plugin (Experimental)

Biome Core and Biome Sample plugins V2 is a major overhaul of the PCG-based tool to address performance and scalability, improve workflows, and add new features.

The main conceptual change is that everything is defined and generated locally for each biome actor. A new Local Biome Core PCG Component and Graph executes and produces point data per-biome actor. These points are then used in the global Biome Core which only updates and spawns modified point data. This overhaul is a way to address the points above while maintaining data compatibility with the previous version, and unlocks new features such as:

1. Local updates per biome actor.

2. Per-biome local cache, simplified for scalability and performance over large worlds.

3. Per-biome local blending with control over blending range, noise, and density.

4. Support layering multiple biomes instead of the previous binary behavior.

5. Difference between generated points is applied between all biomes based on priorities.

6. Runtime GPU ground scatter example supports local biome cache data, per-biome blending, micro-detail assemblies, and uses the new RVT data interface.

7. Full assembly and child assembly support.

   • Assembly property overrides, apply hierarchy and tag-based transforms.

8. New Texture-based biome actor type using actor bounds as UVs and applying its transforms with control over biome color tolerance. (that is, useful for biome maps but also any masks).

9. Optional local assets and default biome definition embedded and unique per biome actor reducing the need of separate assets files.

10. Local Preview mode to work more efficiently when creating a new biome.

11. Retro-compatibility with existing data.

12. Graph simplification and tidying such as using inline constants, removing unnecessary loops and removing complexity of the biome cache handling.

The new revision comes with a Runtime GPU ground scatter example leveraging the PCG GPU landscape RVT interface and micro-scattering with GPU Copy Points by indices matching. A good way to have a deeper look at how to leverage the new GPU functionalities.

We updated the Biome Core, the tool, and the Biome Sample, the example content showcasing the tool, for the UE 5.6 release over their original plugin content.

Metadata Domains

In Unreal Engine 5.6, we added support for metadata on more than just points and attribute sets and we extended the framework to support Metadata domains. We also updated attribute operations to support this concept.

Metadata Domains

Metadata domains define at which level the metadata should be accessed and written, from points entries up to the point data level, making it ideal to flow attributes without requiring to write them to every entry. It can be easily represented when thinking about a mesh, where metadata could exist on vertices, triangles, and the mesh itself.

For UE 5.6, the highest level domain available will be the Data domain. Domains are prefixed by @ when selecting them to read or write to.

For example, to write a new attribute at the highest Data domain, use @Data.MyAttribute as the output attribute name in an Attribute node. Then use @Data.MyAttribute as one of the Sources in a Multiply attribute op node and apply it to the $Scale property of each point data entry.

Each data object is responsible for knowing which domains are supported, and which domain is the default. The default domains are:

• For points the domain is  @Points

• For attribute sets the domain is @Elements

• For splines the domain is @ControlPoints

For all other spatial data, the domain @Data is the default. When there is no domain specified, the default one applies, matching the behavior prior to UE 5.6 when working with attributes operations.

The data domain is currently restricted to single values but might be extended in future releases.

Splines - Properties and Attributes

With UE 5.6, you can now manipulate control points properties directly, add, read, or write any metadata attributes and use them in different attribute operations without having to convert to Point Data.

Control points properties accessible are:

• $Position

• $Rotation

• $Scale

• $Transform

• $ArriveTangent

• $LeaveTangent

• $InterpType

• $LocalPosition

• $LocalRotation

• $LocalScale

• $LocalTransform

Spline data domain attributes are:

• @Data.$SplineTransform

• @Data.$IsClosed

Graph Parameters UX

PCG Graph Parameters are now easier to work with as part of multiple improvements toward better usability across the framework.

Unreal Engine 5.6 changes includes:

• A dedicated Graph Parameters panel that can be docked anywhere in the PCG graph editor.

• Drag and drop directly into the graph to get parameters.

• Re-order parameters by dragging them to the desired location.

• Quick conversion from constants to parameters and from parameters to constants within the graph.

• Create new constants or parameters from the right click node palette.

• Categorize graph parameters and use "|" for sub-categories like blueprints.

• Fixed graph parameters overrides when setting them a blueprint class' PCG component.

Inline Constants

Just like graph parameters, inline constants were part of usability improvements when working with the framework. Inline constants are available on all Attribute Operation nodes such as Add, Multiply, and Compare operators. It provides a way to enter constant values directly on the node input pins, similarly to Blueprints and Materials graph nodes, without having to create a separate Constant node.

You can modify inline constant types by right-clicking on the desired input pin. You can reset them to the default type value and disabled to force a connection to the input, in order to control execution if needed.

Preview Viewports

The PCG Graph editor now supports multiple Data viewports to preview data of any inspected node, helping you work in-context with iterative workflows for both world and asset creation.

The data types supported in Data Viewports for Unreal Engine 5.6 are :

• Static Meshes and Dynamic Meshes

• Textures

• Points

• Volumes

• Splines

• Collision Shapes

• Primitives

Debugging Workflow

We improved debugging workflows when working with the PCG Graph editor, subgraphs, loops, deep hierarchies and multiple PCG components.

Unreal Engine 5.6 changes include:

• Intuitive navigation between graphs with quick jump to and return to selected debug object functions which persist selection.

• Better stability over data selected, sorting, filtering within the attribute list view.

• Dynamically populated debug object tree view with filtering.

• Dynamically populated find based on the selected debug object to search within dynamic subgraphs.

• Better Error and Warning display and filtering.

• Double click on attribute delimiters to expand rows based on displayed content.

Template Graphs

You can now mark any graph as a template using the graph settings IsTemplate flag. When creating a new PCG graph, you can select a template graph as a starting point with pre-configured nodes and graph parameters.

It is an easy way to pre-configure graphs for users of a system relying on PCG, or provide examples.

Graph Customization

You can now filter the available node categories and subgraphs of a PCG graph.

When combined with Template Graphs, it is easy to limit what is accessible within a specific context. Combining both can also leverage the PCG editor itself as an abstract tool by restricting what is accessible to users to only what should be used for a given tool or system without any pre-requisite knowledge of PCG.

For example, you could create a PCG Dungeon Generator tool where the PCG Graph Editor becomes the high level dungeon layout creation tool through graph templates, and customization that limits access to dungeon rooms subgraphs only and removes all base PCG nodes from the node palette.

Explicit Execution Dependency

In order to better control execution, we added a new explicit execution dependency pin to every node. This provides a way to gate the execution of the data flow graph based on the completion of other nodes at any point in time.

Additionally, you can use it to define at which Grid Size level an input-less node will execute when using hierarchical generation. Prior to Unreal Engine 5.6, all input-less nodes would execute at the top level unless placed in a subgraph that was executed at a specific grid size. Input-less nodes consist of most Getters, that is, Get Landscape Data and Get Actor Data.

Additional Nodes and Operators

Unreal Engine 5.6 also introduces multiple native PCG elements including:

• Get execution context: Returns true or false based on the selected execution context. You can use it to do contextual branching in a graph. Available contexts to test for are:

  • Is Editor

  • Is Runtime

  • Is Original

  • Is Local

  • Is Partitioned

  • Is Runtime Generation

• Apply Hierarchy: Re-applies transforms of the parenting hierarchy from the exported attributes within PCG Data Assets. Useful when working with assemblies and applying modifications on their point data. For example, a tree trunk point might be forced to stay within a given range over slopes, and its attached branches and leaves should be placed relatively to the trunk. We initially created it for Electric Dreams, and nativized it in UE 5.6 to use in Biome Core V2.

• Hash: Generates a hash integer value based on any incoming attribute. Useful to create unique identifiers when combining different attributes together.

• Generate Seed: Generates a seed from a random stream, hashed source attribute, or hashed constant string.

• HLOD and Data Layer support: You can now assign specific data layers and HLODs when spawning actors and on target actors. When executing partitioned graphs the data layers assigned onto the original component owning actor will be respected and create dedicated partitioned actors with the same data layers references unless specified otherwise.

• Partition by Data Layers: Using this node, you can partition incoming actor references with their data layer references and provide an inclusion and exclusion list when applying the data partitioning. The node outputs the data partitioned and an attribute list table representing the partitioning.

• Remove Empty Data: Removes data that has no elements from a collection.

• Set Grid Size: Like the Change Grid Size node (previously named Grid Size) the new Set Grid Size is its input-less variant which can be used to define at which grid size any given node should execute, including input-less getters, through the new Execution Dependency pin.

• Get Subgraph Depth: Outputs at which level the node is executed when used inside nested subgraphs.

• Get Console Variable: Returns the value of a specified console variable.

• Instanced Skinned Mesh Spawner: Spawns instanced skinned meshes visuals to support skinned animation akin to static mesh spawner by attribute.

• Spawn Instanced Actors: Spawns instanced actors, this node is only available when enabling the dedicated PCG Instanced Actors Interop plugin.

• Get Virtual Texture Data: Get virtual texture data from the world and outputs it for use in a GPU Kernel.

• Get Static Mesh Resource Data: Get the static mesh resource data for use in the GPU Kernel for sampling vertices and triangles directly on the GPU.

• Texture Generator: A pre-configured custom HLSL kernel to write to a new texture on the GPU and output it for further operation in subsequent GPU compute nodes.

• Texture Processor: A pre-configured custom HLSL kernel that takes a base texture data input which can be written to and transformed within a GPU compute node before being outputted for further operation in subsequent GPU compute nodes.

• Generate Grass Maps: Generates base texture data for any specified grass types to be used in a GPU compute node for sampling and filtering. The landscape materials needs to be set up with grass types.

• Export Selected Attributes: exports incoming point data or attribute set data attributes as a Binary or JSON file at specified locations on disk to use externally.

• Wait: Inserts an explicit delay before continuing graph execution when connected to the new Execution Dependency pin on a node. You can specify the wait time in seconds, engine frames, and render frames with the option to continue only when all of these conditions are met.

Instanced Actor Interop (Experimental)

A new PCG Instanced Actor interop plugin is now available to spawn and take advantage of the instanced actor system.

Instanced actors are lightweight instances of complex actors which are kept in their simplest visual-only representation until they are contained within a given radius from the player position, triggering the visual to "hydrate" into its full actor. Instanced actors work with the Mass Entity Framework and are a good way to optimize gameplay performance by reducing the amount of actors to the minimum while maintaining interactions.

Virtual Production

Mocap Manager

Mocap Manager is made for animation creatives looking to visualize, record, and manage their performance capture work in Unreal Engine. Mocap Manager provides an end-to-end workflow, taking the user through managing their assets, creating a Mocap stage visualization environment, setting up performers, characters, retargeting, and props, previewing Live Link data, recording animation and reviewing takes, all within the Unreal Engine editor.

Capture Manager

Capture Manager is now a first-class component of Live Link Hub. We retooled the process of ingesting your recorded MetaHuman takes from mobile devices, video files, and stereo head mounted cameras to provide fine-grain control of the download and asset creation process, providing teams a way to manage and distribute the ingest and processing of multiple facial performances.

User-Definable Naming Tokens

Define and evaluate dynamic naming {Tokens} with ease in both Blueprints and C++. This new plugin streamlines naming workflows across key tools — including Take Recorder, Mocap Manager, Live Link Hub, Blueprints, and the new Cinematic Assembly Tools — for faster, more consistent asset creation.

Production Wizard

The Production Wizard is your one-stop solution for configuring linear content productions. Set common Sequencer defaults, override asset naming conventions, and pre-populate folder hierarchies — all in one place. Settings are saved per production and you can hot-swap them within a single project, making it easy to manage multiple productions from one uProject. More capabilities are on the way in future updates.

Shot Management with Cinematic Assembly Tools

Cinematic Assemblies are a new type of cinematic asset and the foundation of the Cinematic Assembly Tools (CAT). Each assembly opens in its default level and serves as a centralized container for all metadata tied to your pipeline entity. Assemblies are generated based on Cinematic Assembly Schemas, which define the structure of subsequences, metadata, and folder organization to be created with the assembly. CAT also includes a full Python API for seamless integration with your existing shot management pipeline.

Cinematic Assemblies are supported by Take Recorder, Sequencer, Mocap Manager, and Movie Render queue: the full linear content pipeline!

Custom Take Recorder Tokens

Users are now able to use the new Naming Token's System with Take Recorder in order to procedurally name their takes! Using a new token will also allow users to create a new entry in the naming header for custom fields beyond the old, limited Slate and Take.

Take Recorder Subsystem

Take Recorder is now fully scriptable in-editor with the new Take Recorder Subsystem. Build custom tools and workflows around it—including entirely custom Take Recorder interfaces—without ever needing to open the default panel.

Nvidia DLSS Support in nDisplay

Nvidia DLSS is a powerful piece of technology that can benefit In-Camera VFX workflows and other nDisplay use cases. In Unreal Engine 5.6, nDisplay now supports Nvidia DLSS alongside built-in upscaling methods such as Temporal Super Resolution (TSR). Operators can separately control settings for the Outer Viewport and Inner Frustum with Nvidia DLSS just as they can with the native options.

nDisplay Primary Node Failover

Previously, we added the necessary hooks to nDisplay so that clustered systems can gracefully recover from the most common failure types by allowing a render node to drop from the cluster upon failure. In Unreal Engine 5.6, we added the ability to also support failure of the Primary Node. This feature is intended for Live, Broadcast, and Virtual Production studios managing large nDisplay clusters. However, it can be useful to other complex display setups where potential failure has to be mitigated and properly handled.

Once enabled, Failover exposes a user-defined list of the following:

• Prioritized backup nodes to take over should Primary node failure occur. The new elected node from the list will take over the role of Primary until no more nodes are available. At that point, the cluster terminates.

• Critical nodes, none of which are allowed to fail. If one does fail, the cluster terminates.

Record VCam as CineCamera

Virtual Camera no longer relies on the record/proxy camera to support recording directly to CineCamera. Users can now trigger VCam recording directly from the VCam HUD and record a CineCameraActor without the need for a side-car actor.

Live Link OpenTrackIO

OpenTrackIO is a free and open-source camera tracking protocol designed by the SMPTE RiS-OSVP group that seeks to improve interoperability in Virtual Production and beyond. In UE 5.6, we released a Live Link plugin supporting this protocol. It supports unicast and multicast network protocols, and JSON and CBOR serialization formats. 

Motion Design

Cloners and Effectors

We added several new features to the Cloners and Effectors system including:

• Cloners

  • Texture: Draws a full-color texture across a series of clones. Increasing and decreasing its perceived resolution depending on how many clones are used.

  • Displacement: Factors in a selected texture asset and offsets how each clone scales/rotates based on a simple set of parameters.  You can then tile, rotate, and offset a texture for some interesting effects.

  • Free Placement: Take several actors, place them under your cloner in whichever way that you'd like, and offset their position with the Range or Step property to create build-on animations.

• Effectors

  • Cancel: Pass this effector through any clones being manipulated by other effectors (such as the Push effector) to revert them back to their original state.

  • Cull: Reduce / hide your clones according to a chosen shape and scale setting.

  • Step: Ramp up the position and rotation of individual clones along a linear curve.

• Effector Property

  • Delay: Create spring-like effects when your effector activates.

PSD Layer Import

Importing PSD files natively into the engine now automatically recreates Photoshop's layered PSD. You can animate your layers with the Layer Depth Offset property, which creates dynamic on-moves and off-moves.

Data Support for Broadcast and Live Events

Rigging graphics for broadcast and live events often calls for archival data from a variety of sources. We now support pulling data to create a more dynamic and time-efficient population of graphics that benefit the news, sports, and esports markets.

• Supports JSON, Google Sheets, and native Unreal Data Tables with the possibility of more formats to come.

• Works in combination with Remote Control and the Rundown.

Material Designer Media Layers

Material Designer can now play video files through the Media Layer system. Add a layer to your Material Designer, select Media as your Stage Source, and point to the file that you want to play. You can then play that file directly from your Material Designer, or you can add it to Sequencer and run it from there.

• Leverages the Electra Protron player and Sequencer integration.

• Supports Holdout Composite for crisp playback quality.

Motion Design Scene State

Having a solution tailored for a ticker or "score bug" is important for news, stocks, and live sports. Rigging these systems works best when combined into a single interface and asset. The Motion Design Scene State solves this use case with an offering that supports multiple state machines in a single actor and an interface that offers easy debugging. You can create your animations in the typical Sequencer style for each element in your system, and then use the Motion Design Scene State to trigger and play those animations.

Simulation and VFX

Niagara LWC Tile Update Mode

This feature is for users who operate in large world coordinates and need Niagara systems that travel large distances and work seamlessly. For example, an airplane engine emits smoke in world space.

Niagara operates in float values, not doubles, to save memory and improve performance. Positions are stored relative to the tile where the system is initially spawned. By default, when a Niagara system crosses over too many tiles, we reset the system, clearing particles and updating the tile, to avoid running into floating-point precision issues. This is not desirable as particles can suddenly disappear.

In Unreal Engine 5.6, we provide a project setting (Large World Coordinate Tile Update Mode) you can override on a per system asset basis to define how you want to respond to instances crossing tiles. This option dynamically changes the system instance tile and moves all the particles from the old to the new tile space. For the user, this means the smoke from the airplane engine continues to be emitted, and everything works as expected.

Optimized Niagara System Compilation

With Unreal Engine 5.6, we enabled a new mode for compiling Niagara Systems by default. The new compilation mode effectively uses asynchronous tasks to reduce the time spent waiting for results and dramatically reduces the number of UObjects created along the way. This improves the user experience for anyone waiting on a Niagara system to compile, including artists waiting to see their changes, someone waiting for a level to load, or a cook waiting to finish.

This improvement is especially noticeable in systems with many emitters or complicated effects. The overall time for results to be ready is reduced, and the user's machine remains much more responsive. The new compilation mode also tackles a long-standing issue with Niagara Systems stalling the cook process. While results will vary between projects, we've seen up to a 10x improvement in cook times in single-process cooks for a large number of Niagara Systems.

Additional Information

Outside of the framework for effectively compiling the scripts in parallel, UE 5.6 also includes some substantial optimizations to the actual translation process of the Niagara graphs into HLSL, reducing the overall time by about 40%.

Chaos Core

We are continually updating and optimizing Chaos Physics to give artists, developers, and programmers better simulation results. Rigid Body dynamics is the core technology that most game physics rely upon. As we make progress towards bigger and bigger physics-enabled and physics-based worlds, we need to make sure this core system scales and can handle those use cases. Like rigid body dynamics, queries are a core technology relied upon by a wide range of systems inside UE, and we need to make sure that query performance scales to very large dynamic worlds.

We worked on the following Core Solver optimizations:

• Partial sleeping islands

• Scene query improvements

• Simulation initialization improvements

• Multithreaded collision detection and solving

• Multithreaded island generation

• Network physics development

Chaos Cloth

As cloth simulation, and complex clothing become more widely requested for UE, our legacy SkeletalMesh cloth editor and workflow cannot easily adjust to future upgrades necessary to support those needs. Fashion and most character work has almost exclusively pivoted to using DCCs which specialize in panel-based clothing construction. To grow with these external DCC's we continue to develop our cloth editor to ingest and edit panel setups while refining the cloth setup workflow.

Chaos Cloth for Unreal Engine 5.6 includes the continued development of a Beta Cloth Editor.

Changes from UE 5.5 to UE 5.6

• Cloth Resizing

• Added Kinematic Collider to Physics Asset

• Cloth-Cloth Constraints

• Unified Dataflow Editor

• Support for Variables

• Outfit Asset

• UV Scaling/Warping

• Velocity Scale Improvements

Chaos Flesh

Artists, engineers, and game designers need in-engine ways to set up and simulate tetrahedra in order to generate muscle, flesh and various character jiggle motions. Geometry embedded into tetrahedra can also provide solutions for destruction including denting metal and similar effects.

Unreal Engine 5.6 updates include:

The improvements for UE 5.6 extend our ability for simulating and caching complete muscular systems, adding animation-driven muscle contractions, sliding constraints for fat-over-muscle movement, improvements to volume preservation, and interconnective tissue to help preserve volume between the muscle and fat layers.

Chaos Visual Debugger

The Chaos Visual Debugger (CVD) is a versatile tool designed to record and playback the state of a physics simulation during gameplay. It supports recording of all active Rigid and RBAN solvers, including particle states and collision data. CVD is accessible as an editor tool in Unreal Engine and offers extensive customization options, such as choosing specific data channels to record, either through the UI or via console commands.

The tool also features live debugging capabilities, giving you real-time inspection of physics data during simulation. Additionally, CVD includes a variety of visualization options, such as particle state, collision data, and scene queries, to assist developers in analyzing and troubleshooting physics simulations effectively.

The latest updates include:

• Performance improvements: We overhauled how objects are represented under the hood and how geometry is generated to reduce resource consumption. We also introduced performance settings you can tweak in these systems under a new settings button available in the main tool bar.

• Improved support for networked physics debugging:

  • Multi-source support: You can load two or more separate recordings (for example, a server and a client) into a single CVD instance, and the visualization will be combined and properly synced.

  • Workflow improvements for packaged builds: We implemented a session discovery system that helps CVD find any locally running server or client build, and then you can start a recording to all of them in a single click (the same as working in PIE sessions in previous versions).

• Standalone Debugger: You can now build and package CVD as a standalone portable UE Program.

• Extension System: In this version, we are releasing the first iteration of our extension system. You can use it to record custom data from your game alongside other CVD data, implement your own serialization, visualization, and user interface systems.

• Stability and UX Improvements: See the release notes below for more details.

Chaos Dataflow Editor

The Dataflow graph allows for the procedural generation of assets within a Node-based environment. The implementation of the graph uses a pull-based evaluation, where the nodes of the graph generate a cached output state based on the evaluation of its inputs. Dataflow assets are used to assist in the procedural authoring and setup of simulation systems. For example, the Chaos Cloth system uses Dataflow to import and set up garments from Marvelous Designer.

Unreal Engine 5.6 updates include:

New Features

• Variables

• Sub-graphs

• For Each Loops

• Scene Outliner

• Utility Blueprint API

UI Improvements

• Node Menu is now more contextual

• Evaluation controls

• Warning/Error Logs

• Improved Collection Spreadsheet

• Performance Reporting

• Watch Output

• Asset Drag and Drop

• Improved Rendering System

• Upgraded Viewports

Chaos Destruction

The Chaos Destruction system is a collection of tools you can use to achieve cinematic-quality levels of destruction in real-time. In addition to great-looking visuals, the system is optimized for performance and grants artists and designers more control over content creation and the fracturing process by using an intuitive non-linear workflow.

DataFlow

• New and improved DataFlow nodes (texture, UV, fracture, collision).

• Improved visualization for nodes (convex, connectivity, fracture).

Fracture Editor

• Using the Fracture editor, you can now evaluate and parametrize geometry collection assets using Dataflow.

• We added selection visuals for geometry collection using Nanite.

• You can select physics materials when creating a geometry collection from the editor.

General

• We added transform to Root proxies.

• We added orientation to break and trailing events

• We exposed destruction and performance optimization cvars as options in the project settings.

Chaos Hair

For Hair Simulation, we simulate hair assets in Dataflow by defining guide splines that can be simulated along with a character’s animation. The Groom Editor in Dataflow aims at providing a better set of tools for our artists and licenses to art direct hair grooms for both cinematic and gameplay needs in the editor.

Unreal Engine 5.6 updates include:

• A new Dataflow-based Groom editor.

• A new hair card generation.

Platform

Android Emulator Integration

The Android emulator gives mobile game developers a way to test their Android games on virtual devices from the Unreal Editor. With Unreal Engine 5.6, you can now install and launch the emulator directly from the Platform menu, and we improved workflows to make it easy to debug games.

Optimized Device Profiles for 60Hz

Unreal Engine 5.6 provides out-of-the-box, up-to-date device profiles that reflect Epic Games' Fortnite-optimized settings to achieve 60fps on all supported platforms.

OpenXR 1.1

OpenXR 1.1 consolidates multiple extensions into the core OpenXR specification to reduce fragmentation and simplify development of advanced XR applications. Unreal Engine 5.6 includes support and defaults to OpenXR 1.1, but will fall back to 1.0 if the OpenXR runtime doesn't support it. See Project Settings > Plugins > OpenXR for manual support overrides.

Adreno Occlusion Fast Mode

Hardware Occlusion Queries on Qualcomm Adreno GPU's are now faster with support for Adreno Occlusion Fast Mode. This includes Meta Quest, and you can take advantage of this feature by enabling r.Mobile.AdrenoOcclusionMode=1.

ARCore Vulkan Support

You can now use the modern open-standard graphics API Vulkan when developing handheld augmented reality applications with ARCore. Vulkan is the default RHI in Unreal Engine for mobile devices and we have now deprecated OpenGL support for ARCore.

In-Editor Platform Preview

The platform preview provides a way for artists to preview in Unreal Editor the content as it would look on their target device. Unreal Engine 5.6 brings the following improvements to the platform preview:

• A Texture Groups preview.

• Support for aspect ratio and safe zones for JSON device preview.

• Texture streaming budget emulation

• UI improvements

Mobile Rendering

We improved the Mobile Renderer performance and feature set with Unreal Engine 5.6, notably:

• We added support for skylight real time capture.

• GPUScene received optimizations and we added skinned mesh support.

• We added the Experimental Multipass deferred mode (cvar) for Android Vulkan, providing for shadow and screenspace techniques without depth prepass.

• We added the Experimental Distance Field Ambient Occlusion (cvar).

OpenXR Passthrough

We implemented support for Passthrough without the use of vendor specific OpenXR extensions. See below for further details:

Steps to enable device-agnostic OpenXR passthrough on UE 5.6:

1. Set r.Mobile.PropagateAlpha=True in one of:

   • The engine’s BaseEngine.ini file

   • The project’s DefaultEngine.ini file

   • The device profile

   • This ensures that an alpha layer is passed to the device.

   • If not on a mobile device, instead use r.PostProcess.PropagateAlpha=True. To be safe, you can use both.

2. Set xr.OpenXREnvironmentBlendMode=3 in the same .ini file.

   • This requests the XR_ENVIRONMENT_BLEND_MODE_ALPHA_BLEND environment blend mode from the runtime, requesting it to try to use passthrough.

   • An alternative (and probably preferred) way to do this is using the “Set Environment Blend Mode” blueprint node. Pass in “3”.

   • With this function, you can enable/disable passthrough as needed.

3. Set xr.OpenXRInvertAlpha=True in the same .ini file.

   • This inverts Unreal Engine’s translucency based alpha layer (1=transparent, 0=opaque) to an opacity based alpha layer (1=opaque, 0=transparent) within the HMD runtime using the XR_EXT_composition_layer_inverted_alpha extension, if available.

   • Without this, areas that should show passthrough footage will show level geometry, and vice/versa.

Of these three settings, only the environment blend mode can be changed at runtime. PropagateAlpha and OpenXRInvertAlpha are cached, and their value at launch will be used for the rest of the session.

This has been tested on Meta Quest 3. It should work on other OpenXR runtimes and devices, provided they both:

• Support passthrough via the XR_ENVIRONMENT_BLEND_MODE_ALPHA_BLEND environment blend mode.

• Support XR_EXT_composition_layer_inverted_alpha.

Meta Quest 3 also requires the following line to be added to the Android manifest. This is added automatically when bPackageForMetaQuest is true:

<uses-feature android:name="com.oculus.feature.PASSTHROUGH" android:required="false" />

Cinematic XR-Camera Smoothing

This new experimental feature smooths the camera transform to create a better viewing experience on traditional displays, and you can use it to capture XR-gameplay for trailers. You can enable and configure it with the following CVARs:

• xr.CinematicCameraSmoothing - 1 to enable, 0 to disable (0 by default)

• xr.CinematicCameraSmoothing.RollDecay (1.0 by default)

• xr.CinematicCameraSmoothing.PitchDecay (0.18 by default)

• xr.CinematicCameraSmoothing.YawDecay (0.18 default)

Insights Asset Memory Profiling (Experimental)

In Unreal Engine 5.6, Insight Profiling introduces a new (experimental) Low Level Memory (LLM) tracing of assets within your projects. Launch your client with the appropriate arguments to enable asset memory tracing on your game client. The functionality includes:

• The ability to define per platform memory budgets per asset type

• See the LLM Timeline / TagSet TreeView.

• Switch analysis between TagSets, specifically the System, AssetClass, and Asset TagSets.

• Sort TagSets entries by name and size

• See all the entries and associated budgets per TagSet, anything out of budget is clearly indicated.

• A/B comparison of memory usage from one frame to another.

Audio

Audio Insights

Audio Insights is our primary tool for profiling and debugging audio. This targets everyone using Audio in Unreal Engine. In this release we are providing the following UX features:

• You can now use the audio analyzer rack instead of a separate meter and oscilloscope.

• Audio Modulation: Matrix view dashboard

• We added the ability to dynamically choose the audio sub mix for analysis in standalone.

• We added an activity indicator for submixes and buses.

Sequencer Audio Scrubbing

Audio scrubbing is used in many animation editors and various workflows. In UE 5.6 we enhanced Sequencer audio scrubbing performance and latency so that it's frame-accurate and better matches the playhead location. This specifically targets users in the animation space using Sequencer and Audio Tracks but can apply to anyone desiring to align audio data.

• Audio scrubbing is now granulated and sounds significantly better.

• Moving the cursor through the sequencer track will continuously granulate the audio file. This will adjust the sound so that it's slowly playing back without any pitch shifting.

• When holding the Sequencer playhead in one fixed location, it will continuously play a small audio fragment at the given time location.

Channel Agnostic Types (Experimental)

Sound designers often need to send and receive multichannel audio data between specific MetaSound nodes of varying formats/channel counts. In UE 5.6, audio programmers can code custom nodes containing input and output references using the new experimental Channel Agnostic Types (CAT):

• The new audio-rate data type provides audio buffers with a way to support multiple channels in one pin type.

• Nodes can now support multiple configurations for audio channel formats.

• Reduces clutter and complexity in MetaSound graphs.

Large Channel Count

Through WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API) and aggregate device support we now support large audio channel count on the Windows platform. This is targeting high end customers and specialized projects but also benefits anyone who needs audio output of more than 8 channels (the current maximum).

Enabled by picking "Wasapi" from the Platform Audio API dropdown:

• This will create a WASAPI aggregate device for which all devices are exposed by a single physical audio adapter.

WASAPI Backend Implementation

In Unreal Engine 5.6 we implemented the WASAPI Backend (Windows Audio Session API) for both Windows and Xbox platforms. This has two main benefits. First, it makes UE Audio future-proof. Second, it gives more control and power over how we interface with existing audio hardware.

• New audio hardware API backend for windows and XBOX.

• New module, not a new plugin.

MetaSound Node Configuration

In Unreal Engine 5.6, we gave MetaSound nodes a new layer of expressibility with MetaSound Node Configuration. This feature provides a way for a single node to alter its inputs and outputs in the MetaSound editor. Node Configuration takes advantage of the MetaSound editor Details panel to provide a pathway for modifying node interfaces and serializing sidecar data that can be used when a node renders audio.

In addition to providing a way for sound designers and developers to create more nuanced and interactive nodes, it also results in improved UX. For instance, by cleaning up the node palette and by reducing the amount of steps and rewiring complexity for many common MetaSound design tasks.

Audio Subtitle Plugin

Audio subtitles are required for accessibility – dialogue systems, closed captioning, and voice chat. In Unreal Engine 5.6, we provide a subtitle engine plugin designed to support editor-time or runtime subtitling from any adjacent subsystem which needs subtitle support. This plugin refactoring decouples audio data so that subtitle rendering doesn't necessarily depend on audio data or audio rendering state.

MetaSound Preset Editor

In Unreal Engine 5.6, the MetaSound Preset editor offers a mechanism for technical sound designers to provide a custom UMG widget when editing presets. This can result in a more intuitive layout of relevant MetaSound parameters and controls for exploring different preset settings of the underlying MetaSound Sources.

• Exposing a custom widget BP in the MetaSound preset view and connecting the widget with a builder.

Audio Waveform Editor

Often, sound designers need to go back and forth from UE when working with audio assets. To help their workflow in Unreal Engine 5.6, we are adding the display of markers and loop regions from imported sound files.

This includes additional quality of life improvements to expand the wave editor to be sufficiently featured so that sound designers can stay within Unreal Editor for common audio editing tasks.

Tech Audio Tools

Tech Audio’s experience and usage of the editor utility can be extremely beneficial to the Game Audio community. This initiative is to help onboard new developers to UE Audio, make working at scale less daunting, and serve as a starting point for developers to fork from in building their own project-specific tooling.

• A set of blueprint scripting utilities, tools, and graphs to help with working with Unreal Audio technology.

• Tech Audio wants to build an exemplar collection of Editor Utilities and workflows to utilize internally and showcase externally.

Modeling

Texturing Tools (Beta)

The TextureGraph toolset has numerous improvements to support expanded use when developing texture related tools.

• TextureGraph Instance: You can now create an instance of a textureGraph that can store specific parameters per instance, making possible multiple variations of a master graph.

• Material Instance Support: We expanded support for material instances, which opens the possibility of more complex integration with materials.

• Arrays: We expanded TextureGraph's support for processing arrays of images. You can now construct arrays from a texturePath or from individual texture assets. We added multiple new nodes to support the management of arrays. Most nodes will now support an array of images.

  • Array4

  • ArrayGrid

  • ConcatenateArray

  • ModifyArray

• Resize: We added a new workflow for resizing images with an additional image settings parameter. This allows for non-power-of-two image sizes to be defined and stored.

• Synchronous Blueprint API

• Material Node: Can now support multiple outputs.

• New Nodes

  • Color Correction

  • Erode/Dilate

  • Swizzle

  • Resize

  • MakeVector4

  • PremultiplyAlpha

  • String

  • Boolean

Geometry Scripting

Geometry Scripting functionality continues to expand with the addition and improvement of numerous nodes requested by users.

Low-Level Mesh Building

• MergeMeshVertexPair

• MergeMeshVerticesInSelections

Mesh Modeling

• ApplyMeshIsoCurves

Composition and Decomposition

• SplitMeshByVertexOverlap

• SortMeshesByVolume

• SortMeshesByArea

• SortMeshesByBoundsVolume

• SortMeshesByCustomValues

Normals

• FlipTriangleSelectionNormals

Polygroups

• AddNamedPolygroupLayer

• FindExtendedPolygroupLayerByName

• GetPolyGroupBoundingBox

• GetPolyGroupUVBoundingBox

• GetPolyGroupUVCentroid

Mesh Sampling

• ComputeUniformRandomPointSampling

Mesh Sculpt Layers

• EnableSculptLayers

• SetActiveSculptLayer

• SetSculptLayerWeight

• SetSculptLayerWeightsArray

• GetSculptLayerWeightsArray

• GetNumSculptLayers

• GetActiveSculptLayer

• DiscardSculptLayers

• MergeSculptLayers

Mesh Selections

• SelectMeshSplitNormalEdges

• SelectMeshUVSeamEdges

• SelectMeshPolyGroupBoundaryEdges

Simplification

• ApplyEditorSimplifyToTriangleCount

• ApplyEditorSimplifyToVertexCount

Transform Mesh

• InverseTransformMesh

• InverseTransformMeshSelection

UV

• ClearUVChannel

• TransferMeshUVsByProjection

• IntersectsUVBox2D

Vertex Values

• TransferVertexColorsFromMesh

Baking

• MakeBakeTypeHeight

Content Pipeline

FBX Level Import with Interchange

In an effort to align the UI/UX for importing different file formats into the engine, the FBX Level import process is now available through the Interchange Framework. This is now the default path to import an FBX into a level. You can still fall back to the "Legacy" behavior with the help of a cvar.

The main change comes from the use of the same import dialog as for import in the Content folder. Now, you can perform legacy functionalities, such as removing assets or actors from import or using a different set of options to import, by using custom Interchange pipelines.

Interchange Workflow Improvements

Interchange Framework provides you with easier ways to create, extend, and parameterize import/re-import, and soon export, workflows.

Expansion of Interchange features:

• We added the option to import sockets as well as create a folder hierarchy when importing assets.

• We updated the UI for conflict analysis and settings to control the visibility of dialog in import or reimport scenarios.

• You can now organize Interchange presets in different groups, so that different categories of users on a project can use specific presets.

• For glTF/glb, we added support for IES light.

• For USD, we added support for MaterialX materials defined inside USD files.

Customize USD Asset Import with Interchange (Experimental)

USD is a versatile scene description file format with a growing adoption across the 3D industry.

We added USD to the list of file formats supported by the Interchange framework in 5.5 and extended support in 5.6. Content Creators benefit from more control over the import process and are now able to add custom processing steps for asset import of USD files, similar to the Interchange capabilities that are already available with other formats such as FBX.

The support for USD through Interchange is considered Experimental and limited to import of assets. In 5.6 we added support for:

• GeometryCache

• SparseVolumeTexture

• Primitive Shapes

• LODs

• Embedded MaterialX description

• Collision Schemas

• USDz

Framework

Simplified Mass Processor API

We streamlined the way you build Mass processors by introducing a new query authoring workflow and simplified entity iteration. This reduces boilerplate code, improves readability, and enhances debugging — making it easier and faster to develop with Mass.

The new MassQueryExecutor also unifies and simplifies core functionality, helping bring the Mass framework more in line with familiar ECS patterns.

Mover Plugin: AI Integration, Animation Support, and Performance Improvements

The Mover plugin is evolving into a highly flexible, high-performance movement framework built to support modern gameplay needs. We’ve extended its capabilities to bring it closer to parity with the legacy Character Movement Component — with robust support for AI systems, including Mass, NavMesh, and pathfinding-based trajectory prediction.

We also expanded Animation integration: the plugin now better supports the Unreal Animation Framework, root motion-based movement, and complex character setups — meaning animation-driven movement can influence simulation directly, regardless of thread execution order.

To scale with large crowds and demanding gameplay scenarios, we’ve introduced threaded simulation that enables the Mover plugin to run asynchronously off the game thread. Input gathering and simulation are now decoupled, enabling concurrent movement updates across many actors.

While this threading model is currently limited to single-player contexts, it lays important groundwork for future support in networked scenarios. The Mover plugin continues to evolve as a flexible, high-performance solution for both player and AI movement.

Mass Debugger Overhaul

We introduced a completely redesigned Mass Debugger to make it easier to understand and work with Mass entities, fragments, and processors.

The new debugger UI provides a way for you to inspect entities in the world, explore their structure and fragment data in real time, and set data write breakpoints that integrate with tools like Visual Studio. You can now filter by archetype, select specific fragments to display, and monitor changes at a granular level — making it significantly easier to debug and validate complex Mass systems.

This is just the first major step in a broader effort — we plan ongoing improvements to the Mass Debugger to further expand its capabilities and usability in upcoming releases.

Mass Entity Builder (Experimental)

The Mass Entity Builder is a new experimental tool designed to simplify and streamline procedural entity creation in Mass. It wraps existing and future MassEntity APIs to offer a safer, cleaner, and more intuitive way to generate valid entities, reducing complexity and boilerplate.

We’ve introduced support for dynamic entity spawning, giving users fine-grained control over entity setup before finalizing creation. This deferred spawning approach enables setting or overriding fragment data (like transforms or custom tags) in a way that feels familiar to traditional gameplay workflows, while aligning with ECS best practices.As part of this effort, we’ve also improved quality of life in the Mass Entity Config editor.

Gameplay Cameras (Experimental)

As the camera system evolves, it brings along new, powerful tools for gameplay and cinematic workflows:

• Sequencer-Driven Camera Rigs: Exposed rig parameters can now be keyframed directly in Sequencer, giving you precise control over timing and behavior.

• Live Editor Previews: Camera rigs now run in-editor with full simulation, including picture-in-picture previews and HUD overlays when piloting.

• Blueprint-Parameterized Rigs: Gameplay logic can drive camera behavior in real time using Blueprint inputs, enabling fully dynamic and reactive rigs.

StateTree Task Control Flow

We improved how task completion triggers state transitions in State Tree, giving designers more control and clarity. Previously, a state would complete as soon as any task finished, often leading to unexpected behavior.

With the new Task Control Flow, designers can now define which tasks contribute to state completion and whether transitions should wait for all selected tasks to finish. This makes State Tree easier to debug and more intuitive to use, especially in complex scenarios where some tasks (like logging or visual effects) shouldn’t interrupt state logic.

Navigation System Support in Mass (Experimental)

We introduced an experimental navigation system for Mass that enables Mass-based characters to navigate complex environments using navmesh and pathfinding. Entities can now issue path queries, store the resulting paths, and use dedicated State Tree tasks to move along them intelligently.

StateTree: UX and Workflow Improvements

We enhanced the State Tree editor experience with several quality-of-life upgrades aimed at improving clarity and usability.

• A new Binding Viewer helps you quickly inspect all data bindings within a State Tree asset, making it easier to debug and maintain complex logic.

• You can now also manage tasks and conditions directly within the State View, streamlining editing workflows.

• You can now selectively hide properties in nodes and instance data based on context, helping reduce visual clutter and focus your attention where it’s needed most.

Additional enhancements are planned in future releases to further improve the authoring experience.

StateTree: Delegates and Asynchronous Task Support

We added new tools to make State Tree more event-driven and performance-friendly, starting with support for delegates and asynchronous tasks.

The new State Tree Delegate system allows tasks to communicate internally using Dispatcher and Listener bindings. This makes it easier to build reactive logic chains — for example, a task detecting a hit event can notify another task to change color, without relying on ticking or external events. Designers can now bind transitions or actions directly to task-level delegates in the editor, making logic more modular, readable, and responsive.

We've also expanded asynchronous task support through the WeakExecutionContext. WeakExecutionContext is lightweight and safe to copy. It provides a simple handle for async logic. When pinned, you have full access to instance data from within the async tasks, making it safe to read or modify task state asynchronously while preventing premature garbage collection. You are responsible for making its access thread safe.

StateTree Scheduled Ticks and Performance

State Trees now support scheduled ticking, significantly reducing performance overhead by avoiding unnecessary updates. Instead of ticking every frame, State Trees will now only tick when needed — such as when a task requires it, an event occurs, or a delay completes. Tasks or states can also request specific tick intervals, enabling per-state throttling. Sleeping instances will automatically wake when relevant activity resumes.

This optimization can dramatically cut down CPU usage in complex games, especially when many trees are idle. Designers can see which states or tasks will tick through updated visual indicators in the editor and can toggle scheduled ticking per asset if needed.

Iris Networking System

We improved the stability, performance, and feature support of the Iris networking system, our next-generation replication framework. Iris now supports advanced scenarios like entity-based replication, multi-server setups, and live editing workflows, while offering better scalability for large player counts and dynamic worlds.

This release includes foundational work such as:

• More robust replication of dynamic and nested objects, with improved support for complex actors and FastArrays.

• Expanded debugging tools and internal logging to help diagnose replication mismatches and NetRefHandle errors.

• Fixes for crashes and replication desyncs, especially around async destruction, ownership transfers, and server-only actors.

• Improvements to network performance in high-bandwidth and low-latency conditions, with better bandwidth utilization and reduced replication latency for small objects.

Iris remains in active development and testing across major game modes and tools, with a focus on bringing it to production readiness for broader use in Fortnite and UEFN. We welcome ongoing feedback from internal teams and licensees as we expand its adoption.

Media

Dockable Media Viewer

Often animators need to align their animations against existing reference footage. In Unreal Engine 5.6 we added the capability to dock a video file or Sequencer driven Media Track next to the Viewport where animation work is done. This new mechanic means you can dock media assets (images, media textures, video files, live viewport textures) anywhere in the UE main interface. Two AB banks in either horizontal or vertical configurations help compare 2 sets of images. You can use zoom and pan controls to further align content.

This is specifically targeted at animators but can be useful to other users and industries that require reference in-editor docked media.

Unreal Engine 5.6 updates:

We are providing a new Plugin that adds Media docking functionality:

• Reference and view Media Textures from Sequencer or from the Content Browser.

• Reference live Viewport Textures.

• Reference and view Img/File Media Sources from the Content Browser or from Windows Explorer.

Sequencer Media Playback, Scrubbing, and Looping

Video scrubbing, cutting, and looping videos are common industry features used by animators and in video editing workflows. We improved the usability of Sequencer-driven video playback in the following key areas:

• Responsive video scrubbing and looping (using compatible video codecs such as Apple Pro Res).

• Improved local playback speed for container based media using the new Electra Protron Player.

• Increased read and decode speed for image sequences using Img Media Player.

For seamless looping, the new Playback Range implementation for Electra Protron Player ensures the video cache loops around when you crop a media track. We plan future work to cover other looping edge-cases. For example, when a media track has been extended over unity in length or when Sequencer duration is longer than the media track.

Media IO Improvements

In a continued effort to improve video playback in UE for both container-based media and image sequences, Unreal Engine 5.6 brings numerous quality-of-life improvements across the board. These usability features and fixes will positively impact users from all industries.

• Color management for image sequences.

• Improved scrubbing performance for image sequence and container-based media.

• Media Plate Actor Holdout Composite now has a checkbox instead of using the contextual menu (used to bypass TSR and Tonemap).

• Media Layer integration with the Motion Design Material Designer.

• Real-time MIPs no longer require you to specify the count.

Electra Protron Player

In order to achieve smooth in-editor scrubbing, looping, and seeking performance, in Unreal Engine 5.6 we added Electra Protron. A version of Electra Player that is optimized for local filesystems and container-based media. It is meant for everyone desiring not only in-editor but also live video performance. Animators, Virtual Production and M&E users will greatly benefit. The suggested codec to use for best scrubbing performance is Apple Pro Res.

NDI Input Plugin

NDI is a widely used and established IP video protocol, especially in the Broadcast business. We added NDI Media Plugin for Output in Unreal Engine 5.5, with 5.6 we are closing the loop by adding Input support. The NDI Media plugin has a new NDI Media Source implementation you can use either with Media Plate or with a stand-alone Media Player directly. 

These implementations leverage the Media Framework backend for compatibility with our Unreal Media tech stack. This feature is intended for everyone who is interested in ingesting or outputting IP video in Unreal Engine using the NDI IP protocol. NDI Media also supports the Alpha channel.

Production Rendering Pipeline

Quick Render

Launching a render with Movie Render Queue requires multiple steps, which can slow down the iteration time for artistic workflows. Quick Render makes Unreal Engine's real-time rendering available from anywhere in the editor with the single click of a button, offering four options for you to choose from:

• Current Sequence: Renders the currently-open Level Sequence in Sequencer without requiring the additional step of adding it to a Queue.

• Current Viewport: Akin to a MRQ-ized High Resolution Screenshot, this option renders a still image of what the Artist currently sees in the editor viewport without requiring any additional steps in Sequencer.

• Selected Camera: You can select one or more Cameras in the Outliner and render a still image of them without requiring any additional steps in Sequencer.

• Use Viewport Camera in Sequence: Animators commonly benefit from reviewing their work from multiple angles that may not necessarily be the Shot Camera.  This option provides a way for them to substitute what they currently see in the editor viewport as the Camera in the Level Sequence that contains their animation.

High Resolution Tiling and Panoramic Rendering in Graph

Unreal Engine's fast, high quality rendering capabilities at standard resolutions naturally whets the appetite for even higher resolutions.  High Resolution Tiling historically ran into significant memory issues that impeded users from successfully rendering at super high resolution, especially if they did not have a top of the line GPU.  The transition of the feature to Movie Render Graph lifts these rendering limitations.

Unreal Engine 5.6 includes memory optimizations that dramatically increase the resolution ceiling with High Resolution Tiling. A new Page to System Memory option enables data in GPU memory to be mirrored to system memory.  This has a performance cost but allows for much higher resolutions to be reached, especially if the user does not have a GPU with a lot of memory.

Panoramic Rendering of 360 degree output goes hand in hand with High Resolution Tiling and they share many of the same workflow requirements. Likewise, they share the same improvements in their transition to Movie Render Graph.

Play Render Output

Play Render Output automatically plays rendered media in the viewer application of your choice. This choice is set in the Editor Preferences, and is configurable per-user to accommodate flexibility across many users with different needs for a given project. Play Render Output is currently only available in Quick Render and will be available for full Movie Render Queue renders in a future release.

Multipart EXR Support

Adding onto its existing Multilayer EXR support, Movie Render Graph can also output Multipart EXR based on the EXR 2.0 spec. Enabling Multipart EXR produces image output with layers/elements that can be loaded individually upon request by downstream applications  instead of loading the entire file every time.

H.264 Movie Support

H.264 Movie is now available as an Output Type node on Windows OS. This allows users to generate H.264 movies directly from Movie Render Graph without the need for post-processing using the Command Line Encoder.

In addition, Apple ProRes Movie support is now available on Mac OS.

Movie Render Graph Usability

The graph-based configuration workflow in Movie Render Graph continues to evolve and improve in response to user feedback. Unreal Engine 5.6 includes numerous enhancements targeted for both Artists and Pipeline Developers:

• Frame Range Variables

  • Conveniently set overrides for start/end frame at render time.

• Faster Warmup

  • Manage warmup more efficiently when the graph configuration uses a higher Temporal Sample Count.

• Adapt Resolution

  • Leave the Output Resolution at one of the standard resolutions and orient it based on the filmback.

• Component-Based Conditions for Collections

  • Specify a Condition based on a Component in a complex Blueprint Actor.

• Crop Camera Overscan

  • Improve the output quality of post processing effects and lens distortion.

• Time Dilation

  • Now available in MRG.

Template Variants

We’re excited to announce a major update to the Unreal Engine 5.6 templates, designed to help you hit the ground running. Templates have been significantly reduced in size, helping decrease engine download times while also increasing the number of features in each template! A brand-new option, Variants, allows you to extend templates for specific types of gameplay. Whether you're prototyping a side-scrolling platformer, building an open world racing game, or crafting a top-down strategy title, Variants offer a more specific tailored starting point to help bring your vision to life.

You can create templates from Unreal Engine's New Project screen. Use the variant dropdown menu to select which variant you want to use per template. If you prefer a more basic option, choose None from the variant dropdown to use a lightweight version of the template.

We refreshed the following core templates with optional variants.

First Person

First person now includes First Person rendering features for independent FOV, Scale and lighting. A full character has also been implemented (no more floating arms) along with a custom Control Rig to handle warping to a first person view. The basic first person template has had weapons removed to reduce initial content when loading the lightweight first person template.

Horror

• Added a torch to the player pawn.

• Example map that demonstrates best practice when lighting dark environments.

• Sprint mechanic with associated UI.

• Flickering light.

Shooter

• A range of weapon pickups

• A range of bullet types

• AI opponents

• Ammo UI

• An example arena map

Third Person

The base third person template has remained mostly unchanged, but we extended it in the Combat, Side Scroller, and Platformer variants.

Combat

• Simple hand combat

• Combo attack

• AI opponents

• In-world health bar UI

• An example Combat map

Side Scroller

• A fixed camera example

• Constrained plane setup

• Pickups

• Single-sided and drop-through collision interaction

• Fix to floor and locked camera example

• An example side scrolling map

Platformer

• Dash mechanic

• Wall Jump

• An example platforming map

Top Down

The base Top Down template has remained mostly unchanged, but we extended it in the Strategy and Twin Stick variants.

Strategy

• Drag select AI characters

• Simple character interactions

• Roof transition effect

• Simple AI move to examples

• Orthographic camera setup

Twin stick

• Simple AI opponents

• Bomb and shoot mechanic

• Simple arena map

• Score and multiplier UI

Vehicle

We made some changes to the base vehicle template, we split the base vehicles into static mesh pieces attached to an empty skeleton. We also simplified vehicle materials and textures. There are now two blueprints that demonstrate simple spawning of static and spline meshes. We will replace these with PCG once it’s out of Beta. We enabled RVT for the project and set it up for each map.

Offroad

• Open World exploration map

• Offroad all wheel drive vehicle example

• Spline roads

• RVT map setup

• HLOD structure (hlods are not built to save memory)

Timetrial

• Simple track map

• Gate structure to mark traversal through a lap

• Time and best time UI

Shared Resources

In addition to new template variants, we also updated shared content between variants. 

Level Prototyping

• We updated meshes to Nanite quality.

• A door, jump pad and physics dummy have been added under interactables

Characters

• For both Manny and Quinn, we optimized their materials and textures.

• We added a new set of animations for unarmed, armed, dash, combat, hit, death, and more.

Input

• We added a new input pack that standardizes input across templates.

• Demonstrates mobile touch input setup

• Widget touch thumbstick

Weapons

• We added more weapons, including a Pistol, Rifle, and Grenade Launcher.

• We optimized weapon textures and materials.

Platform SDK Upgrades

• Windows

  • Visual Studio 2022 v17.14 or newer

  • Windows SDK 10.0.22621.0 or newer

  • LLVM clang

    • Minimum: 18.1.3

    • Preferred: 18.1.8

  • .NET 8.0

• IDE Version the Build farm compiles against

  • Visual Studio 2022 17.8 14.38.33130 toolchain and Windows 10 SDK (10.0.22621.0)

  • Xcode 15.4

• GDK

  • Minimum Windows SDK: 10.0.22000.0

  • GDK: April 2025

  • Latest recovery version

  • Supported IDE: Visual Studio 2022

• Linux

  • Native Linux Development

    • Recommended OS: Ubuntu 22.04, Rocky Linux 8 or newer, Redhat Linux 8 or newer

    • Compiler: clang 18.1.0

  • Cross-Compile Toolchain: v25 clang-18.1.0-based

• macOS

  • Recommended OS: Latest macOS Sonoma 14

  • Minimum OS: macOS Sonoma 14.0

  • Recommended Xcode: 15.4 or newer

  • Minimum Xcode: 15.2

  • Supported macOS SDK: 14 and newer

• Android

  • Android Studio Koala 2024.1.2 August 29, 2024

  • Android NDK r25b

  • Android SDK

    • Recommended: SDK 34

    • Minimum for compiling UE: SDK 34

    • Default target SDK for shipping: SDK 34

    • Minimum install SDK level: SDK 26

    • AGDE v23.2.91+ is recommended if you are using AGDE debugging, as this version contains a fix for a SIGBUS error.

  • Build-tools: 34.0.0

    • If you try to use 35.0.0, you may have issues if using aidl on Windows. This is fixed with 35.0.1.

  • Java runtime:

    • OpenJDK 21.0.3 2024-04-16

    • OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 21.0.3+-12282718-b509.11)

    • OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 21.0.3+-12282718-b509.11, mixed mode)

  • Other Notes

    • UE has been updated to use Gradle 8.7, and the Android Gradle Plugin (AGP) version we use has been updated to version 8.5.2. If you are using Android Studio for debugging, we recommend using Android Studio Koala. Ladybug also works, but does not update Gradle or AGP from the above versions.

    • When you choose your NDK level, you should target android-26, which supports Android 8.0+.

• Other Notes

  • Shader Model 6 (SM6) requires macOS 15. This support is in Beta, and we do not recommend it for production at this time.

• iOS / tvOS / iPadOS / visionOS

  • Recommended OS: Latest macOS 14 Sonoma

  • Minimum OS: macOS Sonoma 14.5

  • Recommended Xcode: 16.1 or newer

  • Minimum Xcode: 15.4

  • Supported Target SDK versions:

    • iOS SDK version: 15 or later

    • iPadOS SDK version: 15 or later

    • tvOS SDK version: 15 or later

    • visionOS 2.4 with Xcode 16.3 recommended

    • Note: v2.5/x16.4 passed a very limited test and is likely good, versions down to v2/x16 are likely to work)

  • iOS Graphics API: Metal 2.4 - 3.1

• EOSSDK

  • 1.16.4-36651368

• Steam

  • 1.57

• Switch

  • Default SDK Version: 20.5.6

  • Default Firmware Version: 20.1.0-2.2

  • Minimum SDK Version: 18.3.1

  • Minimum Firmware Version: 18.1.0-1.0

  • Nintendo Package Manager: 1.7.0

  • Supported IDE: Visual Studio 2022

• Switch 2

  • Default SDK Version: 20.5.6

  • Default Firmware Version: 20.1.0-2.2

  • Minimum SDK Version: 19.3.5

  • Minimum Firmware Version: 19.1.0-1.4

  • Nintendo Package Manager: 1.7.0

  • Supported IDE: Visual Studio 2022

• PS4

  • Default Orbis SDK 12.508.001

  • Minimum Orbis SDK 12.008.011

  • System software 12.508.001

  • Supported IDE: Visual Studio 2022

• PS5

  • Default Prospero SDK 11.00.00.40

  • Minimum Prospero SDK 10.00.00.48

  • System Software 11.00.00.43

  • Supported IDE: Visual Studio 2022

• ARCore

  • 1.48

• ARKit

  • 4.0

• OpenXR

  • 1.1.46

  • OpenXR 1.0 and 1.1 runtimes are supported, either can be disabled in project settings.

Release Notes

Animation

New:

• Fix rig mapper crash when changing definitions at runtime if definition has mismatch in inputs and outputs count.

• Prevent AnimInstanceProxy doing draw debug on server. AnimInstanceProxy DrawDebugCapsule now take DepthPriority like other DebugDraw functions.

• Add cvar option (default to true) for whether animeditorviewportclient outputs engine debug messages.

• Animationbudgetallocator now resets external tick state on skeletal mesh components when disabled via cvar.

• Add a Mirror AnimationModifier that mirrors all bones in a sequence based on a mirror data table.

• [RigMapper]:

  • Fix value range warning triggered when comparing floats (i.e. 1.000001f >= 1.0f)

  • Add tests for the processor, and clearer log for some tests

  • Fix output values generation when not using the processor

• Added RigMapper Experimental Plugin

• Rig Mapper plugin update: - Optimizations & performance improvements - Refactoring & Commenting

• When sorting components in AnimationBudgetAllocator, prioritise components with neverskip.

• Update Rig Mapper Offline Subsystem Fix framerate issue when generating anim sequence assets. Update some incorrect return types.

• Set some functions in AnimationSharingManager to virtual so they can be overridden.

  • Add some more debug options to AnimationSharing system including showing current playing anims.

  • Add support for creating and registering custom AnimationSharingManagers.

• Media Viewer: Added a new tool to compare images, video and editor viewports.

Bug Fix:

• Add an unchecked variant for subtypes to test the skeletal mesh component association on a UAnimInstance object.

• Remove dll export from SkeletalMeshComponentInstance data as it lives in a private header

• This change removes skeletal mesh asset properties that were incorrectly added to the global UCS modified property list in 5.5.0 and 5.5.1. Only assets serialized in those versions are affected. This change also only affects blueprint added skeletal mesh components. Components added natively were unaffected by the original issue.

• Increase stack sizes to avoid animation running out of space in deep scopes

• Fixed a crash on compilation of CalculateVelocityFromPositionHistory in Animation Blueprints

• Add support for following tokenized hyperlinks in animation blueprint logging

• Fixed an issue with tooltip names in SOverrideStatusWidgets

Animating in Engine

New:

• Added a new experimental plugin "GeometryCacheLevelSequenceBaker" that bakes skeletal mesh animation in a level sequence into a Geometry Cache.

• Added "Recreate Control Rig With New Settings" option to Control Rig Track right click menu to allow users to change the value of a rig's public variables after the rig is added to sequencer

• [Animation Kit] - Spline path utility rig for testing.

• [Animation Kit]- Add single sim. Add chain sim.

• [Animation Kit]- Added aim option for blendParent. Changed control shapes to not be solid.

• Added a new Lattice Rig "CR_Lattice" to Animator Kit plugin, which exposes a few rig settings to sequencer that users can configure via the "Recreate Rig with New Settings" option, accessible from the Control Rig Track right click menu. Both the size of the lattice, as well as deformer execution phase (pre-skinning or post-skinning) can be tweaked.

Bug Fix:

• [Animation Kit] - Adding back mesh connection to utility rigs. Changed root bone name of utility skm.

• Anim Details' keying section now indicates if a control has a key on another frame

Character Customization

New:

• [Mutable] Moved COE headers to private.These headers should not be public.Kept COESchema as public but moved to private many of its functions.

• [Mutable] Remove Customizable Object Instance Usage Tick.

  • Moved UCustomizableObjectInstanceUsage::Tick to UCusotmizableObjectSystem::TickInternal.

  • Removed calls to SetSkeletalMesh that did not follow the Update flow. Callbacks must always be called.

  • Removed UCustomizableObjectInstanceUsage SetSkeletalMesh. Added bAutomaticUpdateRequired which marks an Instance to start a normal Update flow.

  • Removed EditorUpdateComponent SetSkeletalMesh. No longer necessary.

  • UCustomizableObjectSystem::DiscardInstances and UCustomizableInstancePrivate::SetDefaultSkeletalMesh now sets the Reference Skeletal Mesh directly instead of using SetSkeletalMeshAndOverrideMaterials. SetSkeletalMeshAndOverrideMaterials had code specific to the normal Update flow.

  • Inlined SetSkeletalMesh (+SetSkeletalMeshAndOverrideMaterials) and SetPhysicsAsset.

  • Moved RequiresReinitPose to the UCustomizableObjectSystem.

  • Simplified and renamed SetDefaultSkeletalMesh to SetReferenceSkeletalMesh.

• [Mutable] Made UEdGraphSchema_CustomizableObject funcitons private.

• [Mutable] Change the default name of Component nodes.

• [Mutable] Moved clothing physics clipping to a mutable external data manipulation plugin.

  • Added IMutableClothingModule interface.

  • Added new experimental MutableClothing plugin implementing the MutableClothingModule interface.

• [Mutable] Improved TickWarnings performance. Work split in between Game Thread ticks.

  • Reenabled TickWarnings ticker.

  • Optimized FollowPinArray.

  • Optimized GetRootNode (removed bOutMultipleBaseObjectsFound since is no longer valid).

  • GetParticipatingObjects now uses VisitNodes.

  • GetParticipatingObjects now discovers all assets + is more granual.

  • Implemented an async version of IsCompilationOutOfDate.

  • Added GraphTraversal functions inside the namespace.

  • Renamed GetRootObject to GetObject.

  • Changed GetFullGraphRootNode to start from a Customizable Object instead of a node.

• [Mutable] Avoid loading objects on node PostLoads. Only load them if required due to backwards compatible code.

• [Mutable] New Customizable Object Compile API. Unified functionalities of ConditionalAutoCompile and CompileCustomizableObjectSynchronously into a single new Compile function.

  • Soft deprecated ConditionalAutoCompile.

  • Soft deprecated CompileCustomizableObjectSynchronously.

  • Exposed "Compile Only Selected".

  • Customizable Object editor now displays "Compiling..." when a compilation is in the queue.

  • Fixed Customizable Objects not loading in Standalone.

  • Moved Compilation On Screen Warnings/Errors to the Customizable Object module. Now they also appear in Standalone.

• [Mutable] Allow multiple GameThread tasks per tick. The time limit can be changed with a CVar. Currently set to 0.5ms.

Bug Fix:

• [Mutable] Fix Components PImpl pattern + Actor improvements.

  • Created ACustomizableSkeletalMeshActorPrivate.

  • Renamed CustomizableObjectInstanceUsage due to old assets having the Usage serialized (must be transient).

  • Prepared Mutable Actor to use dynamic components.

  • Deprecated Actor debug material functions.

• [Mutable] Fix pins breaking due to Editor language settings.

• [Mutable] Fix LOD update using the wrong update parameters.

  • Moved ESkeletalMeshStatus to private.

• [Mutable] Fix Bake modifying original Materials when using the "Generate Constant Material Instances" option.

  • Fixed CopyAllMaterialParameters setting the parameters to the original Material (instead of the UMaterialInstanceConstant).

  • Simplified CopyAllMaterialParameters by using a template (instead of runtime type switching).

  • Inlined GetTextureParameterNames.

• [Mutable] Fix unwanted assets being added to package due to missing cook scope. Wrapped all loading functions to ease maintenance.

• [Mutable] Fix deadlock when compiling a Customizable Object and shutting down the editor.

• [Mutable] Fix Morph issues with Streaming.

• [Mutable] Fixed multiple streaming issues.

  • Avoid crash when streaming without morphs.

  • Fixed Morphs using non-existing data from initial generation.

  • Allow disabling morphs when using streaming with the CVar.

  • Removed MinLOD usages from initial generation.

  • Documented LOD variables

  • Renamed LOD variables.

• [Mutable] Fixed morph streaming issues.

  • Fixed morph crash without streaming.

  • Fixed DoComponentsNeedUpdate issue when streaming.

• [Mutable] Removed Parameter not found check. These functions are public and the user can easily call them with a non-existing parameter. In any case (editor, game, shipping, development...) Mutable should not crash if a parameter is not found.

• [Mutable] Fix crash when using Image Layer Blend Normals with a Mask.

• [Mutable] Fix grooms not attaching when opening an editor.

• [Mutable, HairStrandsMutable] Fix Grooms not detaching when discarding an Instance

• [Mutable] Fix UCusotmizableComponent and UCustomizableObjectInstanceUsage using CDO objects

Deprecated:

• [Mutable] Deprecate FindParameterNameIndex. Users should not interact with ParameterIndex. Replaced with ContainsParameter.

• [Mutable] Improved UCustomizableObject public API.

  • Deprecated all functions that use ParameterIndex.

  • Added missing ParameterName signatures.

  • Removed old unused deprecated functions.

  • Started with the Int -> Enum / Option -> Value renaming. Only renamed functions which we had to change the signature.

Control Rig

New:

• Added debug draw settings to debug functions and debug nodes in ControlRig

• Extracted IO Mapping, Pose Adapter, Variable Mapping and Hierarchy Mappings from AnimNode to external helpers, so these can be reused externally.

• Added an option that allows refreshing the hierarchy using only bones that exist on the mesh, removing bones that exist in the skeleton but have been removed from the mesh

• Control Rig dynamic hierarchy now supports using a skeleton for binding at import bones rig unit

• [Modular Control Rig]

  • Made all modules a Variant for upgrading in UE56. This will maintain backwards compatibility with any older Modules.

  • Adding tags for Epic, Biped, Quadruped modules.

  • Tagging root module.

  • Made Root56 module the default for 56.

  • Tag all modules

  • Add variation for Root module.

• Added persistence options to ControlRig debug draw settings

• ChainInfo Control Rig Node This is a node that takes in a list of items and a param value, interprets those items as a chain, and outputs helpful info about:

  • Segment info including:

    • Segment Length

    • Segment Stretch Value

    • Local Segment Param

    • Segment Start Item

    • Segment End Item

    • Segment Index

  • The chain at the current param value including:

    • Chain Length

    • Param Length

    • Chain Stretch Factor

    • Interpolated transform

• Added an option to exclude virtual bones in the Import Skeleton rig unit.

• Add gizmo interaction events to ControlRigEditMode.

• Add tag filter to the module browser tab.

• Added experimental support for physics in Control Rig. To access the new nodes and functionality, enable the PhysicsControl plugin.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed a crash in Control Rig when undocking the hierarchy and opening multiple editors

• Prevent control rig debug draw displaying in game view mode when high resolution screenshots are taken

• Fix struct redirector handling in the RigVM registry

• FKControlRig control-name mapping are now forced to be lower-case to address cook indeterminism.

• [Modular Control Rig]

  • Backward solve fixes for Biped modules.

  • Fix AnimalSpine first bone auto connection.

  • Fixed naming of head control.

  • Fixed IK/FK fixes on a few modules that were not working. Included some incredibly small low risk module bug fixes that have been reported

  • Fixed flipping on HindLeg, hooked up number of spine bones, fixed modules to work with left side axis, further fixed backwards solves.

  • Fixed foot backwards solve. Added basic twist bone rigging to arm. Various cleanup and fixes to some of the graphs. Fixed Shoulder and arm FK.

  • Added twist to legs. Fixed IK/FK naming. Added back public function from arm to leg so it picks up changes. Fixed hind legs ik fk.

  • Fix bug in VehiclePivot that caused an array to fill up during the interaction event.

  • Add missing toe metadata for mGear skeletons. Expose distance on VehiclePivot Module.

  • Improved backwards solve for Foot Module.

  • Fixed HindLeg FK controls not rotating. Fixed AnimalNeck stretch.

  • Fixed Shoulder backwards solve by parenting to chest null instead of body ctrl.

• Fixed a crash in Control Rig when closing one tab and multiple rigs are open

• Fixed Control Rig not returning correctly the value of the initial rotation of a control

• Fixed a memory use after delete at RigVMHierarchyController import from text function

• Fix defaults not being set for template nodes in RigVM

• Avoid an infinite loop/recursion in URigVMPin::GetParentScriptStruct, which could happen when loading assets that have invalid but handleable data types in them.

• Refactored RigVM math customizations to use property handles, in order to fix a memory stomp while setting values in the details pannel

• Fixed a crash in Modular Rig when switching the preview mesh to a different compatible asset

• Fixed a crash in RigVM graph details when using instanced structs.

• [Control Rig Content]

  • Marked draw functions outdated and renamed variants to debug in Standard Function Library.

• Added visual logging support for RigVM

• RigVM fix to avoid a crash when checking if a pin can be linked and one of the target pins is an unresolved wildcard pin

• Protected Control Rig anim node cache bones function with the evaluation lock, as we can receive a cache bones request on a worker thread while the main thread is executing the rig

• Fixed Control Rig Hierarchy random initialization issues by converting static names into lazy names

• Fixed a crash in Control Rig when the user generates controls in the construction event and expose these controls as a promoted variable

• Avoid Control Rig mark the asset as dirty with node selection (but keeps selection undo redo)

• Fix for RigVM removing spaces from default pin values

• Allowed RigVM event nodes to vary their event name based around the node's defaults

• Avoid Control Rig type registry performing a full engine type scan when an user defined struct or enum is missing from startup type scan.

Deformer Graph

New:

• Enabled Deformer Graph support for mobile platforms

• Added a new property "Target Mesh Deformers" on Skeletal Mesh that accepts a new asset type "Mesh Deformer Collection", which allows the Skeletal Mesh to automatically determining if half edge data or other deformer graph specific data should be built for the Skeletal Mesh during cook.

• Added a default MeshDeformerCollection "DA_DeformerCollection_RecomputeNormals" to the Deformer Graph plugin, which can be used to make sure half edge data is built for any Skeletal Mesh that may run a Deformer Graph that contains Half Edge data interface.

• Added support for "AddDeformer" control rig node to initialize Deformer Graph variable pins with the default value of those variables defined in the Deformer Graph asset.

• Added support for comment nodes

• Updated Deformer Graph plugin default deformers to use the Read Skinned Mesh Data Interface instead of Skinned Mesh Data Interface such that pre-skinning deformers can affect skinning performed by these default deformers.

Bug Fix:

• Added some safety checks to compute graph/optimus to prevent crashes on nullptr.

• Fixed bad kernel dispatch order when a copy is required from a set/get resource node to another data interface node like write skinned mesh. Previously the copy kernel was dispatched too early.

• Fixed a typo in skin weight as vertex mask data interface causing the wrong LOD Index to be used when creating buffers.

• Fixed having multiple variable nodes of the same variable leads to shader compilation error around redefinition of functions from the graph data interface

• Fixed errors related to unsupported typed UAV loads on Dx11 when a Read Skinned Mesh data interface and a Write Skinned Mesh data interface are connected the same kernel. Read Skinned Mesh data interface now uses SRV instead UAV to avoid the error.

• Fixed crash when using the new skeleton data interface on LOD change from LOD1 to LOD0 if LOD0 has more material section than LOD1

• Fixed copy & paste not working in the shader text editor

Gameplay

New:

• Adding visual logger logline support in rewind debugger.

• Exposing anim to texture editor functions as a public interface.

Bug Fix:

• Account for possible invalid section when montage is force moved

• Fix for an issue in sequencer where shots that are set to blend will have the incorrect blend time if the sequence play rate has changed.

• Fixing some logging typos in the animation blueprint library after some feedback from licensee.

• Prevent Foot Placement running when an actor is dropped into the level viewport

• Fix for issue where looping level sequences could get stuck on the final frame

• Adding missing GatherDebugData calls.

• Fix for an issue when doing a replace on multiple selected notifies. When iterating through the array of nodes user chose, we now do it in reverse because we delete as we go. Previously this was changing the size of the array.

• Passthrough inputs correctly when properties aren't set on certain chooser column types

• Fix for when removing a montage section, any sections that used that section as link will now become unlinked automatically.

• Fix to allow motion warping of rotations to account for montage play rate

• Fix root motion sampling in blend stack

IK & Retargeting

Bug Fix:

• Fix potential crash in Retarget Component when used with a MetaHuman BP.

ML Deformer

New:

• Use the component space transforms instead of bone space transforms. And calculate the bone space transforms from those. This fixes some cases where no leader pose is used, but some things copy poses and don't update the bone space transforms. It also makes it easier to visualize the input pose.

• Added a confirmation dialog to the Finalize Morph Targets button as you cannot undo this.

• Automatically create two hidden layers when creating a new Nearest Neighbor model. And automatically create a section as well. This makes the UX a bit better.

• Show a UI warning when the frame rate of a geom cache and animation don't match. As this can result in issues when scrubbing the timeline or training. Directly added some safety check to the morph model instance, which could potentially cause a crash.

• Added support for curves on the skeletal meshes.

• Some improvements to the memory management in geometry caches. Preventing reallocations, resulting in faster performance.

• Added a new console command "MLDeformer.DebugDrawInputPoses" which will draw the input pose to the ML Deformer. It can be useful to quickly visually see what meshes have ML Deformers on them, and what bones are included.

• Moved the tick group from pre-physics to post-physics.

• Based on artist feedback we changed some default settings to see higher quality results on first training. This makes it easier for new users. More advanced users can tweak the values to reduce memory usage and increase performance at runtime. The values changed are:

  • Delta Zero Threshold, which was 0.0025 before, and now 0.001.

    Please keep in mind that by default the memory usage will be much higher now, until you change the morph target compression level and delta zero threshold values. Also experiment with the regularization factor to get the memory usage down. You can see the current GPU memory usage for your MLD asset in the MLD asset editor UI, on the lower left side in green text.

    This does not affect already created assets, only newly created ones.

  • Added a new Detail Pose Model.

    • This new model will allow you to provide key poses in which we will blend in lost details that the ML reconstruction failed to capture. This gives more detailed folds in clothing etc.

    • Next to this, the Neural Morph Model directly receives dual quaternion support with this change. Dual quaternion skinning can improve the learned deformations as they are less spikey compared to linear skinned deltas.

    • Added in-engine tools to help with the creation of training data for ML Deformers. Also added support for Undo/Redo to the ML Deformer asset editor. Fixed some crash as well, where a skeletal mesh pointer could become invalid.

    • Improve performance of the asset editor. Improved responsiveness with no property changes, faster loading, faster sampling of anims.

    • This is a complete rewrite and replacement for the Nearest Neighbor Model. The new model is inherited from the Neural Morph Model and therefore shares all UI/UX and features with it, making the user experience more unified. It only supports the global mode of the Neural Morph Model and it adds some new properties and functionality on top.

  • Compression level, which was 20 before, but is now 1.0.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed the timeline from breaking when switching models. This was because some delegates were still pointing to the old editor model which got destroyed after switching models. Directly fixed a few small errors in the comments.

• Added some cook scoped object in the GeometryCacheModel to make it tag the training geom caches as editor only and be excluded from the cook. Also removed some unneeded code to set editor_only marked properties to nullptr before serialization during cook.

• Fixed a crash when there are no input sample animations, and the NMM is set to local mode, and you click a bone.

• Fixed a crash and potentially incorrect behavior when switching from Local mode to Global mode in the Neural Morph Model.

• Avoid crash due to nullptr in FMLDeformerEditorToolkit::OnModelChanged.

• Crash fix while cooking. This was because the MLDeformerModelInstance wasn't keeping the SkeletalMeshComponent alive and that could a crash. Made the TObjectPtr a transient UPROPERTY now.

• Fixed a crash in the Nearest Neighbor Model where the GetNumBaseMeshVerts() is 0, which can be caused by the imported model data not to be present.

• Removed an error log that shouldn't really be logged in the Nearest Neighbor model.

• Add the advanced preview scene settings tab to editor.

• Fix python errors when launching with "-game" as argument.

• Fixed a bug when training, related to masks of input animations. Training would fail with some error right after sampling.

Runtime

New:

• Expose AddAnimationModifier for Editor Tooling

• Add editor option to hide long list of enum blueprint actions in the animation blueprint editor.

• Optimized NamedValueArray union operations used by animation blending

• Enable NEON intrinsics for RigLogic on supported platforms

• Reduced inlining to save stack space in AnimBP graph traversal to avoid stack overflows

• Optimized component space to bind space conversion when sending matrices to render thread

• Optimize RigLogic for low LOD evaluation (targeting low-power devices), bringing a 30-40% performance improvement

• Allow 'None' to be selected in SBoneSelectionWidget.

• Add property to disable transition in state machine editor.

• Added public API (IAnimSequenceCompilingManager::FinishCompilation) to wait for animation compression to be finished (for specific assets)

• Avoided weak object ptr testing in hot loop during animation decompression

• Fixed marker pair detection when it overlaps the start/end of a sequence

• Ensured ACL curve compression never fails by gracefully handling bad data

• Animation blueprint navigation speed has been improved when several animation blueprints are opened simultaneously in the editor.

• Exposes the option to sync anims in blendspaces. Blendspaces apply time scaling using the "Axis Scaling" feature, whether or not anims are being synced

• Optimized RichCurve evaluation

• Add ability to feed a LOD pose to a Run Graph rig unit Added an input pose trait that reads a LOD pose from e.g. a get variable node and pushes the pose onto the pose stack. The input pose trait can then be connected to any other node in an anim graph and be further used.

• RigLogic Body Correctives for AnimNext This change enables the new body correctives using RigLogic that will replace MH pose drivers in AnimNext.

  • AnimNext's reference pose now generates and stores a mapping from mesh bone indices to LOD pose bone indices.

  • We're now using pose indices directly without any bone index translation at runtime. This is more cache friendly as we're less jumping around in the transform arrays and should help increase performance.

  • Fixed a bone index translation issue when initializing the bone index mapping.

  • Dense and sparse driver joint mapping is now stored per LOD and only the needed data is sent over to the trait tasks.

  • Some more safety checks and warning/error logging.

• Optimized skinned mesh proxy creation

• Modify SAnimCurvePicker to optionally support multiselect.

• Added memory usage estimate during animated curve compression

• AnimNext: Skeletal mesh attachments with minimal bones This allows us to remap and attach skeletal meshes that only contain the bones it needs, like e.g. only skinned bones. For the cases where the target skeleton does not share the same root bone with the source, try to find the corresponding bone on the source skeleton for the target's root bone and sync the skeletons up from there by calculating the delta transform between the two and move it along with the source.

• Allow pinnable blend profiles in profile blend node and refactor.

• Refactor animation editor asset family to support plugins.

• Add local/mesh space blending toggle to Profile Blend node.

• Animation Attributes now use Interpolation rather than Weighted-Multiplication when blending Animation Attributes. This makes it so it blends from identity/default value rather than from zero for non-zero default attributes, e.g. Transform and Quaternion Attributes.

• Animation Sequence trimming tools:Inserting frames into Animation Sequence using timeline now prompts users for number of frames to insertTrimming/inserting frames now adjusts animation notify (states) and sync-markers correctly

• Added ability to lazy-initialize UAnimationSequencerDataModel's URigHierarchy data - to speed up editor load and cook memory footprint. Currently disabled by default. Use a.AnimSequencer.LazyRigHierarchyInitMode to enable using four different modes/values:

  • 0 = RigHierarchy is always initialized during PostLoad.

  • 1 = RigHierarchy is lazily initialized while running CookCommandlet otherwise during PostLoad

  • 2 = RigHierarchy is always lazily initialized when required for pose evaluation or model modification while not running CookCommandlet

  • 3 = RigHierarchy is always lazily initialized

• Enabled editing of overlapping AnimNotify(state) properties during multi selection.

• Composite character support in AnimNext:

  • Added new RigUnit to remap from one skeletal mesh to another.

  • Added re-usable remap pose data so we can use it in other places later on (like a copy from mesh anim graph node).

  • Added stats for it and separated the other remapping stats (from, to AnimBP, to local transforms).

  • Translational retargeting settings can now be inherited from a compatible skeleton.

    • This allows you to set up the per-bone translational retarget settings in the retarget manager just once for your core animations, and have different characters that are compatible with that skeleton play those animations and automatically use the per bone retarget modes from the source/core skeleton.

    • This means you do not have to set up the retarget modes for every character anymore. This is optional though. There is a new checkbox/boolean that allows you to enable this. It is disabled on default. You can find this setting/checkbox in the retarget manager in the skeleton asset editor, next to where you set up your compatible skeletons.

  • Post-process anim graphs in AnimNext Post-process anim graphs can now be set for a skeletal mesh in the skeletal mesh editor and is saved along with a new user asset data. There is also a new RigUnit to retrieve the post-process anim graph from a skeletal mesh to be fed into a run anim graph node together with the LOD threshold and if it should be run or not based on the LOD threshold and the given LOD level.

    • Added post process anim graph user asset data that we can add to skeletal meshes. This one holds the anim graph asset to use as post-processing anim graph.

    • Added a new UI widget that gets registered (via some custom delegate) by the AnimNext module so that the post-process anim graph property always shows up inside the skeletal mesh editor even if the user asset data is not present.

    • If a user sets a post-process anim graph, the user asset data automatically gets added to the skeletal mesh and removed when it is unset.

    • Created new post-process anim graph LOD threshold functions to be able to share it between AnimBPs and AnimNext, and kept and deprecated the old ones.

    • Added a new GetPostProcessAnimGraph RigUnit that takes the current LOD level and returns the post-process anim graph set on the skeletal mesh asset together with its LOD threshold as well as if it should be run based on the input LOD for convenience.

  • Running different LOD levels between running graphs as well as the visual mesh in the same AnimNext module e.g. running facial animation on another LOD than the driving animation on the body. And also running animation on a different LOD than the visual representation/skeletal mesh component.

    • Running animation graph with a lower-quality LOD level than the visual mesh now works. In this case we fill the missing transforms that the visual representation needs with reference pose transforms.

    • Running multiple anim graphs within a module with different LOD levels now works:

      • Source and target pose equal: Same as before, copying all transforms.

      • Source LOD < target LOD: Source LOD is set to a higher-quality LOD level and contains more bone transforms than we need. Just copy the ones we actually need.

      • Source LOD > target LOD: The source pose is missing transforms as it is set to a lower-quality LOD level, initialize the missing bone transforms with the reference pose transforms.

  • Added new test plugin inside EngineTest.

  • Added Animation Attributes Viewer to Animation editors.

  • Added Animation Track name property group to Animation Sequence details.

  • Added Compressed Animation data information property group to Animation Sequence details.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed issue causing reimported Animation Sequences from FBX not reflecting their respective new frame-rate.

• Breakpoints in Animation Blueprints can now get hit when not debugging a specific object.

• Skeletal mesh component global scale animation rate has been clamped to a minimum of 0, in order to avoid issues with global negative values in other dependant systems.

• Fix missing fast path icons for blend space nodes.

• Exposed bShouldStopAllMontages pin in latent Play Montage node

• Skeletal mesh editor now uses the required bones to display the skeleton tree, so the bones stay in sync with the preview scene, making it clear if bones are excluded or not.

• Added option to disable animation ticking when a skeletal mesh is directly occlusion/frustum culled

• Fixed potential race condition when building skinned asset linkup data

• Added checks in anim sequences and pose assets to avoid creating transient retarget source assets

• Fix for aim offset anim node to account for socket offset when calculating pivot location

• Fixed TSAN race condition around bForceRefPose flag

• Fixed crashes when re-instancing animation blueprints with custom proxies

• Fix FAnimMontageInstance::GetNextSection to return next section of instance rather than the montage default next section.

• Fix crash with setting bone name in skeletal mesh region bone filter.

• Fix crash in 'call function from anim graph' node BP menu population

• Deprecated USkeletalMeshComponent::SetAnimClass function

• Fixup redirects and remove UFUNCTION markup for redirected SetAnimClass function

• Ensure Dynamic Anim Montage use the target frame-rate from the Animation Sequence it is created for.

• Fix race condition between parent and child Anim BP class sparse class data patching/copying

• Fix race condition when copying sparse class data in base Anim BP subsystem

• AnimNext RigLogic trait crash: RigLogic crashed when the mesh's DNA for a given LOD had a bone enabled that wasn't part of the given pose's LOD. Filter these in the init-phase already in order to prevent out of bound access and avoid runtime checks.

• PR: Fix incorrect comparison of VisibilityBasedAnimTickOption in AnimationBudgetAllocator.

• Fix crash when selecting anim sequence with empty reference inside an anim composite.

• Fix the graph ordering constraint when using anim node reference node.

• AnimNext: Control rig trait crash fix Wrong skeletal mesh used which resulted in a crash for multi-mesh characters.

• Fix crashes when skeletal meshes are saved with more bones than their skeleton

• AnimNext: Crash when remap target has less LODs than the source skeletal mesh In case the source ref pose has fewer LOD levels available than the input/source pose, use the highest quality mapping available. This happens in case the source skeletal mesh does e.g. have 4 LODs while the target skeletal mesh only has 1. In this case we just create a single mapping for memory reasons as we'd store duplicated data otherwise and bones are guaranteed to be sorted.

• Fix Anim BP reinstancing crash in the edge case of a nested linked anim graph

• Fix assumption that compact pose always has the same set of bone indices as the ref pose override

• Properly accounted for keyframes that have an infinite error in ACL codec

• Fix mapping of DNA indices to UE bone and curve indices, such that the mapping cache key is composed from both the SkeletalMesh and Skeleton, not just the SkeletalMesh, and also make sure the containers are sorted during initialization to prevent it happening at runtime which may corrupt the data structure

• Fix montage editor selection issues. Dragging montage selections now correctly selects the montage. Marquee selection now requires the Alt modifier key.

• Allowed post process Animation Blueprints to be applied based on a LOD threshold per-component

• Ensure AnimationSequencerDataModel evaluation does not override bone pose in case the target reference skeleton is different to the Animation Sequence its reference skeleton.

• Fixed an Undo / Redo crash on animation sequences caused by outdated tooltips, by refreshing the notify list

• Animation Blueprints will no longer show animation graphs using animation layers default shared groups in My Blueprint.

• Fixed Regenerate LOD button not getting enabled in the Skeletal Mesh Editor under some circumstances at a post edit change

• Fixed problems editing various property types in anim notifies

• Fixed animation budget allocator debug rendering sometimes getting removed

• Fixed memory leak when switching skeletal meshes and setting animation mode during montages

• Fix anim getter node titles not updating on state rename.

• Made sure required bones are up to date when ticking animation

• Fix bone names being drawn for bones when they are not visible.

• Fixed OnlyTickMontagesAndRefreshBonesWhenPlayingMontages option updating the anim instance multiple times

• Fix copy-pasting shared transition rules not behaving correctly.

• Fixed compilation non-determinism in animation blueprints

• Fix to calculate all active transition alphas prior to setting state weights

• Fix potential invalid reference within budgeted components to deleted allocator

• Fix issue where sequence length of child montages could get out of sync with the parent asset. Also force update of common frame rate when child montage is created to prevent display of very large number of frames

• Added wait for additive base sequence to finish compressing before we attempt compression

• Fix invalid condition that was causing anim task evaluation to be triggered on the game thread, on the frame a mesh is spawned

• Prevent auto calculate significance overriding budget allocator component data flags

• Clamp preview cursor of blend space to bounds of blend space.

• Fix white thumbnail for skeletal meshes due to missing large icon file.

• Made DeviceProfiles::GetConsolidatedCVarValue thread-safe

• Deformed faces multi-threading issue in AnimNext RigLogic

• Ensure that Blendspace pose sampling forward the extraction context to the Animation Asset evaluation

• Fix double drawing of selected bone name when bone name drawing is enabled in the animation editors.

• Ensure that any Animation Sequence compressed data validation in cooked-editor runtime does not try to access editor-only data.

• Fix collapsed meshes with skeletal mesh components with disabled animation

• Add framework for supporting custom blend profile implementations in animation blueprints.

• AnimNext: Crash in remap pose node when either the source or target mesh are invalid when remapping attributes

• Replace invalid/stale assertion on mmap'd data to just assert on data type alignment for FScriptContainerElement. Assertion predates application bundles and as such, files may be addressed by offset which will not necessarily be platform page size aligned.

• Prevent possible crashes when there is a potential mismatch in bones between retarget transforms vs the animation transforms

• Fixed issue causing EvaluateAnimationBlueprintWithInputPose AnimationModifier node to not evaluate the pose correctly.

• Avoided container usage in loop that can modify its content

• Fixed ACL curve codec asserts in debug builds

• Skipped ACL error computation when logging isn't verbose

• Make SimulateAdvance symmetrical with Advance when dealing with ends of sections

• Prevented crash by disallowing renaming states in animation state machines to 'None'

• Fix memory leak when calling functions via property access that return non-POD values

• Fix skeletal meshes getting ticked offscreen incorrectly when using montage-related visibility options

• Fix uninitialized pose transforms being generated in some circumstances

• Minimize the amount of processing done in UAnimSequencerController::UpdateWithSkeleton - by first checking whether anything is actually going to change

• Replaced hard check(s) in AnimSequencerDataMode validation with error logging instead.

• Addressed issue where Animation Sequences could have matching DDC keys causing compressed animation data indeterminism: Animation Sequence X with length of 30 frames, containing uniform pose across its framesAnimation Sequence Y with length of 15 frames, containing uniform pose - matching that in X - across its frames. The DDC key now includes the number of frames to make it unique.

• Enabled component tick when unregistering from the Animation Budget Allocator

• Fix cook non-determinism with generated 'mutables' struct in animation blueprints

• Fix memory leak when GC-ing both skeletal mesh component & anim instance in the same pass

• Fix crash when creating a preview scene for animation assets with a deleted compatible skeleton

• Fix thumbnail scene references of anim sequences preventing deletion when assets contain notify states

• Fixed incorrect duplicate GUID warning when an Anim state machine transition rule is shared

• Fix copy-paste of transition nodes in Anim state machines creating duplicate GUIDs/assets

• Prevent renaming state machines to 'None' in Anim state machines

• Fix AnimSequence segment length fix button in AnimMontage not working

• UCopyBonesModifier::OnApply_Implementation optimization reimplemented pull-request using SetBoneTrackKeys rather than UpdateBoneTrackKeys to minimize controller operations

• Ensure that interactive changes are not processed in AnimationModifierAssetUserData::PostEditChangeOwner - causing excessive load and hangs.

• Changed Animation Modifier library plugin loading phase to be PreDefault, to ensure any referencing assets are loaded correctly.

• Creating an AnimStreamable asset no longer crashes the editor

• Remove usage of deprecated GetCompactPoseIndexFromSkeletonIndex

• Fixed issue of Control Rig writing Animation Attributes using Skeleton indices as CompactPose indices - causing remapping issues and potential crashes.

Sequencer

New:

• Ctrl-B now browses to the selected section's source object (ie. audio asset or skeletal animation asset)

• Sequencer Scripting: GetPlaybackStartPosition and GetPlaybackEndPosition functions now return the last valid frame that the playback controls in the UI respect

• ULevelSequenceEditorSubsystem::AddSpawnableFromInstance and AddSpawnableFromClass are now to be used in favor of UMovieSceneSequenceExtensions::AddSpawnableFromInstance and AddSpawnableFromClass

• Rerun Construction Scripts has been renamed to Allow Construction Scripts to Rerun Every Frame

• Sequencer Scripting: The CopyFolders function now recursively gathers tracks and objects to copy as well as folders

• Sequencer Scripting: The particle channel now has corresponding functions (AddKey, RemoveKey, GetKeys, etc)

• Link Filters with Curve Editor now allows the user to toggle whether Sequencer's filter should affect what tracks are shown in the Curve Editor

• Snap Keys to Elements and Snap Sections to Elements is now off by default

• Sequencer Scripting: The Transform function now allows you offset and scale keys in bulk

• Force Whole Frames is now a separate button on the toolbar

• Add ability to set the sequencer sections grip height

• Engine: CinematicTimeDilation can now be clamped, ie [/Script/Engine.WorldSettings] MinCinematicTimeDilation=0.0001, MaxCinematicTimeDilation=20.0

• Audio sections tooltips now indicate which attach socket they are attached to

• Duplicate keys are now removed when deselecting keys

• Sequencer Scripting: The GetSections function on the ScriptingObject now returns the sections given the nodes. This allows you to get the sections on a track row as well.

• The Material Parameter Collection track now has a button to browse to the source asset and a chooser to assign another asset

• Snap Keys and Sections is now Snap Keys to Elements

• When importing cameras apply uniform scale modifier to distance based parameters (Manual Focus Distance).

Bug Fix:

• Blueprint read only properties are no longer keyable.

• Fixed crash after tearing down a level sequencer object.

• Creating keys with the middle mouse button now only functions when there are no modifier keys pressed. This fixes an issue where if you zoom scroll (ctrl and middle mouse wheel) you might accidentally press the middle mouse button down, creating a bunch of keys.

• Labels in Sequencer now follow the same rules as labels in the Outliner. For example, when cubes are added sequentially, they will be named as Cube, Cube2, Cube 3, Cube 4 instead of Cube, Cube (1), Cube (1) (1), Cube (2) (1), etc.

• Ctrl+S in Sequencer will now perform all the specific sequence saving operations (ie. thumbnail, save all sequences from the root) and not just save the single sequence.

• GetPossessedObjectClass is now LOAD_EditorOnly so that it doesn't load during cooking.

• Pasting overlapping sections now outputs an error if the track doesn't allow overlaps.

• Component velocity is now reset in pre animated state. This fixes a bug where Sequencer will set component velocity when animating but never reset it when done. This bug had some unexpected side effects. If the user animates the transform of an object and then closes the Sequencer UI, the component velocity will have been retained.

• Movie Scene: Removed the reliance on actors and actor components for Media Player Proxies.

• Sequencer's cut/copy/duplicate commands no longer take priority over the Level Editor commands.

• The cursor no longer gets stuck when switching sequences.

• Keys are now copied in root time space so that they can be pasted into a different time space.

• When the user cancels a paste operation, it no longer continues pasting other sections.

• Send a track value changed if any property changed for skeletal animations. This fixes a bug where if you change any property on a skeletal mesh, the pose will revert to a t-pose until you scrub Sequencer again. This is because the change causes the skeletal mesh to update/tick, but since Sequencer data isn't actually changed (unless you autokey), Sequencer doesn't evaluate again.

• Keys no longer disappear when expanding a track that has no children (ie. Event and Spawn tracks).

• By default, the curve editor should not be visible until the user opens it.

• Reduce Tolerance in the right click menu of a track section no longer crashes.

• The bound actor is now selected only when the user selects child nodes. When you select keys/sections/layer bars, the corresponding bound actor is no longer automatically selected.

• Fix for a crash where Conditions are not weakly referenced by MovieSceneCompiledDataManager, and when a level sequence actor is destroyed that uses them, GC will crash on breaking Disregard for GC assumptions.

• Ease handles are now correctly displayed in frames

• Track rows on the cinematic shot track now correctly respects mute/deactivate

• Curve Editor: The retime tool now properly respects undo

• Add a key with the middle mouse button now properly respects snapping to whole frames

• Objects are now properly selected when they are initially added to the sequence

• A new infinite section is created automatically when you create a Console Variable track

• When deleting all keys, the current value is now set as the default value so that there is no visible change

• All selected bindings are expanded/collapsed when a selected binding is expanded/collapsed

• The actor reference key editor now properly finds the bound object so that it can display a component and socket chooser for the actor reference key

• Improved performance of dragging keys by optimizing the rebuilding of track model sections

• Cycling through time formats now properly skips past Hidden time formats

• Custom track names are no longer lost when upgrading spawnables from 5.4.

• Improve/restore remapping of bindings when objects are pasted. This now only remaps binding IDs in sections that are newly created.

  • However, if the user duplicates a camera that is referenced by a camera cut track, the camera cut track will not be switched to reference the newly created duplicate camera.

  • For example, if the user duplicates two bindings that are attached to each other, the newly created duplicates will be attached to each other.

• Fix RefreshBindingDetails so that it doesn't create a new BindingPropertyInfoList when the menu is still visible and instead just refills the existing menu. This fixes an issue where if you right click on Binding Properties and modify UOLs, it would only complete the first operation. For example, you have to open the menu, set the fragment to Actor, close the menu, open the menu, pick the Actor (you couldn't do this all with the menu open once).

• Binding labels are now updated properly when using Assign Actor->Add Selected or Replace with Selected

• Ctrl double click on a subsequence to open the the subsequence no longer crashes

• Layer bars are no longer selected when pressing the right mouse button

• Fix Vector4f properties crashing sequencer

• The AutoSize computation now correctly calculates the range of the source object

• Fixing a bug where decal material tracks would display red and disconnected when they were actually connected.

• Rebind Possessable References now correctly rebinds child components

• Select All in Selection Range now prioritizes keys over sections just as when you do a marquee select in the track area

• Sequencer Scripting: The SetObjectPropertyClass function now correctly initializes the object property track

• Changes in the key editor are now only committed on pressing Enter

• Copy/pasting multiple sections from different rows are now pasted onto the same corresponding rows

• Group and level filters now correctly reset when filters are reset

• Fix ensure hit when creating piecewise curves from curves with multiple keys on the same frame

• Ensure that evaluation context buffers have been flipped if an eval task is active prior to forced update

Skeletal Editing

New:

• Exposed TriEdit in the skeletal mesh editor.

• Exposed the vertex color paint tool in the skeletal mesh editor.

Editor

New:

• Added UMaterial and UMaterialInstance asset validators.

• Added ability to create preview shader platforms in DataDrivenPlatformInfo.

• [Selection] Allow for BP ISM components to opt into per hit proxy generation, so that PCG workflows can set this on BP ISM components.

• Added API to manage and query uncontrolled changelists via their internal GUIDThis is useful for creating programatic uncontrolled changelists (with a fixed ID) that aren't the default changelist.

• Imath version was upgraded to 3.1.12

• Boost version was upgraded to 1.85.0

• [Content Browser] Change the default preference for showing "Content" suffix on folders to false. We have added icons which denote additional content directories from plugins which are the visual differentiator now.

• Use the TextureLODSettings of the preview DP when preview is active.

• UEditorEngine::Save now includes the path of the package being saved in its Unreal Insights trace information, matching the convention established by Load.

• Modify maximize/restore button so that it drops you out of windowed-fullscreen.

• Improve Previewing Texture Streaming Pool in Editor - Get the correct PoolSize value from the DP cvar in Texture Streaming Stats - Exclude Editor Resident Memory from the Runtime Resident Memory in Texture Streaming Stats.

• Add multi selection for static mesh sockets in the static mesh editor.

• OpenEXR version was upgraded to 3.3.2

• Improve display of Far View Plane slider so that the maximum value more intuitively represents "Infinity" rather than zero.

• [TEDS] Added option to batch delete rows from TEDS and made the Index Table use garbage collection.

  • Options to batch delete rows from TEDS have been added.

    • The second version removes all rows that match a set of provided columns for better performance when large tables are removed.

    • The first option deletes all in the provided list of rows.

  • This process is spread out over multiple threads and multiple frames and targets no more than 2ms per frame by selfbalancing job counts per frame and rows per batch. This also only happens after at least one row has been deleted so if a user isn't interacting with the editor typically no work is done.

  • The extra benefit is that the Index Table now doesn't add any cost during deletion, where previously even rows that didn't have an index would pay the cost for checking and updating the Index Table's internal bookkeeping.

  • The downside is that while there's pending clean up work, resolving a hash to a row handle is more expensive and periodically 2ms per frame is used up for the cleanup cycle.

  • It does this to avoid the overhead of first compiling a list of entities to remove, but the downside is that these were needed by the Index Table to clean itself properly. 

  • To avoid adding this cost, the Index Table has been updated to not immediately check to see if a deleted row needs to be removed from itself, but instead uses a garbage collection like approach by first going over all its stored rows to see if any have been removed and then clears out the ones that have been removed.

  • Additional changes made:

    • Reindexing a row in the TEDS Index Table no longer needs the row itself.

    • A utils header was introduced. It currently provides functions that quickly convert to/from Mass entity (arrays).

    • Unsafe versions of IsRowAvailable and IsRowAssigned have been added that omit checking if the database has been initialized. This is internal to the TEDS plugin and can be used in most places that get created during initialization to save on a bit of performance cost checking the state.

    • Marked UEditorDataStorage as "final" to give the compiler a few more optimization opportunities whenever a pointer of reference to UEditorDataStorage is directly called.

• [TEDS] Added an std::initializer_list constructor to FRowHandleArrayView. There were lifecycle issues when constructing an FRowHandleArrayView with an inline array, e.g. FRowHandleArrayView({1,2,3}, ...). With the initializer list and lifetime checks this should be avoided now.

• [Transforms] Flip left / right ortho camera to align to camera view space Update 2x2 default to flip orientation of panes vertically

• [TEDS] Added a Query Stack node that monitors for row adds/removes to keep a row list up to date. The new Query Stack node takes either a fixed list of columns to monitor or extracts them from a provided query. It then sets up add and remove observers to collect changes that it will apply to the list of rows once per update. If a row node is provided as a parent, this node will try to update the parent's row array, otherwise it will keep a local array. In order to support monitoring the Row Handle Array had to be extended with support for removing rows.

• [TEDS] Added a Query Stack node that monitors for row adds/removes to keep a row list up to date.

• Modify startup ordering to ensure a consistent time for FEdMisc to initialize during editor startup

• The "Settings" menu in the level editor is now hidden by default. All contents have been migrated elsewhere.# Set "LevelEditorToolbarSettings 1" to re-enable the menu.

• Greatly speedup material validator by only translating material to HLSL first and only compiling if estimated amount of samplers exceed platform limits

• Pugixml: added an installation of third-party library pugixml version 1.15 as a module

• Aspect Ratio Preview fixes and Safe Zones preview implementation Wrapped the main editor viewport in the middle of a 3x3 grid in order to restrict aspect ratio for preview platforms that request it. By default, without preview or aspect ratio restriction, the middle cell will fill the entire screen. Safe Zones are gathered from adb dumpsys windows display atm and made resolution independent

• Add option to open .uproject directly in visual studio as well as an option to prefer preview releases

• Waveform Editor: UI buttons added to waveform toolbar to allow creating a new cue marker, a new loop region or to delete a selected marker or loop region.

• Add filter UI to SDeleteAssetsDialog to allow usage of FARFilters and other filters (e.g. writeable, checked out, gameplay tags)

• Waveform Editor: Real-time loop preview audio selected loop regions

• When sorting the autocomplete list, console commands that actually begin with what the user typed will appear at the top. This makes it consistent with the other command box.

• The ASTC texture format has been improved and updated when using astcenc:

  • The ASTC texture format now encodes using multiple threads.

  • ASTC can now support multiple versions to encode with, defaulting to the version that was current before this release (4.2.0).

• [TEDS Compatibility API] Refactoring TEDS compatibility API UScriptStructs to use const and const_cast

• Add PlatformName to FDataDrivenShaderPlatformInfo. In Editor, when using -game we now also load the TPS module of the preview platform if we are using OverrideSP command

• Use the Runtime Value of bSupportsInlineRayTracing and bSupportsRayTracingShaders for preview platforms This avoids getting in a bad state where the Preview platform has bSupportsRayTracing=true, but bSupportsRayTracingShaders=bSupportsInlineRayTracing=false while Runtime RHI globals like GRHISupportsRayTracing is true, leading to crashes because of missing shaders. Like Android VK SM5 Preview in D3D Editor

• Re-enable VK SM5 preview for D3D Force SM6 for preview VK SM5, Mac SM5 Enable Lumen Support for Preview VK SM5, Mac SM5 Modifying FeatureLevelSwitch to respect the parent ShaderPlatform FeatureLevel and not the one set by preview in order to have consistent material logic with the Shader Platform we are trying to preview

• Chooser tables: Add NoPrimaryResult chooser type. This is mostly UX fluff for when you are just interested in writing output values (especially integral ones), and not in returning an asset or class per se.

  • Fix EvaluateChooser BP node showing input struct pins as by-value when they are by-reference (the node modifies Read/Write parameters in-place)

  • Adapt EvaluateChooser BP node to hide the Result pin and Mode setting in case we are working with NoPrimaryResult.

  • Fix EvaluateChooser BP node compiling itself out along what followed its Then pin if no value pin was connected (it was setup as a Pure node)

• Added FScopedDisableSourceControl. This is more reliable than disabling the current provider for things like temporarily disabling source control when saving writable files, as disabling the provider causes other systems to interact with that change and potentially do expensive refreshes. It also keeps things like Perforce connected to their server, and avoids losing any source control settings.Note: ISourceControlModule::GetProvider still returns the current source control provider even when temporarily disabled, so code must also check ISourceControlModule::IsEnabled before using it.

• Favor using uncontrolled changelists (if possible) when using the BackupAndOverwrite auto-save method

• Exporting AssetDefinition_DataTable and DataAssetFactory via API macro, so that user projects can create subclasses.

• Allow IsAutoSaving to query for both transient or persistent auto-savesNote: It still only queries for transient auto-saves by default, to maintain backwards compatibility with the existing API

• Add Default Button to Scalability Menu in Editor that will reset the scalability to what the device profile initially set

• Allow a custom EditCondition to be treated as an additional condition rather than an overrideThis is controlled by a new ECustomEditConditionMode argument to EditCondition, and makes it easier to add additional EditCondition to a property via a detail customization, without replacing the EditCondition that was set on the property itself.

• Update OutputLog with improved behavior, display, and saved filter settings.

• [TEDS] Added a new array and array view optimized for row handles.

• TBB version was upgraded to (oneTBB) 2021.13.0

• OpenVDB version was upgraded to 12.0.0

• Add "Show in Content Browser" option for plugins in the Plugin Reference Viewer.

• [TEDS] Initial step for the TEDS Query Stack. This change list adds the TEDS Query Stack module. The Query Stack can be used to composite nodes together that each have a unique ability that when combined creates a stack to handle complex row handle manipulation.

  • The first version includes two nodes:

    • Row view node: a node that takes a collection of row handles and allows them to be used in the query stack.

    • Row merge node: a node that has zero or more parent nodes that it combines together into a new list of nodes.

  • Merging can happen in the following ways:

    • Append: The parents are appended to each other without any further manipulation.

    • Sorted: The parents are combined together into a sorted list.

    • Unique: The parents are combined together into a sorted list and only one instance of any row handle is kept.

    • Repeated: The parents are combined together into a sorted list and only row handles are kept that appear at least twice in the result.

• Added a new plugin, Directory Placeholders, which adds a new asset type, the Directory Placeholder. This is a very small asset with no properties, whose sole purpose is to act as a placeholder so that an otherwise empty folder can be submitted to source control. This plugin also adds a feature to automatically generate placeholder assets when new folders are created, and delete them when otherwise empty folders are deleted.

• Material Editor: Double clicking on the parameter rows in the parameter tab jumps to and selects parameter nodes.

• Expose control of the Near View Plane in the level editor viewport options.

• Allow custom ISM editor proxy objects

• [TEDS] Added support for retrieving delta time in the TEDS Query Callbacks.

• The Texture Editor now has a tab showing what various texture properties will be resolved to for each platform. This includes mip sizes, which mips are streaming/optional, as well as the final pixel format and texture format.

• [TEDS] New Query Stack nodes to manage queries.

• Improved the consistency of data validation auto-registration. Data validation now hooks into module load/unload and Blueprint asset creation/deletion to update the set of auto-registered validators accordingly.

• [DataTable Import Options] Adding a reimport options popup to when the Curve Table reimport button is pressed so an interpolation mode can be selected

• Allow overriding the MessageLog name used for validation errors

• [TEDS] New Query Stack node to manage a row handle array directly as well as a new interface call so nodes can share row arrays.

• [TEDS] Added a Query Stack node that converts queries to row handle arrays. This change also has a small behavior change to queries that only have a context. Instead of running them repeatedly for each row, they now only get called once. A query callback with this signature will have to do any work to access rows internally so it fits better to not attempt to do a row iteration.

• Aspect Ratio added to Android Json Preview

• [Viewports] Viewport camera navigation: Add local up/down movement with R/F

• Waveform Editor: Waveform editor UI updated to allow controlling a loop region with the mouse. This includes selecting a region by clicking on it, highlighted mouse drag handles for the left and right bounds of the loop and the ability to drag a loop region by clicking and dragging from an area inside it.

• [TEDS] Extended the widget constructor class with a way to provide sorting information. This is part of a larger effort to introduce generic sorting through TEDS to the editor.

• Waveform Editor: Keyboard shortcuts to modify the loop region bounds in Waveform. This includes incrementing and decrementing the start and end bounds, changing the increment step amounts, and selecting the next or previous region. All key binds can be remapped in settings.

• [TEDS Core API] Refactoring TEDS Core API UScriptStructs to use const and const_cast

• Add an in-PIE toolbar that can control view modes and show flags.

• New: Added automatic installation of the Android Emulator during Android setup, and creation of an AVD suitable for UE.New: Added launching an AVD Emulator to UBT command line with -device=avd- syntax.

• Update UBT to report when a project uses a deprecated plugin and promote the field to the PluginManager so users can see when a plugin is mounted that has been marked deprecated.

• Add a "Diff Against" menu entry that allows users to pick any other asset of the same type to diff. This will appear anywhere we show revision control options for assets.

• Ctrl+RMB will always create the AddMenu in the ContentBrowser

• Templates can now have Variants.

• Initial release of the new Project Launcher tool. The existing tool is still available as Legacy Project Launcher from the Platforms menu.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed assert when copying from spline properties that have different values (prevent copying when this happens)Added copy/paste options to the spline point's type property

• [TEDS] Fixed an issue where ListColumns wouldn't report pending columns. To remain consistent with `HasColumns`, `ListColumns` should also return the list of columns that are known up until that point. Since this applies to reserved rows, it's still impossible to return the list of columns for the table as those are not yet known. The documentation in the interface has been updated to reflect this.

• Fix 10x source code accessor to pull the correct solution file name

• Allowed GetAllowedClasses metadata to use fully-qualified paths to function libraries, enabling use on USTRUCTs

• Hide several asset actions in context menu for aliases in content browser

• Reverting a source control added file with "Should Delete New Files on Revert" disabled will now track it as an uncontrolled add, rather than leave it in limbo

• Fix crash in composite curve editor when table view tab closed

• Allow GetOptions metadata to work for nodes other than 'call function'

• Fix a regression that causes editinline subobject override names to no longer map to default subobject archetypes.

• Fixed bug where FAssetManagerEditorModule::WriteCollection tries to add PackageNames to the wrong collection share type.

• Fix editor crash refreshing widgets of tool menus

• [Property Matrix Editor] Can now unselect individual cells from the property matrix editor

• Fix an issue where the level editor toolbar started to clip items while there was still free space.

• Keep Simulation Changes should now properly keep all the changes

• Fix Wrong texture format used in velocity pass with mobile preview

• [Revision Control] Fix an issue where renaming files resulted in no revision control history for the new, moved file

• [Gizmos] Fixed Translate and Rotate gizmo's not fully rendering properly at the widget matrix

• Bug Fix: Fixed that installing the Android SDK from the Editor Platform menu doesn't take effect until after a restart on Windows, by broadcasting environment variable changes.

• Fix to stop a crash on Mac when diffing files with Git

• Encoding fix for PipInstall which should avoid crashes on systems where UE is installed in a path with special characters.

• [Curve Editor] Fixed Crashes in array remove/clear and undo/redo, when the curve data is inline allocated in a container, or wrapped by InstancedStruct

• Fix unchanged assets being marked as dirty when checking out unrelated assets

• Added success/failure message when reverting an uncontrolled changelist, to match the UX of reverting a controlled changelist

• Optimized the uncontrolled and unsaved filter processing in the scene outliner

• Convert a delete to a checkout when restoring a deleted actor via an interactive save

• Fix crash on Mac preview when mobile deferred is activated

• [Curve Editor] Fix crash when Curve wrapped by InstanceStruct gets reset/replaced, causing memory address to change.

• Propagate outer object archetype flags to inner optional subobject archetypes when instanced at edit time in order to allow packages containing one or more instances of those subobjects to import them at save time.

• Fix material editor keeping reference to derived material instances during level unloading

• [Curve Editor] Fixed Curve Editor not updated its data when resetting the runtime curve property

• [Debug Draw] Fix a crash when brushes don't have any polys to draw

• Fixed bug where FCollectionManager::EmptyCollection returns false when it successfully empties a collection rather than true.

• Make CustomDepth behave same between Editor and EditorPreview on mobile platform

• [Editor Mode Plugin Template] Fixed a bug of a new plugin not creating with the Editor Plugin template and non-unity mode is enabled / general cleanup

• [Curve Editor] - Fixed editor locking issue when the user resets any property to default on the property chain

• [TEDS] Fixed the TEDS Query Builder not being able to bind to a referenced lambda.

• [TEDS] Alerts could attempt to check a parent that has become invalid, causing a crash deep in Mass due to an invalid archetype.

• Fixed FValidateAssetsDetails::ValidationMessages not being populated when using FValidateAssetsSettings::bCollectPerAssetDetails

• Fix SplineComponent Losing Custom Tangents of adjacent points when inserting point.

  • Needed updates to fit with the current implementation

• [Viewports] Fixed zoom ratio to be consistent in ortho viewport.

• Fixed FText time zone conversions

• Fixed a bug associated with shared linear and cpu accessible textures.

• Bug Fix: Fixed Quick Launch to build the correct architecture of the selected Android device.

• Bug Fix: Removed stopping latency of Android Device Detection thread on close.Bug Fix: Added 10s timeout to ADB in Android Device Detection thread.

• PixelInspector: Fixed aspect-ratio-constrained viewport inspecting.

• Fix regression where browse to asset no longer works on unloaded assets

• Include propagated subobject and archetype flags on new instances constructed for non-nullable editable reference container properties on editor "add" actions.

• For PreviewShaderPlatform do not try to inherit from ParentShaderPlatform if that Section does not exist

Deprecated:

• Deprecating the "Tiling" style of texture formats.This only affects users who have implemented their own texture formats (derived from ITextureFormat) and implemented the CompressImageTiled style instead of the normal CompressImage(Ex) path. The CompresImageTiled path will be removed soon.

• Truncation Warnings enabled for ToolMenu and ToolWidget modules

• Truncation warnings are enabled in the Graph Editor module. Graph Editor module APIs were updated to use FVector2f for slate positioning, and FVector2D functions were deprecated.

Datasmith

New:

• [solidworks] Add support for Datasmith exporter plugin for Solidworks 2025

• Alembic version was upgraded to 1.8.7

Bug Fix:

• [CAD] Fixed some import of CAD files containing non-manifold mesh hanging the editor

• Fixed occasional crash importing CAD files

• Fixed crash importing CAD scene with root node(and below) hidden

• Fixed some file import of CAD files hanging the editor

• SketchUp Datasmith Exporter : Fix NaN in Transforms due to double -> float -> double conversion that is now useless. Culprit was creating an Identity FQuat from a Imath::Quat.

Framework

New:

• Adding a PropertyVisibilityOverrideSubsystem which can handle multiple override delegates for controlling property visibility on a property-by-property basis.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed TOptional properties not being fully hidden when using MarkHiddenByCustomization because the flag was not applied to the eventual child optional node (also fixed MarkResetToDefaultCustomized and ClearResetToDefaultCustomized)

• Fixed an issue where world partitioning would assume worlds were PIE worlds in -game or -server modePlace One Filer Per Actor (OFPA) actors in a sublevel instead of the Memory package in -game or -server mode to mimic what happens when the level is cooked.

• Bug Fix: Updated the scene outliner tree item id from uint32 to uint64, as other systems like TEDS where using item IDs represented with uint64.

• Fixed a crash that could happen on undo/redo of a static mesh component change where the component could attempt to access invalid static mesh render data.

• Property Editor: Standalone Widgets now use visibility attribute.

  • The GenerateStandaloneWidget method now copies the visiblity attribute when using a customisation.

• Fixed an assert when looking up localized package names in -game or -server mode

• In the startup of the geometry framework module, skip registering the level editor outliner filter in -server mode

Interchange

New:

• Allow saving and loading translator settings via Python

• Use "usdc" as default payload format when exporting to USD

• Use InstancedStaticMeshComponents instead of HierarchicalInstancedStaticMeshComponents components when opening or importing USD stages, whenever possible

• Prevent unnecessary patching of USD plugInfo.json files every editor launch

• Export Unreal level by default when exporting level sequences to USD, defaulting to the current level

• Show the root layer as dirty by default for new USD stages made with the USD Stage Editor

• Change USD metersPerUnit handling to use doubles instead of floats whenever possible

• MaterialX: upgraded MaterialX to version 1.38.10

• Keep track of previously added USD API schema names and show those on the Add Schema list, whenever right-clicking a prim on the USD Stage Editor

• Updated the LoadAll/LoadNone payload options on the USD Stage Editor to also affect the currently opened stage and its payloads

• Added support for converting more UsdGeomCamera parameters into the corresponding Unreal camera properties

• Handle textures inside USDZ files when importing via USD Interchange

• Support variant-style LODs via USD Interchange

• Add support for USD stages referencing OpenVDB files via USD Interchange and SparseVolumeTextures assets

• Add new Interchange MaterialReferenceNode to allow describing material assignments of existing material assets

• Move USD Geometry Purpose option from USD Interchange translator settings to the new USD Pipeline

• Add support for making primvar-compatible material instances on USD Interchange

• There's a new experimental Interchange USD plugin that must now be enabled manually to support importing USD files through Interchange.

• Downgrade warning into a log when MDL SDK is not available as that can prevent cooking in some cases

• Allow material slot merging to affect imported multi-LOD meshes from USD, for static and skeletal mesh assets

• Added an option to set the root prim name when exporting Levels and LevelSequences to USD

• Interchange : in FBX parser, add different possible texture paths encoded in fbx file like we used to have in Legacy FBX importer (Absolute, Relative to fbx source file)

• Re-enable the cvar for import into level via USD interchange for 5.6

• Try to pick up any new existing assets on the asset cache's asset folder before loading a stage

• The USD Stage Editor will now show prim kind on the properties panel even if the prim doesn't have any opinion authored, so that we can author a new one via the combo box

• Improve support for UTF8 USD strings and paths on USD importer plugins

• Added new items to the Options menu on the USD Stage Editor to allow quickly selecting the currently bound stage actor and opening its LevelSequence with the Sequencer

• Import USD prim visibility onto actors/components on the level when importing via USD Interchange

• Add support for specifying component/actor visibility on Interchange scene and factory nodes

• Add a new InterchangeUSDPipeline for some USD-related factory node post-processing

• Allow removing the ParentNodeUid of a given node

• Use shorter file names and file paths when exporting levels, level sequences and assets to USD

• Add USD prim kind as a custom Interchange translated scene node attribute

• Translate USD prim attributes as Interchange translated node attributes (just non-animated, non-array attributes for now)

• Added support for importing geometry caches through Interchange USD.

• Fix "Import as Material" vs "Import as Material Instance" issues for USD Interchange

• OpenUSD version was upgraded to v25.02a

• Move USD MDL schema translator to dedicated plugin that can be independently disabled

• Add USDImporter option for setting FallbackCollisionType for static meshes, when opening and importing USD Stages

• Add support for physics collision schemas via USD Interchange

• Use more sparse typename authoring when adding references/payloads and exporting assets, Levels and LevelSequences to USD

• Add new Interchange project settings for controlling when to display the reimport options dialog. Overrides can be placed per asset type and translator

• Refactor USD error and logging utilities to better utilize the message log for user-facing messages, and to automatically deduplicate similar messages

• Show some feedback when trying to reimport with USD Importer something that was imported via USD Interchange

• Fix USD Interchange not being able to parse skeletal animations when the animSource relationship is authored within the Skeleton prim itself

• The USD Stage Editor will no longer try to reuse static meshes in case it needs to specify different collision settings. It will instead make a new, separate static mesh

• Assign AnimSequences to spawned SkeletalMeshComponents when importing USD stages through Interchange

• Optimize generation of skeletal meshes with many morph targets when parsing stages via USD Interchange

• Enable support for producing textures with non-power-of-2 sizes from USD Interchange imports

• Simplify handling of skinned meshes to just use bind pose on meshes and skeletons, fixing incorrect morph target results in complex cases.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed materials exported from UE importing via USD interchange as black plastic without any warning or feedback

• Fixed missing skeleton when Skeleton prim is named after one of its own bones

• Only clean up the USD asset cache when actively closing stages

• Fixed duplicate morph targets when importing skeletal meshes.

• Fixed spawnable USD stage actors not animating in PIE or showing up in MovieRenderQueue

• Fixed some strange behavior when playing LevelSequences with spawnable USD stage actors during PIE.

• Fixed textures not being parsed via USD Interchange translation in some scenarios.

• Fix errors when undoing setting a prim purpose via the USD Stage Editor in some scenarios

• Fixed multiple issues when manipulating visibility of the prims/components related to point instancers

• Prevented the USD Stage Editor clear payloads/references buttons from being enabled if the prim doesn't have a payload/reference spec in the local layer stack

• Fixed multiple issues when manipulating the stage properties relevant for the USD stage actor's LevelSequence, especially related to start/end time codes and playback ranges

• Fixed a crash when importing USD blend shapes with invalid point indices

• Fixed USD level exporter generating invalid point instancers if a foliage static mesh fails to export

• Patch USD plugInfo.json files only when needed

• Fixed USD stage importer top-level actors having RF_Public flag, triggering crashes on WorldPartition levels

• Fixed a crash when failing to produce some asset types during the process of opening USD stages

• Automatically resize subsequence sections to match the USD stage's playback range

• Fixed USD stage actor losing connection to its spawned actors and components after recompiling its blueprint

• Fixed ensure/error spam when force-deleting the asset cache currently in use by a stage actor

• Fixed a warning about UnrealUSDWrapper module not being loaded when cooking

• Fix warnings about asset names differing from package names when opening USDZ stages with textures via the USD Stage Actors

• Fix crash when parsing USD skeletal mesh data with polygons that have 0 vertices

• Prevent render contexts registered for the USD Stage Actor from showing up on Interchange USD's list

• Fixed a crash when undoing a change that regenerated the Time track on the USD Stage Actor's LevelSequence

• Fixed an off-by-one error when exporting AnimationSequences to USD which was causing animations to be one frame too short

• Fix import of USD stages with skeletal animations and blend shapes not flagging the curves as morph target curves

• Implemented a fallback for collecting mesh data from USD Mesh prims in case it was authored all on a single time sample

• Fix USD asset imports persistently disabling the option to import actors on the USD Stage Importer options dialog, when importing via Python

• Fixed DisplayColors materials no longer working via Interchange USD

• Fixed USD AssetCache cleaning assets way too aggressively, ignoring some situations where they were still actively being used

• Fixed crash when importing a stage with a component of the previous import already selected.

• Prevented the binding of stage actor properties other than Time onto its LevelSequences

• Fixed draw mode extents animation not being written out to USD

• Fixed USD AssetCache never cleaning up GeometryCaches as the asset cache's own reference to the asset was being counted as an "external reference".

• Fixed a crash when using the USD Stage Editor and trying to reuse a LevelSequence that was destroyed during PlayInEditor

• Fixed a Mac-specific crash when reloading USD Stages with the USD Stage Editor

• Remove unnecessary stopping of VolumeComponents whenever the USD Stage Editor updated them

• Fixed assets and components not being cleaned up when a prim is removed from the stage

• Fix USD level exports creating empty prims for Brush actors

• Fixed isolate layers functionality of the USD Stage Editor not using UE transactions or being undo/redoable

• Fixed crash when reimporting a static mesh with a skeletal mesh USD file

• Fixed failing to duplicate prims on the USD Stage Editor in some complex scenarios

• Fixed a crash when turning the USD stage actor into a spawnable within it's own LevelSequence

• Fixed a crash when parsing skeletal meshes with no mesh data from USD files

• Allow undo/redoing apiSchema/reference/payload changes after tweaking them on the USD Stage Editor

• Fixed more issues related to LevelSequence handling on the USD Stage Editor, related to sublayers, offsets and scales

• Fixed an ensure when opening USD stages that reference .mdl materials that don't exist

• Fixed a logic error when detecting whether to enable the USD SDK or not

• Fix incorrect item count after removing one entry from Interchange ArrayHelpers with duplicate entries

• Fix broken skeletal meshes when handling USD skeletal data with faces that have less than 3 vertices

• Fix asset references from the currently opened Level and blueprint previews not being updated when reimporting assets from USD

• Fixed a crash when using using the Actions -> Import option on the USD Stage Editor while the stage's LevelSequence was opened

• Fixed how the Sequencer wouldn't properly refresh in some workflows that involved regenerating the USD Stage Actor's LevelSequence

• Fix AnimSequences seeming to have no animation data after using Actions -> Import on the USD Stage Editor

• Fix USD Interchange not producing AnimSequence assets whenever the animation length wasn't an integer multiple of the bake interval

• Allow discovering and reusing existing Material Instance assets from the content browser when importing with Interchange and using the material search location option.

• Fix Interchange USD not using timeCodesPerSecond when baking skeletal animation assets

• Fix name-prefix-based collision meshes sometimes being imported as separate static meshes via Interchange in some scenarios with name collisions

Scripting

New:

• Add ToolMenuContext DebugLogContextObjectClasses() scripting function for python to see what context objects are available

• Added a CookAsset function to CookFunctionLibrary, an experimental function which allows for an asset to be cooked from an editor script

• Improved Python initialization API for deferred initialization

  • Added IPythonScriptPlugin::IsPythonConfigured and IPythonScriptPlugin::OnPythonConfigured to know when Python has been configured by deferred initialization.

  • Added IPythonScriptPlugin::IsPythonInitialized to compliment IPythonScriptPlugin::OnPythonInitialized for deferred initialization.

  • Added IPythonScriptPlugin::RegisterOnPythonConfigured and IPythonScriptPlugin::RegisterOnPythonInitialized as convenience wrappers around their respective IsX and OnX functions.

  • Fixed -ExecutePythonScript failing with deferred initialization by updating it to use these new APIs.

• Exposed DuplicateObject to editor scripting

• [Revision Control] Add batch versions of get status and provide information on branch status to the BPFL SourceControlHelpers

• Added support for lazy Python initialization, when running with 'Engine.Python.IsEnabledByDefault' set to false.

  • This allows tools that require Python to request that it be enabled and initialized on-demand at runtime, rather than require everyone have Python enabled in-case they want to use any tooling that uses Python.

  • This can be triggered by calling IPythonScriptPlugin::ForceEnablePythonAtRuntime (from C++) or UPythonScriptLibrary::ForceEnablePythonAtRuntime (from BP).

  • ForceEnablePythonAtRuntime will flag Python as being enabled, and can be called at any point. If called prior to Python being ready to initialize, it will just set a flag for it to use to enable itself when it's ready. If Python has already passed the point where it would have naturally initialized (past OnPostEngineInit) then it will immediately initialize Python. Similarly, if Python has passed the point where it would have naturally run its start-up scripts (the first Tick) then it will immediately run the start-up scripts.

  • Running the Python commandlet (-run=PythonScript) or the Python executor (-ExecutePythonScript) will automatically call ForceEnablePythonAtRuntime as those tools always require Python to be enabled.

  • A user may choose to enable Python temporarily via the new "Enable Python" menu entry in the Output Log, or permanently via the EnablePythonOverride property in UPythonScriptPluginUserSettings. EnablePythonOverride set to Enabled acts the same as passing -EnablePython on the command line, and set to Disabled acts the same as passing -DisablePython on the command line.

• Exposed utils for querying whether and asset or object is cooked or has its editor-only data, or whether an asset is considered read-only in-memory

• Level Editor: The GetExactCameraView/SetExactCameraView functions now allow the user to toggle bLockedCameraView

• Added basic support for deprecated enum entries in PythonNote: This is currently limited to entities deprecated via ScriptName meta-data on the enum entry

• Added new ToolkitBuilder UI layout to ScriptableTools. The older layout is still accessible through the ScriptableTools project settings bUseLegacyPalette option.

• Scriptable Tools now supports command registration in the new ToolkitBuilder UI layout. This allows Scriptable Tools to now be individually keybound in Editor Preferences.

• DiffString has been added to KismetStringLibrary/StringLibrary as an editor only method for diffing two strings from blueprints, python, or C++

• Improvements to editor utility start-up and unload management

  • Editor utilities may now opt-in to running on start-up via a new 'Run on Start-up' option on their Class Defaults.

  • Like the existing StartupObjects config array method, this requires that the Blueprint implement a Run function/event, and the editor will wait until the main editor frame is available before running this function/event.

  • The new 'Run on Start-up' option also requires that the initial asset registry scan has completed, so may run later than the StartupObjects config array method.

• Added GetBlueprintForClass to find the Blueprint object that generated a class, if any

• EditTextSourceString scripting improvements

  • Added a variant of UKismetTextLibrary::EditTextSourceString that takes a property name, so that Python can also use it.

  • Updated UKismetTextLibrary::Generic_EditTextPropertySourceString to respect the read-only state of the property (via PropertyAccessUtil).Updated UKismetTextLibrary::Generic_EditTextPropertySourceString to emit pre/post edit change events (via PropertyAccessUtil) when in the editor.

  • Updated UKismetTextLibrary::Generic_EditTextPropertySourceString to perform archetype value propagation (via PropertyAccessUtil) when in the editor.

• Exposed unreal.collect_garbage() to PythonUnlike unreal.SystemLibrary.collect_garbage(), this runs immediately (rather than the next frame) and will handle being called from a commandlet correctly

Bug Fix:

• Any blueprint that is based on an editor only class can now use the editor utility APIs

• Run a Python GC prior to the UE GCThis helps to clean-up any reference cycles that Python might have that are keeping UObject instances alive

• Fixed crash when an exception is encountered when evaluating the inputs of an Execute Python Script node

• JsonObjectGraph::Stringify now properly encodes subobjects of objects in the transient package

• [Scripted Asset Actions] Fix an issue where types derived from blueprints would not filter correctly in scripted asset actions for blueprint actions. This was caused by the modification to stop fully loading assets on right click. We were only walking the native class chain in the case the asset action was for blueprint types, since those are no longer loaded fully on a right click

  • Cvar to enable: Editor.AssetActions.ExperimentalClassSupport 1

• Fixed ScriptName deprecation failing to handle the real property/function name being used as the deprecated name. e.g.: A function called GetLODs in C++ having a ScriptName of "GetLods;GetLODs" would fail to export the "GetLODs" deprecated entry as it still resolved to an existing function, despite having a different name than "GetLods" when exposed to Python (GetLods -> get_lods; GetLODs -> get_lo_ds).

• The BlueprintEditorLibrary AddMemberVariableWithValue function now properly sets the provided default on the created member variable

• Defer any -execcmds for Python that are requested before it's fully initialized

• Tests based on editor only AFunctionalTest classes now run in an editor world, rather than a PIE world

• Fixed auto-save failing to update the state of source controlled files when using an uncontrolled changelist

• The object associated with an FSubobjectData should now be retrieved by GetAssociatedObject rather than GetObject, this new function will properly resolve the object using the root context, rather than potentially returning a template object

• Don't call back into Python tick callbacks while user Python script is already running on the stack

• Keep legacy Python type redirectors alive through a Garbage Collect

• Cleaned up LODs -> lo_ds in Python exposed APIThere is now a clean lods version, and the lo_ds variant is deprecated

• Add redirector for the PythonGeneratedClass CDO (from the old short name to the new unique name)

• Fixed an issue where ScriptableInteractiveToolPropertySet functions were not readily available in contextual function searches.

• Fixed a crash when editing Scriptable Tools Mode project settings after exiting the mode.

• The delay node now works correctly when executed by editor functions

• [Revision Control] ResavePackages: support providers that do not use readonly flag or checkouts

• Fixed a sporadic crash that could occur if a ScriptableTool invoked SpawnActorFromClass during tool Setup.

• Calling AssetTools functions should not crash anymore in headless.

• Fixed a crash and emit an error in ScriptableTools that destroy gizmos during a GizmoTransformStateChange event.

• Fixed a crash when calling dynamic delegates from Python

• Fixed parsing issues in the Python stub file

Deprecated:

• [Python] Update Python docs generator to include enterprise as part of engine

UI

New:

• UMGEditor: Restore selection of the root preview widget when refreshing the preview.

• MVVM: Support fixing up references to renamed view models in unloaded blueprints

• Notifications now have an optional copy to clipboard button. It has been made available on revision control submit notifications.

• CommonUI: Don't broadcast input method changed events when EI rebuilds its input mappings and instead bind directly to `ControlMappingsRebuiltDelegate` in CommonActionWidget to update itself in case the keys changed.

• UMGEditor: Clean up and expose Delete/Replace widget API to support operating on widget blueprints without opening the widget blueprint editor.

• Menu Anchor Widget: Added an option to hide the menu background when using the application stack.

• CommonUI: Prevent needlessly setting cursor position every frame when the viewport is the cursor target due to incorrect change target geometry logic

• CommonUI: Add option for action bar to display actions without valid keys for the current input type

• Removing Grey Background from Viewport layout icons and decreased icon size from UX feedback

• CommonUI: Add ResetCalculatedActionDomainCache() for widgets to call when their Action Domain is changed at runtime

• New setting for drawing the grid in the UMG editor and the node graph using antialiasing

• Added GetClassFilter metadata tag for class and soft class properties which allows specifying a static UFunction with the signature bool (const UClass*) to filter classes in the class picker.

• Adds possibility for actionable message to force the widget's expansion

• Allowed Slate attribute bindings to be explicitly initialized on assignment. When attributes are bound they are not automatically updated to the current value until later. This can cause issues with dynamically created widgets as they can have a frame where they use the default value before getting the value from the binding next frame. In the case of the color block this resulted in a white flash. However the existing code indicated that there's also a need for this behavior in certain cases, so to allow for both a new flag enum has been added so the widget can individually choose how to respond to attribute binding.

• CommonUI: Add CVar to prevent Mouse Wheel and Gestures from updating the current input method

• CommonUI: Add CommonUI.ShouldVirtualAcceptSimulateMouseButton CVar to modify if virtual accept events should convert to left mouse button events at runtime

• CommonUI: Add UCommonUISettings::CommonButtonAcceptKeyHandling to configure how SCommonButton reacts to key events for FNavigationConfig's Accept action For existing projects, the default is to ignore those key events and to rely on the button's Triggering Input Action instead. New projects will use the "TriggerClick" option by default and it is recommended to update the FNavigationConfig appropriately instead of switching to "Ignore" mode.

• [SSpinBox] Spin boxes now revert to the previous value on escape key press

• Added CVar "Slate.AllowTooltipsWhileMouseDown" to restore old functionality where Slate tooltips would continue to display while the mouse button was down

• Update CommonActionWidget to mark SetInputAction functions as virtual

• [Reimport Icon] Adding a new reimport icon and applying it to icons that were using the import icon (when they should be using a reimport one)

• CommonUI - TabListWidgetBase - Added a bool to control whether the tab navigation should wrap or not.

• [Widget Path] When users are moving focus, they will no longer traverse through the children of disabled widgets

• Common UI: - Add Throbber (Swidget) argument to SLoadGuard and setter for it. If unset, will use current ini defined throbber brush in an SImage - Add throbber brush property to CommonLazyImage, CommonLazyWidget & CommonLoadGuard - Use new brush property to feed the SWidget argument with an SImage when the brush is not set to draw as none

• Added the option for row headers to indicate that they're busy sorting. A new option "Sorting" was added to SHeaderRow's EColumnSortMode list. When set to this option, the up/down arrows are replaced with a spinner to indicate that sorting is in progress. This was added because in some cases in the editor sorting can take a couple of seconds when the sorting is complex or done on a large list of rows. With this option it's possible to show a spinner for the duration of the sorting so users aren't left wondering why nothing is happening.

• Update plugin browser to show disabled entries for plugins that require C++ when your project is blueprint only (rather than just hide them)

• CommonNumericTextBlock allows to always show the sign of the value, i.e. "+1" and "-1"

• MVVM: Improve handling of renamed fields

  • Load dependent blueprints when renaming view models so they get fixed too

  • Fixup conversion functions when renaming view models

  • Fixup components of binding property paths when renaming fields

  • Fix case where renaming a field in one blueprint could falsely rename properties in bindings in dependent blueprints Fixes asserts that can occur when view models are renamed.

  • Fixup bindings in dependent blueprints when renaming view models

• UMGEditor: Fix inconsistencies in IPropertyBindingExtension by passing the PropertyHandle to all functions

• Changed SInputKeySelector to be able to assign multiple modifier keys in it

• CommonUI - Back Action can now have Display Name overridden in the Activatable Widgets

• UMG: Support fixing up references to renamed widgets and animations in unloaded blueprints

• Removed FTickableGameObject from UCommonBoundActionBar. It now sets a ticker when bound actions are updated and when input mode changes (if ticker isn't already set).

• CommonUI: Support registering inputs for multiple local players on a single widget

• The text input widget at the base of the Output Log window now fills the available space.

• Added a mechanism to UContentBrowserDataSubsystem to customize the logic used to hide empty folders (such as /Game/Collections) even when Show Empty Folders is enabled in the Content Browser.

• FEditorViewportClient: allow focusing on objects smaller than 10cm. This change replaces the hardcoded 10.0 lower limit with a member variable that subclasses can modify. Default behavior is unchanged. FDataflowConstructionViewportClient: set the minimum object size to 0.1cm, since we could be dealing with coordinates in the 0-1 range.

• FEditorViewportClient: make GetMinimumOrthoZoom virtual. FDataflowConstructionViewportClient: set a custom GetMinimumOrthoZoom, ignoring ULevelEditorViewportSettings::MinimumOrthographicZoom

• Use the platform format when copying disk file paths to the clipboard.

• Slate: FPointerEvent constructed with a Gesture is now considered a TouchEvent

• UMG Extensions: Correction to UserWidget Extension Preconstruct to be called when the Extension is added after construction was already called.

• Updated Widget Previews to respect the preview size specified in the UMG designer (Desired, Fill, etc.) and display the current preview size in the corner. Added a Widget Size override property to explicitly set the Preview Widget's size

• UMG: Add option to List/Tile Views to decouple navigation from item selection

• [Progress Bars] Remove toast notification functionality for progress bars since it is just duplicate information

• SCustomDialog can now control the enabled state and tooltip of each button

• CommonUI - ActivatableWidgetContainer - Added a bool to reset pool of widgets when releasing slate resources (usually when loading a new map).

• Enhance debugging support of Action Domains for the CommonUI.DumpActivatableTree command

• CommonUI - BoundActionButton - Actions requiring hold can now require it for button mouse presses as well.

• The Reference Viewer now displays friendly plugin names.

• Add automatic upgrading of editors using SCommonEditorViewportToolbarBase to the new UToolMenu tool system.

• Updated the viewport toolbars to a new design.

  • Changed the default to "2"

  • Old toolbars can be re-enabled with "ToolMenusViewportToolbars 0"

Bug Fix:

• [Common UI] Restore cursor visibility when exiting PIE while using a gamepad

• UMGEditor: Improve the usability of the Widget Reflector at design time, widgets in the UMG Designer can now be picked by the widget reflector while in "Pick Painted Widgets" mode

• Fixed log lines containing new lines overlapping when displayed in the texture editor.

• Slate: Fix crash caused by SlateEditableTextLayout's HintTextStyle getting out of sync with its TextStyle

• [Common UI] Fix the bClearFocusRestorationTargetOfDeactivatedWidgets setting from UCommonActivatableWidgetSwitcher has no effect

• Slate: Menu Anchors now properly only set focus for the provided FocusUserIndex when using EPopupMethod::CreateNewWindow

• Updated FMVVMListViewBaseExtensionCustomizationExtender to find the Entry Widget Class by property name instead of display name. This prevents an assert when the editor is set to a language other than English

• Protect against check/crash during blueprint compile in MVVM system

• CommonUI: Fix action domain root nodes not receiving focus/applying their input config if they are activated before painting

• Perforce Provider: Guard access to the state caches for concurrent queries to files & changelists states. Fixes a crash when right clicking on the tree view menus in the content browser while the thumbnails are fetching their Perforce states.

• CommonUI: Fix UCommonUIInputSettings::bLinkCursorToGamepadFocus not working

• Fixed NaN when trying to draw blurred regions with Slate

• CommonUI: Fix UCommonUIActionRouterBase::HandleSlateFocusChanging not considering leaf nodes of the active root node nor action domain nodes

• Update CommonUI preprocessor to switch input methods when the mouse wheel is scrolled

• Fixed a deadlock when a long running source control operation on a collection causes the slow task or source control progress dialog to appear.

• Fixed pasting package paths into the asset property editor not working if the package was unloaded.

• ComboBox Widgets: Fixed potential null access when widget becomes invalid as a result of OnSelectionChanged

• Fixed offset when using a background blur widget within a retainer panel

• Slate: fixed a bug with retainer widget where the hit test grid could no longer hit testable elements, resulting in incorrect input processing.

• Fixed glyphs that may be displayed incorrectly with SDF activated.

• Fixed ApplyLineHeightToBottomLine(false) being incorrectly applied to all lines during layout, rather than only the last line in the current view

• CommonUI: Update CommonButtonBase to consistently focus the child SCommonButton

• SLoadGuard: Fix OnLoadingStateChanged not getting copied in the Construct call

• Apply widget scale to corner radius in SBackgroundBlur widget. This ensures the corners stay the same relative to other widgets being scaled.

• Fix default view model resolvers to be created in the correct package so they save properly

• CommonUI: Fix assert when using a CommonWidgetCarousel widget when 1 or 2 children with Global Invalidation enabled

  • Slate GI doesn't allow widgets to exist in multiple slots

  • When the CommonWidgetCarousel had fewer then 3 children, it would reuse children in the left and right slots

  • Reused widgets are now replaced with `SNullWidget::NullWidget` in slots that will not be visible during transitions

  • Also fixed not being able to accurately preview the selected widget due to transitions being active when selecting widgets in the designer

• CommonUI: Fix crash caused by Input Actions with null Triggers

• Fix crash when widget removes itself from the parent in OnPaint and reindex and invalidation are enabled. The cached value needs to be fetched again after an OnPaint. The proxy will become invalid at the end of the loop (and need to stay valid or everything else will break).

• Fix warning when adding a view binding to a function

• Slate Text Highlights: Replace OffsetX with an Offset Vector2D and set the Y offset based on the difference between the block's LocationOffset and the line's offset. This lets us properly align highlights on lines of text that contain multiple font sizes

• CommonUI: Fix hitting a check in List View caused by entries still handling events after having been removed

• CommonUI: Fix Common Action Widget not updating its icon when switching from showing an Enhanced Input to a Data Table input

• Slate: Fix transform calculation in SFxWidget::OnPaint that was incorrectly using RenderScale as a translation rather than a scale that was causing a 1 px padding offset for carousel widgets

• CommonUI: Fix FBindUIActionArgs::OverrideDisplayName / FUIActionBinding::ActionDisplayName not working for enhanced input actions

• Minor editor fix for Common UI uncategorized widgets in widget blueprint palette

• CommonUI: Fix action domain widgets overriding focus and input config when they're not the active widget

• Fixed crash when closing the engine during the preinit phase.

• Fix bad access to widget invalidation list.

• Removing ensure in CommonActionWidget::UpdateActionWidget that could be hit when Common Input Subsystem is not ready as it can be updated even if it's not set.

• Texture Editor: Fixed the Source Alpha Detect button overlapping the rest of the UI.

• UMG: When rebuilding widgets, don't overwrite the player context on child widgets if they already have a valid player context

• CommonUI: Fix issue where the focused widget would not get hovered by the virtual cursor when focus moved to the viewport and back to the original widget

• MVVM: Fix up MemberParents in binding paths when a field in the path has changed type

• Fixed various issues with Slate text runs that could cause unwanted spacing/alignment when using rich text blocks with multiple styles

• Fixed empty folders showing up in the content browser path bread crumbs when Show Empty Folders is unchecked.

• EnhancedInput: Fix validation error when saving widget blueprints with disconnected input action event nodes

• Fix font assets not properly displaying their thumbnails

• Updated ListView to properly send the OnEntryWidgetGenerated event without relying on a timer This resolves an issue with MVVM where ListView entries won't have their VM bound if no world timer is running (i.e. the game is paused)

• Fix clipping of controls under RetainerBox when offset is non zero [RN] fix creator/ui

• UMG: Fix not being able to use "Wrap With..." on the first widget in an inherited Named Slot

• UMG: Slate - Added properly working absolute <-> local transform BP functions

• UMG: SetAnimationCurrentTime now properly takes into account UnwarpedPosition

• [SDockTab] SDockTab can no longer be closed when `CanEverClose` is set to false

• UMGEditor: Fix not being able to save navigation settings on the root userwidget in widget blueprints

• Fixed issue where CategoryDrivenContentBuilderBase did not update visibility on reinitialization.

• Slate: fix various possible crashes and bugs when importing offline fonts.

• Fixed the display name of merged folders in the Content Browser asset view being selected non-deterministically, causing it to appear differently than other areas of the Content Browser UI.

Deprecated:

• Add a define to conditionally add final to virtual functions for slate APIs transitioning to FVector2f from FVector2D

UX

New:

• Allow to override Wireframe Material of Dynamicmesh

• [TEDSOutliner] Implementing support for multiselect visibility, in parity with the old outliner

• Add Audio section filter for actor and component detail panels

• Allow SDlgPickPath to show the view options by default. This matches the behavior from SDlgPickAssetPath. Without this, it's impossible to pick a path from a plugin folder

• Made the toolbar extension log verbose in render capture plugins

• Improved Gameplay Tags UX:

  • Added "Search For References (all children)" item to the context menu for individual tags. Triggers the Reference Viewer with the selected tag AND all its recursive children.

  • Added Gameplay Tag Manager entry to the Editor "Tools" menu. Now you don't have to look for a tag variable editor widget to start this from. Also dockable.

• Added asset name and package path as tie breakers to the Packages dialog column sorting.

• Updated the Color Picker UI, featuring visual updates to the color sliders, color themes menu, color blocks, icons, hexadecimal fields, and a new Recents color theme.

• Fixed ensure when trying to capture thumbnail on an unloaded asset : we now try load the package (like is done when clearing the thumbnail)

  • Also changed label "Capture Thumbnail" into "Capture Thumbnail From Viewport", to make it explicit that this will not capture the asset scene's thumbnail, but rather, use the current viewport as its thumbnail (the tooltip was already explicit about it)

• Also hide (per instance) Custom Data when there are too many instances in a static mesh component

• Updated the source control Revert dialog to appear and function similar to the Checkout dialog.

  • Added asset name and package path as tie breakers to the source control Submit dialog column sorting.

  • Added support for sorting columns to the source control Conflict dialog. Show file paths in source control dialogs using the platform format.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed SSourceControlCheckedOutDialog Asset Class column visibility being controlled by the ShowColumnAssetName argument rather than the ShowColumnAssetClass argument.

• ProjectBrowser: Changed "Most Recently Used" sorting to descending instead of ascending so that recent projects get listed first.

Foundation

New:

• Allow specifying if a functional test is in a sublevel and in which persistent level is should be enabled.

• Add support for reading/writing metadata into the PNG text header.

• Streamable Manager error handling - Add an Error field to FStreamableHandle. - Add FStreamableDelegateWithHandle to more easily find and inspect handles when a load completes. - MakeShareable -> MakeShared - Remove unecessary dll imports/exports

Bug Fix:

• Fix potential signed overflow UB around bitmask-generating shifts in a few places.

Build

New:

• Add UBT option to enable warning for switches on enumerations that don't have a case for all enumerators. It is off by default, and can be enabled per-module or per-target. Add macros to disable and restore the previous warning behavior for specific code regions.

• Added support of the analysis-paths flag in integration with PVS-Studio

• Don't automatically add installed plugins as project dependencies

• Support package names containing the 'build' substring when building AABs. Having build in the package name would cause Java files not to be deployed to AAB grandle directory resulting in failed builds. Update 'build' file path filtering to ignore java source root.

• Add Clang FPass-Plugin support to UBT This adds the functionality for a module to specify any number of LLVM FPass-Plugin to be included in the clang compile arguments and run during the individual module's compilation.

• Reduced compilation times of *.ispc files by around 40%. It has been achieved by rebuilding the ispc compiler with the optimal settings and enabling Link Time Optimization.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed crashes in the AutomationTool .NET incompatibility when launching external tools relying on .NET version other than the default one used by Unreal Engine. Now, AutomationTool clears DOTNET_* environment variables when launching tools from outside of the Unreal Engine directory.

• Added UBT support for the Game Feature Plugin "Activate" flag in PluginReferenceDescriptors. Fixed issue where the Activate flag would be deleted from plugin descriptors when running some UAT programs

Compile Time Improvements

New:

• Add WindowsPlatform.PreferredCompilers a list of compilers a target will use, allowing for falling back to a different compiler if not available

• Add support for debugging optimized code with MSVC. Please see http://aka.ms/vcdd for more details

• ICX 2025.1 and Microsoft Clang 19 HWPGO integrations

Core

New:

• Update minimum MSVC to 14.38.33130 & minimum Visual Studio 2022 to 17.8

• Add FQuat::GetShortestArcWith to simplify creating the rotation between two quaternions

• Optimized actor range iterations in the editor

• Add a default data-driven subobject instancing path that does not rely on 'Instanced' property flags on generated types. Allows for decoupling of compile-time 'Instanced' semantics to support non-native UE class types that do not statically bind references for subobject instancing. Note: This path is disabled by default; UClass subtypes can opt-in via override.

• Added a way to override the EAllowShrinking defaults.

• Updated FGuid::Parse and FGuid::ParseExact to accept a FStringView

• SavePackage: Remove handling of deprecated UObject::PreSave, UObject::PreSaveRoot, and UObject::PostSaveRoot functions.

• Added Unreal.natjmc for skipping over certain Core operations during debugging.

• Added non-shipping tracking for ResetAsyncTrace Delegates

  • The delegate dispatch step inside ResetAsyncTraces is now Timed, and if it's above a defined threshold, we dump some key info about those delegates to help diagnose rare performance spikes.

• Refactored TArray to limit template instantiations.

• Add an experimental thread sanitizer that can be run on the Windows platform.

• Oodle updated to version 2.9.13

• Optimized FMatrix float/double coercion

• Optimized FTransform::ToMatrixInternal to avoid float coercion

• [UBT] Added Project level scope support for BuildConfiguration.xml.

• Made FMath::Min, FMath::Max, HashCombine and HashCombineFast variadic.

• Added [[nodiscard]] to relevant container functions.

• Reduced template instantiations in weak and SP lambda delegate bindings, as the type of the user object is unimportant in these cases.

• CVars: Allow FAutoConsoleVariableRef to hold a FName directly This is useful in rendering code for cvars that ultimately get used as an FName such as for debug visualization modes. The cvar is a string cvar internally, but also keeps a FName representation available so that the string to name conversion cost only happens when setting the variable, not every time it is queried.

• Added TCopyQualifiersFromTo_T and TLosesQualifiersFromTo_V.

• Added Projection(), a helper companion/replacement for Invoke.

• Change to FProperty::ImportSingleProperty which means we can process Enums in Quotes within a Struct when loading from a config.

  • This means that ImportEnumFromBuffer can assume that the enum is unquoted and will allow it to process bitwise enums within quotes the same way whether it came from a Struct or not.

  • Additionally, this includes Unit Tests which prove that the parsing is well-behaved in various scenarios (including empty quotes or missing quotes).

  • When loading config files, Structs now support Quoted Bitwise Enums of the form "EMyEnum::A | EMyEnum::B"

  • This approach means that we identify Enums within Structs (and Structs in Arrays) and take away the first quote before passing it to ImportEnumFromBuffer later on.

• Added an RAII FPooledSyncEvent.

• Added support for references and void in TTypeCompatibleBytes.

• Added project based timeout settings which can be adjusted by either a console variable or through the default engine configuration.

• Added operators to TStructView & TConstStructView to make them easier to use

• Made the expression parsing code templated on character type and implemented TAnsiString::Format and TUtf8String::Format.

• FPlatformString and FCString: Deprecate Strcpy and Strcat that take a DestLen, because some platforms are ignoring the DestLen and allowing buffer overflows.

  • Add FPlatformString::Strncat to provide similar functionality (but following CRT's standard of taking SrcLen rather than DestSize).

  • Deprecate FCString::Strncat because it has a different meaning than C++ strncat.

  • Provide StrncatTruncateDest and StrncatTruncateSrc to replace it.

  • Change FCString::Strncpy's MaxLen argument from int32 to SIZE_T to match CRT strncpy.

  • Change the bufferlength arguments passed into GetSystemErrorMessage from the incorrect sizeof(TCharBuffer) to the correct UE_ARRAY_COUNT(TCharBuffer) to avoid the possibility of overflowing the buffer due to passing in twice the character count of the buffer.

• Remove manifest from compiled DLLs as it was causing a delay for each module loaded to query WinSxS with an out-of-process call. This saved about 10s of boot time for ~2300 dlls loaded at editor startup.

• Zenloader can be enabled to read loose files when loading in non-editor configs by passing "-loosefileloading" on the commandline or specifying "s.LooseFileLoadingEnabled=true" in Engine.StreamingSettings INI. `WITH_EDITOR` configs continue to load loose files by default.Note: loose files will override IOStore content if there is an overlap.

• Added [[nodiscard]] to FSoftObjectPath where appropriate.

• Added support for UTF-8 to FormatStringSan.

• Exported explicit template specializations are no longer created for StaticClass and StaticStruct, a normal template implementation is used instead.

• Exposed some extra DLC and validation options to ICookInfo

• Removed TargetFramework override in "Tests" .csproj files

• Utility functions and console commands that print UObject state information:

  • PrintObjectsInOuter

  • PrintObjectsWithName

  • PrintObjectProperties

  • PrintObjectArchetype

  • PrintObjectIDO

  • Utility functions and console commands that print UObject state information.

• Introduce TStripedMap that wraps TMap and TMultiMap providing thread-safety guarantees and reduce contention when its striping feature is used.

• Add LoadAsync wrappers to TSoftObjectPtr and TSoftClassPtr to better expose it as an alternative to LoadSynchronous

• Zen streaming uses on-target cache to speedup consecutive runs

• Added Algo::Contains and Algo::ContainsBy.

• Add IsTaskEvent to FBaseGraphTask and fix it so Unlock and DispatchSubsequents are safe to call on either type. Also improved headers now that the old taskgraph frontend has been removed

• Added PRAGMA_DISABLE_CPP20_EXTENSION_WARNINGS for allowing asm in constexpr blocks (supported in Clang, but not officially until C++20).

• Update asio to 1.30.2

• AssetRegistry:

  • Remove deprecation handling of FAssetPackageData::PackageGuid and instead store the entire PackageSavedHash read from the PackageHeader.

  • Change GetPackageSavedHash to be WITH_EDITORONLY_DATA to match the UPackage::GetSavedHash API. The PackageSavedHash will always be serialized when serializing FAssetPackageData, but the game will not store a copy of it and will write out zeroes if it ever serializes AssetPackageData.

• Additional CrashReportClient customizations:

  • Option for hiding the allow to be contacted text

  • Option for customizing whether the user can send a crash without providing detailed information

• Added a new define UE_UOBJECT_HASH_USES_ARRAYS that replaces FHashBucket in UObjectHash implementation with a one that uses arrays instead of sets. This reduced memory consumption by ~20%.Please note that this might reduce performance in some corner cases. This will be addressed in a future engine update.

• Added an operation to rename properties within a PropertyBag. Naming through the PropertyBag API has also been restricted to match standard object naming as best as possible.

• Remove lambdas from the implementation of ensure() as an optimization.

• Change FTimeout to use FPlatformTime::Cycles64 internally instead of FTimespan, this can be significantly faster depending on the platform. Also added functions to access the platform time as double seconds in C++

• Added UTF32CHAR* constructors and appending to FString, FUtf8String and FAnsiString.

• Rename TiimerHandle.cpp to TimerHandle.cpp

• Add GetTypeHash for FBox so that it can be used in sets and maps.

• Added extracting FQDN via getnameinfo to FSocketSubsystemBSD::GetAddressInfo if getaddrinfo only returns a hostname

• Added TAdderRef and TAdderReserverRef, for type-erased adding to containers.

• Added hostnames as the last resort for client to connect to zen server when zen streaming is used

• Improved performance of strnstr significantly

• Overloaded PluginUtils functions to support full paths to plugin descriptors for situations where you want to sidestep plugin naming conventions.

• Add support for UBSan for msvc platforms

• Allow loading config System{TYPE}.ini from FPlatformProcess::ApplicationSettingsDir()

• Added a way to configure zen streaming target side cache size via defines

• Cooker: Added command line arguments:

  • -DeviceProfile=[device profile name], to set an override device profile to use instead of the platform's default device profile

  • -CookCVarControl=[0|1|2|3], to control the value of the CVar Cook.CVarControl.

    • 0 uses default behavior

    • 1 redirects CVars that are accessed via GetPlatformValueVariable to the platform (or override) device profile

    • 2 additionally temporarily updates all ECVF_Preview CVars to match the active device profile

    • 3 additionally temporarily updates all CVars to match the active device profile

• [UBT] Automation scripts are now added to generated Visual Studio solutions by UnrealBuildTool project generation mode.

• ScopedCSVStat with conditional invocation

• Added cvar to control if non-nullable properties produce an error, a warning or a default object when failing to resolve an object reference. Default objects will not be created if the class is abstract.

• [StudioTelemetry] Added support for plain-text ProjectID GUIDs from *.ini.

• PVS null checking improved by changes to CA_ASSUME

• Added UTF-8 overloads of LexFromString for numeric types.

• Cooker: Implement budgeted time-based triggering of SoftGC instead of relying on the memory threshold approach, because the memory threshold approach is stymied by our lack of knowledge of how much memory is buffered inside the memory allocator.

• [UBT] Added CppCompileWarnings system to control compiler arguments related to disabling/enabling warnings, and validating Plugin & Module settings.

• Added a variable sized read-write spinlock class (TRWSpinLock) along with new templated scope for read-write locks in general

• Adds new "PluginManager.LeakedAssetTrace.Severity.Editor" CVar allowing Editor builds to configure the severity of leaked asset reporting from GameFeaturePlugins. If not set, "PluginManager.LeakedAssetTrace.Severity.Editor" == "PluginManager.LeakedAssetTrace.Severity". "PluginManager.LeakedAssetTrace.Severity.Shipping" overrides "PluginManager.LeakedAssetTrace.Severity.Editor" as it does "PluginManager.LeakedAssetTrace.Severity" already

• UnrealBuildTool: Support opt-in unity files for source code that isn't .cpp

• Fixed TSet::EmplaceByHash returning an incorrect element ID

• Add the option to use TDirectoryTree in PakFile for directory scans.

  • This change improves directory scan perf when using for e.g. IFileManager::Get().FindFiles. Without the change, the path lookup involves doing a linear search through all directories in a pak.

  • This change adds a directory tree index that mirrors the directory index for faster path lookups. Overall perf gains depend on the size of the project/paks and eventually the directory index.

  • For FN we see the total inclusive time drop from ~13s for 117k lookups to ~350ms for the same so around a 97% cost reduction. These gains were measured on last gen platforms and can vary per platform. The mirrored directory tree in FN has a memory overhead of 2MB.

  • The use of DirectoryTree is disabled by default and can be opted into by adding `GlobalDefinitions.Add("ENABLE_PAKFILE_USE_DIRECTORY_TREE=1")` to project configurations.

• Added TMap::Remove(Id), TMap::FindId(Key) and TMap::FindIdByHash(Hash, Key).

• Added [[nodiscard]] to relevant algorithms.

• Add static NumComponents variable and IsValidIndex function to TVector2, TVector3, and TVector4. Clean up operator[] and Component functions on all vector type

• Added support for 64-bit radix sorting.

• Implemented virtualized utoc files using memory mapped IO on supported platforms. Allows platform OS to unload memory pages occupied for that files and only keep what's actively used. Can be disabled with CVar "IoStore.AllowMemoryMappedUtoc=false".

• Add option to run KMeans' distance-to-cluster loop in parallel.

• Add a local queue in the scheduler for the game thread to improve its task queuing efficiency

• Define object versions in such a way that if they get merged or cherrypicked out of order there is a static assert.

• Added ANSI and UTF-8 overloads to FText::FromString and FText::AsCultureInvariant.

• PackageName: improve SplitPackageName functions.

  • Add flags to specify whether slashes are kept.

  • Add SplitPackageName that does the same splitting done by SplitLongPackageName but does not test for IsValidPath.

  • Fix IsValidPath to return true for /Memory/ packages, to match the behavior of other functions such as MountPointExists.

• Added an FWideString alias and TIsTString trait for testing if a type is a UE string class.

• Expanded natviz support for TVariant from 8 to 12 template arguments.

• Split the LoadFromCompactBinary overloads for FString into FWideString and FUtf8String overloads.

• Add System.Text.Json reference so module rules can read JSON files

• Added FUtf8String support for FName.

• Added [[nodiscard]] to TOptional.

• Decouple FProperty->JsonValue conversion from instanced property flags to support exporting object properties to nested JSON object values on types w/ dynamic reference values.

• Annotated TVariant with [[nodiscard]] and UE_LIFETIMEBOUND.

• IncrementalCook: Change the API of CookPackageSplitter to take a single FPopulateContext& argument instead of multiple arguments, so that for future API changes we can add on inputs and outputs without needing to write the difficult boilerplate required for deprecation of a virtual function.

• Update TStaticArray to be constexpr along with Swap and Exchange. Also added some basic compile time tests for TStaticArray. [RN] Update TStaticArray to be constexpr along with Swap and Exchange.

• FBox ctor from FSphere - initialize box to tightest enclosing box around a sphere.

• FileHelper: Add LoadFileInBlocks for TryHashFile and other similar performant reading of files.

• Missing log format %s or arguments

• Python wrapper generation are now run in parallel by default

• Add template versions for some of the 2d vector math to support FVector2d -> 2f updates

• Added UE_NODEBUG across TArray functions which are simple getters, forwarding functions, or metaprogramming implementation details.

• WorldPartition - GetStreamingPerformance now reports streaming performance also for non blocking cells/sources.

  • Poor streaming performance caused by blocking cells/sources take preference over poor streaming performance from non blocking cells/sources.

  • The thresholds for reporting streaming performance from non-blocking sources can be configured via "wp.Runtime.SlowStreamingRatio" and "wp.Runtime.SlowStreamingWarningFactor".

  • GetStreamingPerformance also reports an additional enum for streaming performance ("Immediate") that triggers when sources are within unloaded cell content bounds.

• SourceLocationUtils: Add adapter-based API for source location formatting.

• Added a CVar: `LevelStreaming.LevelStreamingPriorityBias` that can be used to offset level streaming LoadPackageAsync request priorities (added to the levels calculated StreamingPriority).

• Stomp malloc is now lock-less for improved scalability when active

• Added zen server plugin support to zen launcher

• Updated zenserver transport-sdk to v5.6.6

• Add Async.ParallelFor.DisableOversubscription (defaults to false) cvar which specifies if parallel for requests can spawn additional threads when waiting for spawned tasks to finish

• Added a cvar for managing how GenericPlatformMallocCrash handles allocation requests on non-crashing threads, allowing them to permanently suspend on allocs/frees, suspend on allocs and skip frees, or process as normal. New default is to suspend on allocation and skip frees to allow threads to tear down and avoid deadlocking during crash processing on some platforms.

• DLC Packaging: Fixed DLCName.upluginmanifest missing from output when packaging DLCs The generated output folder from a DLC package can now be copied into a packaged game and the DLC will be loaded through the default plugin discovery and loading process.

• Add TInstancedStruct::NetSerialize function

• Added a new function GetRequestedRemoveContentOnNextInit to InstallBundleManager to return the list of bundle names are currently pending removal on next init

• Changed FPlatformMallocCrash::IsActive to a static function instead of requiring getting an instance, to allow it to be safely called during static/TLS initialization.

• Fixed loading localized content when running the editor with -game. Previously localized imports would not load properly when using zen loader.

Bug Fix:

• Push array inner property to current archiver state when serializing "replacement" array item value overrides on load.

• AssetRegistryExportCommandlet: Fixed possible SQL syntax errors with the generated output when the column/tag names are also SQL keywords.

• Removed some implicit dependencies on instanced property flags during reference property value iteration.

• Redirect TPropertyValueIterator for FObjectPropertyBase types to the RefLink chain instead of visiting all linked properties.

• Fixed FUtfStringView and TUtf8StringBuilder .natvis.

• [FastBuild] Fixed an issue where FastBuild is issuing duplicate local build actions.

• Correctly handle struct redirection when importing an InstancedStruct from text

• When loading assets in the editor we now fall back to tagged serialization if an object has changed to an unrelated type, rather than losing its data completely

• Console: Fixed for a visual issue where the last line of the scrollback buffer was not being displayed and the previous to last line could overlap with the input field.

• Forwarded missing flags to inner UPropertyToJsonValue exporting functions.

• Removed a negative size check from TArray's serialization path which is handled anyway.

• Fixed algorithms to take either an rvalue range, so views can be passed as temporaries, or const lvalue refs if the range isn't modified to produce fewer template instantiations.

• ImageWrapper: Made sure the CompressedBuffer for LibJPG has a minimum size so compression doesn't fail when compressed size > sourcesize

• Cache/apply cooked metadata for inner fields on container/optional property types.

• Explicitly disabled GetTypeHash and comparison operators for TSet and TMap.

• Prevented calling Swap on non-copyable types.

• Fixed object properties using MustImplement to now use ObjectMustImplement metadata, as MustImplement is only for class properties.

• Fix leak in UE::Tasks::Any when using it with a collection that has a single item

• Removed assert when using escapes (`) or argument modifiers (|) in localized structured logs since they actually format correctly in UE. It's only in external tools like Horde that they are not ATM but support can be added later.

• Bug Fix: Fixed an issue where IsChildOf with ustructs whose hierarchy is altered at runtime, didn't work properly with UE Programs that compiled against Editor code.

• Fix use-after-free in UE::Tasks::Wait along with a rare but severe issue where the function would exit before all tasks were finished

• Fix crash when calling TFieldPath::ToString after a field is invalidated without a subsequent call to ResolveField

• Fix TDeque not retaining capacity when copying/moving with an inline allocator.

• Correctly disable delta serialization for InstancedStruct by passing value as defaults, not nullptr

• Fix missing support in the loader for localized packages when running editor with -game

• Treating missing zen streaming chunks as warnings instead of errors

• Editor-time created packages get marked as EndLoaded once saved, similarly to packages loaded from disk.

• Struct Deserializers now grow containers to fit incoming entries rather than skipping entries out of range entirely.

• Removed the need for FDecimalNumberSigningStrings::GetEmptyString() which is more optimal and avoids some bad codegen in the AutoRTFM compiler.

• Fixed const overload of TFutureState::GetResult().

• Fix for FName::IsValidXName not using InErrorCtx in one case when producing OutReason.

• Made TIsCharEncodingCompatibleWith accept non-char types but return false, which makes it easier to use in SFINAE contexts.

• Fixed TSparseArray::Reserve() to not use growth semantics for the storage of elements.

• Fixed a thread-safety issue on init inside LLM

• Fixed .natvis of FNames under Clang.

• Added checks for too few specifiers in FormatStringSan.

• Fix LoadAssetAsync (and the soft object wrappers) to correctly handle UObjectRedirector, it will now return the redirected asset like the sync load functions

• Fixed Cbor for FUtf8StrProperty and FAnsiStrProperty.

• Change FFieldPath to properly handle blueprint class redirectors when resolving structs by name

• Fix crash in crash reporting during certain scenarios in late stages of shutdown.

• Fixed possibly shutdown crashes by unregistering FWindowsApplication::ShutDownAfterError against FCoreDelegates::OnShutdownAfterError in its destructor.

• [Fastbuild] Fastbuild executor fails when there are not multiple installations.

• No longer skip EditorOnly properties from config files when not in Editor so standalone mode (-game) will be consistent with Editor and PIE.

• Properly handled non-uniform scale in FTransform::GetRelativeTransformReverse

• Fix to ensure that new container items created in the Property Editor get scoped to the correct instance when IDO features are enabled.

• Fix potential memory ordering issue between tasks inside the same pipe

• Address some clang warnings

• Support for InstancedStruct in FPropertyValueIterator.

• Add support for an unlimited number of cores in FWindowsPlatformProcess::GetPerFrameProcessorUsage. The previous code was hardcoded to support a maximum of 128 cores and would assert if more cores were detected.

• Fix compilation issues with derived type uses of StructView

• Fixed unnecessary resolving when assigning FSoftObjectPtr with a TObjectPtr.

• Fixed forwarding of FArchiveState::ArThisRequiresLocalizationGather to proxies.

• Fixed JsonObjectConverter not loading BP classes when deserializing JSON.

• Fixed FEnumProperty::ImportText to skip leading whitespace and some questionable null handling.

• Fixed errors in TRingBuffer when using an allocator with NeedsElementType == false.

• Fix possible race on platforms with weak memory ordering when using the result of an AddSubsequent call to decide if it is safe to start using the memory modified by the task

• Use a faster VirtualAlloc2 approach in editor allocator (mimalloc) when alignment is required to avoid potential random OOM that could happen with the older method

• Fixed assert in TFixedAllocator::CalculateSlackGrow to guard against overflow.

• [UBT] Fixed symbol redefinition issue under Target.bWarnAboutMonolithicHeadersIncluded context.

• Fixed an assert during save when invalid references are found.

• Added constraints to TVariant's constructor and Emplace function to ensure constructibility.

• Improved error messages for failure to construct a default object for an unfulfilled non-nullable property.

• Fixed the TSubclassOf overloads of Casts to be const correct.

• Fixed TIsImplicitlyConstructible false positive for aggregates.

• Refactored TFuture, fixing TFuture::Then() to take a continuation without a parameter rather than an int.

• Fixed validations for Class and SoftClass properties in FPropertyBag. Also added typed validated version of SetSoftObjectPath when an object pointer is provided.

• Force the condition in CA_ASSUME (and therefore check macros) to be referenced, so that users don't need to mark their otherwise-unused variables with [[maybe_unused]].

• Fixed TCppStructOps::Destruct by avoiding an unnecessary virtual dispatch, which also fixes a warning when calling a non-virtual destructor on a struct with virtual functions. (-Wdelete-non-abstract-non-virtual-dtor)

• Fix performance regression for the loader at runtime that might check for file existence on disk even for packaged builds

• Fix potential use-after-free when destroying an FPipe just after a call to WaitUntilEmpty Fix potential race between ClearTask and WaitUntilEmpty in FPipe because of missing barriers on TaskCount

• Fix EventCount WaitFor and WaitUntil that would return a wrong value to the caller when the value changed before actually waiting

• Fixed an issue where AutomationTool.reference file was placed in the project Intermediates, instead of engine scoped Intermediates folder.

• Added missing call to the destructor of the wrapped struct in FSharedStruct.

• Fix case where the loader was not properly loading a package if that UPackage was created outside the loader

• Define the same UnrealMath aliases for NEON as we do for SSE/FPU.

• AVX/AVX512 CPU detection fixes: only allow AVX/F16C/AVX512 if OS has context-save support.

• Use unsigned constants to avoid signed overflow UB in a few functions.

• Added container property override support for instanced subobjects when experimental override serialization logic is not in use and explicit instanced property flags are not present.

• Fixed TOptional::operator== where it would compare objects with an intrusive unset state. This would cause incorrect results in cases like TOptional() == TOptional(TEXT("")).

• Add support for linker load external read dependencies in ZenLoader

• Fixed a thread-safety issue in the scheduler that could happen during a restart worker call

• Fix potential deadlock in the loader when recursive loads are involved

• Fix invalidated GameUserSettings not getting deleted

• Fixed garbled TMatrix comment, adding a clearer explanation of how matrix-matrix multiplication applies

• Fixed many incorrect printf format specifiers.

• Added support for %hs not being supported by vsnprintf.

• Moved AtomicQueue module dependency from private dependency list to public dependency list, so that modules that tried to use FTaskConcurrencyLimiter would not have to manually add AtomicQueue as a dependency to allow compiling.

• Update UObject::SaveConfig() to respect the "DeprecatedProperty" property metadata key and skip saving deprecated properties to disk. This allows UpdateSinglePropertyInConfigFile() to be properly used to delete deprecated properties from .ini files.

• Allow users to change the derived type on default value instantiations used to initialize a base type reference member in saved instance data when using override serialization.

Deprecated:

• Deleted unused TCancellablePromise.

• Removed deprecated CHAR8 typedef.

• Deleted deprecated TIsVoidType, TIsSame and TRemoveConst traits.

• Removed deprecated functionality from GenericPlatformString.h.

• Remove DirectXMath support for UnrealVectorMath. It's been inoperable since 5.0.

• Replaced some deprecations with static asserts in ContainerAllocationPolicies.

• Removed deprecated functionality from FSoftObjectPath and related calls.

• Removed deprecated functions from FStructView.

• Converted FSoftObjectPath::SubPathString to FUtf8String and added new accessors, deprecating the relevant FString-taking functions.

• Deprecated bool AllowShrinking parameters.

• Removed IPlugin::SetVersePath, IPlugin::SetVerseVersion and IPlugin::SetEnableSceneGraph setters. Users should call IPlugin::UpdateDescriptor instead so an event gets raised when the plugin descriptor changes.

• Remove bogus char logging, which hasn't worked for 11 years.

• Removed StaticFindObject overload for VersePaths.

• Deprecated FPlatformSplash::SetSplashText overload that takes a const TCHAR* - Use FText instead

Dev Tools

New:

• Added option to UGS to toggle whether to use the perforce native dll.

• CSVTools: Added support for adding custom csvColor overrides when using Csv2SvgUse -csvColors : list of hex colors. Applied in order to corresponding csv files when used in combination with a list of csv files or csvDir.

• Add support for toolbar button groups in UToolMenus.

• Added ZenImportSnapshot build graph task to allow import of cooked data snapshots produced by the ZenExportSnapshot build graph task.

• Improve where optional attributes can appear in enum, class, and struct definitions.

• Added async RPC functionality to Gauntlet

• Added verification that interfaces have matching native interface base classes

• Added -cookincremental parameter to BuildCookRun which will perform an incremental cook using the most recently cooked data as a baseline.

• Added -snapshot parameter to BuildCookRun, which will retrieve the most recent snapshot published to Jupiter and cook incrementally on top of the fetched data.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed a bug where an error would occur when moving UGS between monitors with different DPIs. Also fixed a bug where we would not immediately adjust the UI based on the new monitor DPI.

• Fixed a bug where if no project tabs have been created in UGS an exception is thrown on mouse move.

• Clear the currently synced CL when switching the stream a workspace targets. This correctly updates the state of UGS to recognise the synced CL has been invalidated and also fixes a bug with Fast Sync where it misses files in the sync.

• Fixed issues with object id generation from C# Time part was mixing up units. The serial part was not initializing from random value.

• Add throw if Refresh token was not returned in response.

• Added support for null values in property comparison in DiffTool to handle add/remove of empty elements in arrays in the diff'ed assets while the tool active

Horde

New:

• HordeAgent on Windows now defaults to installing the Windows Service with recovery options to restart the service on abnormal shutdowns.

• Improvements to downtime schedule configuration:

  • Add a Duration property that can be used instead of FinishTime.

  • Add a TimeZone property that can be used instead of an explicit offset in the StartTime and FinishTime values.

  • Support abbreviation values for StartTime and FinishTime as an alternative to ISO 8601, for example "Sun Dec 1, 2024, 3AM".

• HashiCorp Vault can be used to store secrets.

• Documentation for Scheduled Downtime

• PostLoad method for GlobalConfig and IPluginConfig is now async

• Documentation to create an external secret provider.

Bug Fix:

• Added an additional sanitise case for the PerforceMetadataLogger when trying to get file annotations.

• Fixed a bug where the same error/warning message using different slash directions would not match with an existing issue when handled by the hashed issue handler. We now standardise the slash direction before hashing to give a consistent result.

• LogicalCores property uses CpuCount and CpuMultiplier from AgentSettings Limit the number of logical processors to CpuCount or the number of logical processors reported by the OS, whichever is the smallestScale the number of logical processors by CpuMultiplierThe variable UE_HORDE_CPU_COUNT set to the value of CpuCount, when CpuCount is set

• Fixed an issue where CIDR blocks were not performing inclusive checks.

• Do not run matchers on partial json log line entries. This prevents us from trying to match unreliable log lines which were only partially written out e.g. due to the process crashing mid output.

• Fixed a bug where issues would have their FixCommitId set to 0 rather than cleared after re-assignment to a new owner.

Insights

New:

• Adds a data stream type for Trace analysis which allows a runtime to connect directly to the analysis session, bypassing UnrealTraceServer. The session is analyzed directly in memory and not stored on disk. The direct socket connection is using a different port than the standard networked trace connection, to avoid collisions with UTS. It is only available for local connections and in the same process.

• Added "ConsoleCmd" CPU scoped trace event for console input processing (includes the console command execution). The CPU timer has the actual command string as metadata.

• Improved the debug stats/counters for TraceLog:

  • Added defines in TraceAuxiliary.cpp to easily enable/disable code for STAT, TRACE, LLM and/or CSV stats/counters.

  • Added additional debug counters/stats:

    • "Cache Unused"

    • "Emitted not Traced"

    • "Memory Error" (total - block pool - fixed - shared - cache).

  • Added also trace counters API stats and made it default (instead of STAT counters).

  • Added block pool, fixed buffers, shared buffers, emitted and traced stats also to the output of "trace.status" console command.

  • Added initial zero values to all stats/counters (improves graph display in Insights for all the stats).

  • Simplified code re registering EndFrame callbacks.

  • Added support for registering a callback to be called each time TraceLog updates: added OnUpdateFunc in UE::Trace::FInitializeDesc + added UE::Trace::SetUpdateCallback(func).

  • The new trace update callback is now used to emit stats/counters also during engine initialization. Once the engine finishes the initialization, the stats counters will be emitted only once per frame (by resetting the update callback and further emitting stats from end frame updates).

• Added utility function to find out if a trace session has a certain channel

• CpuProfilerTrace:

  • Added support for FName variants of CpuProfilerTrace macros:

    • for TRACE_CPUPROFILER_EVENT_SCOPE_STR (when the provided event name does not change)

    • for TRACE_CPUPROFILER_EVENT_SCOPE_TEXT (when the provided event name is dynamic).

  • FEventScope and FDynamicEventScope can also be initialized now with an FName.CpuProfilerTrace:

    • Added variations for _STR macros (_STR_ON_CHANNEL_CONDITIONAL vs. _ON_CHANNEL_STR_CONDITIONAL vs _ON_CHANNEL_CONDITIONAL_STR).

• Exposed a new TraceServices::IStringStore public interface. The main string store can be accessed now from IAnalysisSession (using GetStringStore()).The AnalyssiSession's string store now also supports Find() in addition to Store().

• MemoryTrace: Added MemoryTrace_UpdateAlloc API; can be used to update the context (tag and metadata) for an allocation.

• Add a hard size limit on TraceLogs usage of block pool. Once the limit is hit and no free buffers are available, tracing threads will start to block until the worker thread has had time to write out data and give back buffers to the pool.

• Add ability to show callstacks for bookmarks in UnrealInsights. Enable `callstack,module,bookmark` channels to gather this information from the tracing target.

• Added CPU scopes (TRACE_CPUPROFILER_EVENT_SCOPE) to FTraceAuxiliary API.

• Add option to emit Trace scoped from TraceLog itself. Enable by passing `-tracescopes` on the commandline.

• Add optional profiler hooks in TraceLog, and instrument common worker thread functions.

• Stats: Support flags in lightweight stats

  • This re-uses existing declaration macros (that were previously only utilized when STATS is 1) to define lightweight structs containing information about the stat such as the flags and group.

  • This allows us to do things like properly filter out verbose stats when profiling in the Test config (where STATS is 0).

• Added tracing for all LLM tag sets (assets and asset classes).

• CounterTrace: Added more options to set value for a trace counter:

  • TRACE_COUNTER_SET_IF_DIFFERENT(CounterName, Value)

  • TRACE_COUNTER_ADD_IF_NOT_ZERO(CounterName, Value)

  • TRACE_COUNTER_SUBTRACT_IF_NOT_ZERO(CounterName, Value)

  • TRACE_COUNTER_SET_ALWAYS(CounterName, Value)

  • TRACE_COUNTER_ADD_ALWAYS(CounterName, Value)

  • TRACE_COUNTER_SUBTRACT_ALWAYS(CounterName, Value)

  • These can be used no matter how counter is created ("checked" or "unchecked").

• MemoryTrace: Added support for UE_MEMSCOPE_PTR with a video memory (or other root heap) pointer; i.e. UE_MEMSCOPE_PTR(InPtr, InRootHeap).

• Allow platforms to filter modules included in callstack tracing.

• Timing Regions now support an optional second parameter to specify a category (Regions macros and `FMiscTrace::OutputBeginRegion`). This allows filtering and grouping in the Insights Frontend.

• CsvProfiler - Report explicit event wait names as trace scopes.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed timing regions emitted from SlowTask to use unique ids. Matching by name was not reliable when multiple slow tasks with the same name are active at the same time.

• Fixed HighResShot not working when trace is disabled.

• Fixed consistency regarding usage of the Metadata trace channel (for AssetMetadata and IoStore).

• MemoryTrace: Fixed memory tracing to enable tracing of tags and mem scope with "memalloc" channel (and not with "memtag" channel which is used to enable tracing from LLM).

• Fixed parameters to UE_TRACE_METADATA_SCOPE macro when UE_TRACE_METADATA_ENABLED is 0.

• Remove FName block allocations and TextureManager construction from contributing to the MemQuery/Memtrace asset memory cost readings, increases the precision of per-asset memory consumption reports.

• Fix trace.file when launching from editor to console.

• Fix the Open Live Session on Trace Start functionality in the trace status bar widget.

• Fixed crash in RenderGraphInsights plugin. Added support for late connect (i.e. enabling late the RDGTrace channel).

• Fixed max number of callstack frames traced to be 255 (instead of 256; some platforms still limit this to max 64 frames).

  • Added UE_CALLSTACK_TRACE_MAX_FRAMES to override this if necessary.

  • Memory Insights analysis would already limit this to max 255 frames (length of callstack is stored as an uint8).

• Fixed issues re-tracing of the "Asset Registry Scan" timing region (begin events being traced multiple times without a corresponding end event).

• Trace: Fixed "-tracescopes" resulting in corrupt trace if scope functions emits sync trace events.

• Trace: Fixed "trace.status" console command displaying incorrect value for "Emitted - Traced" statistic.Trace: Fixed TraceLog messages to not duplicate the message type into the log message.

• Launch UnrealTraceServer with job breakout only when allowed. On Windows UTS is sometimes launched from a process that runs in a job that does not allow breakaway.

Deprecated:

• Marked the Profiler* modules as deprecated. The old Profiler has actually been deprecated since UE 5.0, superseded by Trace/UnrealInsights.

• Deprecate TraceDataFilters plugin because the functionality has been moved to the Trace Control Widget from Session Frontend and the Live Trace Control Widget from Unreal Insights.

Unreal Build Accelerator

New:

• This change adds a couple of minor improvements to the UBA visualizer:

  • Shows the world time in addition to time offset from session start on mouseover of the timeline view.

  • Adds a new optional graph showing active process count over time across all active machines (hovering over the graph shows the number of active processes at the selected time).

Framework

New:

• Chooser Tables: Add support for gameplay tag query columns

AI

New:

• Synchronize namespace reference in comments in CrowdManager.h to namespace found in CrowdManager.cpp

• Activate PathFollowingComponent ticking only when necessary

• Context ambiguous AIMoveTo strafe fix

• Improve K2_AIMoveTo Tooltip

• NNERuntimeORT upgrade to ONNX Runtime 1.20 and upgraded DirectML to version 1.15.2.

• Learning Agents: Fix shared memory on Mac by supporting guid short format

• Added Auto-Scroll button to visual logger

• Learning Agents: Implement multi-socket training

Bug Fix:

• Added cleanup for gameplay tasks owned by the AIController when handling OnUnPossess.

AI Behavior Trees

New:

• AAIController::UseBlackboard - Fix to correctly return the result of trying to initialize the Blackboard.

Bug Fix:

• ApplySearchUpdatesImpl now applies the active instance index stored in pending update to make sure methods calls use the right instance (i.e., decorators will get memory from the right buffer)

• Fixed BTDecorator_ForceSuccess when used used on aborted RunBehavior nodes

AI Debugging

New:

• Visual logger improvements in order to better handle high item number scenarios:

  • Added frustum culling for all types of rendered debug items, instead of just 2 of them

  • Added FarClippingDistance to visual logger tool, in order to set a smaller far clipping distance only for the visual log items

  • Added a CVar r.DebugRender.AllowFrustumCulling, to eventually disable frustum culling on debug render items

  • Added a CVar r.DebugRender.OverrideFarClippingPlane, to override the far clipping distance of all debug renders made by a FDebugRenderSceneProxy

  • Circles are now handled as a whole instead of a list of lines. This accelerates frustum culling since we perform it on the circle rather than per-line

• Added log owner display name to visual log entries.

  • This avoids having to rely on "Use Unique Log Names" in order not to miss some log events that might occur on different objects that are names identically (e.g. 2 components from different actors that are default-named, like "PrimitiveComponent").

  • The log entry name is now based on the UObject's fully-qualified name, which avoids misregistering events from 2 different objects onto the same track.

  • The display name is what we use in the visual logger window, so user-wise, this is unchanged. The timeline track's tooltip now displays the fully-qualified name.

• [Visual Logger] Added support for Coordinate System entries for Visual Logger

• [Mass Navigation] Add optional display of mass navmesh short path in the gameplay debugger tool.

• [Visual Logger] Added coordinate system macro defines to the section for !ENABLE_VISUAL_LOG to fix compilation failure when cooking non-desktop platforms.

• [Mass Gameplay Debug Tool] Added keybindings to toggle lookat and entity descriptions, with the addition of small updates to the entity debug display.

• Improved filtering for row items and tooltips in Visual Logger

  • Replaced MatchCategoryFilters by faster ShouldDisplayCategory base on FName comparison

  • Changed selected entry color to reduce confusion with the color used when warnings are present

  • Error and warning colored boxes are now slightly larger if they are the selected entry to preserve that information

  • Filtered rows are now preserved when a category filter level is modified

  • Tooltips now reflect the category filters

• VisualLoggerKismetLibrary functions are now BlueprintThreadSafe. For message logging, FMessageLog is used only when functions are called on the game thread, otherwise FMsg is used for thread safety

• [Mass Navigation Debug] Move UE::MassNavigation::Debug utils to its own file.

• GameplayDebugger: Which categories are enabled and disabled persist across PIE/editor/game sessions by saving them to EditorPerProjectUserSettings.ini.

Bug Fix:

• Threading fixes and improvements to VisualLogger added MT access detector for the list of maps of object entriesmade EditorBaseTimeStamp thread safeSVisualLogger now listens to FWorldDelegates::OnPostWorldInitialization instead ofFEditorDelegates::PostPIEStarted so EditorBaseTimeStamp can be reset properly before other threads start creating new entries for the new world. This fixes an ensure related to mismatching timestamps when merging entries.

• [VisualLogger] FDebugRenderSceneProxy: match wired and solid render side counts when both are used.

• Added an associated world to FDebugDrawDelegateHelper to only draw text labels on the associated canvas

• Fix debug draw text location for VisualLogger, RewindDebugger and DebugRenderSceneProxy by considering DPI scale and aspect ratio requirement (black bars)

• Rewind Debugger: Fixed RewindDebugger drawing debug capsules at the wrong location. Previously it passed in the capsule's floor coordinate as the center when calling DrawDebugCapsule, causing a half height offset.

• Fix VisualLogger Deprecation messages

AI EQS

New:

• Adds #ifndef macro to USE_EQS_DEBUGGER in EnvQueryTypes.h to allow for the preprocessor macro to be modified in target.cs files via the GlobalDefinitions or Definitions variable.

• EQS Update : Add a NavDataOverrideContext in UEnvQueryGenerator_ProjectedPoints to be able to override Navigation Data instead of using the owner's one.

Bug Fix:

• Prevent AIDataProvider values from being replaced by an incompatible one when using copy/paste

• Fixed AIDataProvider PostEditChange to only validate providers when the struct is of the right type

• EnvQuery runtime template object stored in the EnvQueryManager will always be created with a unique name now

• [EQS] fixed ever growing list of queries when the owners are GC'ed Fixing a memory leak in the EQS Debugger.

AI Navigation

New:

• Made annotation events collection and handling thread safe

• Mass Navmesh NavigationAllows mass entities to find and follow a navmesh path using FMassNavMeshPathFollowTask.

  • Addition of a MassNavMeshNavigation module.

  • Addition of UMassNavMeshNavigationTrait.

  • Addition of a FMassNavMeshPathFollowTask to request a navmesh path and update the short path when needed.

  • Addition of FMassNavMeshShortPathFragment, a subpath used by UMassNavMeshPathFollowProcessor.

  • Addition of FMassFindSmartObjectTargetTask to set target location and associated intent.Addition of a FMassNavMeshStandTask and action.

  • Keep FMassNavMeshPathFollowTask running until the entity reaches its destination.

• [ZoneGraph] Added prefix to parameter names.

• Mass Navigation Debug

  • Addition of vislog for standing avoidance

  • Addition of vislog to UMassSteerToMoveTargetProcessor

• Allow RecastNavMeshDataChunks to reclaim navmesh tiles when using Dynamic Modifiers Only runtime generation while detaching them if they have different layers but the same XY position.

  • Also updated the warning for reusing unloaded sublevels to use the updated console command 'LevelStreaming.ShouldReuseUnloadedButStillAroundLevels 0'.

• [Mass Navigation] Clarify UMassSteerToMoveTargetProcessor debug display.

• [Navmesh] Addition of a Boolean to track if a navmesh has been loaded without its tiles and update the display so it shows as "needs to be rebuilt".

• [Navmesh] Addition of a "Navmesh needs to be rebuilt" message to the navigation display since the stat display is not always enabled.

• [Navlink] Addition of LinkBuilderFlags to the generation config to control which point links will be added from the created links (center, extremity or both).

• [Navlink Generation] Addition of "Selected Edge Collisions Samples" flag to display individual trajectory samples that hit a collision when debugging tile generation.

• Mass Avoidance

  • Allow UMassMovingAvoidanceProcessor to account for environment edges.

  • Addition of environment boundaries in FMassNavMeshShortPathFragment.Those boundaries are added when requesting a short path and are made from a FNavCorridor of the path.Fix in avoidance processor to ignore environment edges that are not yet relevant.

  • Addition of UMassNavMeshNavigationBoundaryProcessor to pass the boundaries to the avoidance through the FMassNavigationEdgesFragment.

  • Added leading and trailing points at the start and end of the short path.

  • [UMassMovingAvoidanceProcessor] Environment avoidance can now work with extruded edges (giving more freedom of movement in tight spots).

  • [UMassMovingAvoidanceProcessor] Avoidance bug fixes in environment separation and avoidance prediction handling.

  • Fix check on environment edge normals.

  • Fix inverted force generated by environment edges.

  • Added text display to DebugDrawLine and display environment edges index when using avoidance debug display.

  • Simplified avoidance debug display, improved consistency and revisited coloring.

• Optimization: add missing references for loops in UCrowdManager::PostMovePointUpdate.

• [Navmesh] Fixed warning "Referenced by: FRecastTileGenerator->AddRereferencedObjects"

• [UMassSteerToMoveTargetProcessor] Clearer and improved debug display.

• New console command "ai.debug.nav.DumpRepositoryElements" to list all elements registered in the Navigation repository with their bounds and parent

• The call to OnActorRegistered in NavigationSystem from AActor::PostRegisterAllComponents will now handle registration for the actor and all its components. Component registration to the navigation system will be ignored until all components are registered to the scene to avoid extra work since actor registration will take care of it. The component specific operations are now only used after the initial registration (e.g., component added/removed/updated).

  • This change fixes an issue exposed by the new registration flow when the NavigationElement is created and pushed with all the relevant data instead of relying on the callbacks when processing the registration queue. That delay was hiding the dependencies between some components.

• [Mass Navigation] Prevent MoveTarget progress to continue without its entity.

• [Mass Navigation] Addition of LogMassMoverDivergence. It allows to track divergences between the mass entity requested velocity and the mover result (if any).

• [Mass Navigation] Added an option to prevent the usage of catchup speed scale in animation driven mode to avoid undesirable speed changes.

• [Navlink] Improved functionality for navigation segment links with addition of logs and changes related to TileRefs.

• [NavigationSystem] replace legacy repository unregisternavrelevantobject method with UnregisterNavRelevantObjectInternal

Bug Fix:

• [Navlink] Fix navlink trajectory issue occurring when using large values for end heights tolerance.

• [Navlink] Only register generated navlink proxies if bGenerateNavLinks is enabled.

• [Navmesh] Fix "Added an oversized dirty area" warnings occurring even if using the disabled threshold value when using invokers.

• Navigation: Stability fix. Fixes nav mesh generation crash on application exit when bDoFullyAsyncNavDataGathering is set to true in the project and FNavigationDataHandler::DemandLazyDataGathering is executing when the application is exiting. Destroying the NavOctree while other threads are running nav building tasks is unsafe, so now the GameThread will wait for the nav mesh build to cancel which waits at least until running async tasks are finished.

• Navigation: Stability fix. Addresses an incorrect array resizeGrow implementation in Recast helper struct rcScopedDelete. When an array is grown from N to M, M elements were copied from the last array address which read-accesses memory it shouldn't.

• [NavArea] Fix regression when creating area modifiers SetAreaClassToReplace sets ApplyMode and bIsLowAreaModifier, calling SetApplyMode was overriding the change.

• Moved unsubscribing from FCoreDelegates::OnGetOnScreenMessages in NavigationSystemV1's destructor over to NavigationSystemV1::CleanUp where the other unsubscribing takes place - by the time the navigation system's destructor gets called the WeakObjectPtr stored in FCoreDelegates::OnGetOnScreenMessages is no longer valid and unsubscribing fails.

• [InstancedStaticMesh] Fix ensure cause by invalidated CachedBounds in UInstancedStaticMeshComponent (AddInstancesInternal is called in a callstack where the bound cache gets invalidated).

• [Navmesh] Recast: prevent layer IDs from being overwritten in complex tiles.

• Fix invoker registration on navigation system override initialisation

• [NavLink] Fix warning for invalid bounds if ANavLinkProxy does not have a simple link but is using a smart link.

• Added support for an edge case in NavigationSystem caused by AActor::RerunConstructionScripts

• Prevent navigation updates on component destroyed during ConsolidatedPostEditChange

• [Navmesh] Brush Navmesh Issues

  • Rebuild Level BSP when sublevel transforms as a whole

  • Fixed framerate tanked when dragging the brush with navmesh

• Fixed InstancedStaticMesh to make sure that UpdateBounds is completed before UStaticMeshComponent::PostStaticMeshCompilation calls FNavigationSubsystem::UpdateComponentData, which relies on updated and cached bounds to create a valid FNavigationElement.

• UpdateActorAndComponentsInNavOctree in NavigationSystem now only performs a full update (unregister/register) on registered components. Otherwise they only need to be unregistered. This is to prevent trashed components to stay registered in the NavOctree when executing RerunConstructionScript.

• [WP Navmesh] When building WP navmesh and deleting unnecessary packages, skip packages already deleted to avoid "Error deleting packages" errors.

• [ZoneGraph] Fix UMassZoneGraphLaneCacheBoundaryProcessor not running by adding the missing FMassLaneCacheBoundaryFragment.

• [Avoidance] In CreateCrowdManager, use warning instead of making an error if no navdata is found. This is because OnNavMeshUpdate() is called on UnregisterNavData and it might be the last one. We want to avoid errors on closing maps.

• [Navmesh] Fix crash in FRecastTileGenerator::AddReferencedObjects by removing invalid check in FNavigationElement::GetWeakUObject.

• [Navmesh] Fix: only spawn the navmesh for the world that was loaded.

• [ZoneGraph] Fix UMassZoneGraphLaneCacheBoundaryProcessor incorrectly calculating segment normals.

• [Mass Navigation] Clamp steering force to respect MaxAcceleration parameter from FMassMovementParameters.

• [Mass Navigation] Addition of FTransformFragment as a requirement for UMassNavigationObstacleTrait.

• [Brush Navmesh] Fixed BSP Navmesh not updated when undo/redo a move

• [ZoneGraph] Fixed crash when attempting to debug ZoneGraph in a non-shipping build by moving ZoneGraph ShowFlag from the ZoneGraphEditor module to the main ZoneGraph module

• [Navlink Generation] Fix generated navLinks ground validation when using a high JumpEndsHeightTolerance value.

• [NavCorridor] Fix issue with SimplifyConcavePortals that could break some portals while simplifying the corridor.

AI Perception

New:

• Improve OnTargetPerceptionForgotten Callbacks in AIPerceptionComponent

• Replaced the RefreshStimulus() method with a new method, ConditionallyStoreSuccessfulStimulus(), which returns a boolean result.

  • This also enables the inclusion of custom logic, such as handling events for a changing Stimulus.Strength parameter when NotifyType == EAISenseNotifyType::OnPerceptionChange

  • This change allows for method overloading and enforces the invocation of OnTargetPerceptionUpdated when needed.

AI Smart Objects

New:

• Added partial multithreading support to be able to update/use/release slots from multiple threads. SmartObject instance lifetime is still single threaded and mainly controlled by components lifetime. The functionality is off by default and can be activated by setting WITH_SMARTOBJECT_MT to 1

• Added support for FSharedStruct and FInstancedStructContainer to 'FPropertyBindingPath::ResolveIndirectionsWithValue'

  • Replaced sharedptr in FWorldConditionQueryDefinition by a transient FSharedStruct so it can be pointed at through property bindings.

  • USmartObjectDefinition::ApplyParameters() will try to redirect bindings to conditions to the runtime structs since EditableCondition used for the bindings are not available in non Editor builds.

  • Clear cached DefinitionAsset variation when SmartObjectComponent is reconstructed to make sure we get an updated variation in case blueprint scripts are modifying some parameters.

• [SmartObject] In FMassFindSmartObjectTask, addition of an option to find the SO from the lane location or the world location (keeping the default as it is currently, by lane).

• Deprecated GetSlotView to force callers to use safer InspectSlotDataFromView/MutateSlotDataFromView.

  • Added FConstSmartObjectSlotView

• Add a public const view accessor for smart object owner data

• Refactored SmartObjectDefinition to use PropertyBindingUtils to share functionalities and add proper support for more types (e.g., object pointers)

• Updated FSmartObjectHandle to use a guid to get proper support of persistent collections with world partitioned level using level instances. Each component will have its own Guid that we combine with the owner Guid when it is time to create a unique handle.

  • This is required for components in LevelInstances since those can be reused many times in a single level and we need to ensure to generate an ID that we can bind to the runtime instances when those components get loaded by the streaming grid.

• Added toolbars in SmartObjectEditor viewport for widget modes, camera, and fixed translation snapping.

• Improved viewport preview bounds computation to ignore invalid definition bounds so the camera position is more appropriate

Bug Fix:

• [Smart Objects] Fix smart objects with parameters are not saved properly in a persistent collection.

• Asset variations are now created using the provided world as Outer so they get properly GC'ed when changing world. This is required since Parameters can have pointers to objects in the level (e.g., actors, components, etc.)

• Forget set InstanceData.LastLane

• Fixed unbound parameter validation for cases where there is no bound parameters

• Prevent uses of variations created for a different world.

• [Smart Objects] Fix a crash inside USmartObjectZoneAnnotations::DebugDraw()

• Added move operations to FSmartObjectRuntime and FWorldConditionQueryState to fix cleanup issues when calling RemoveAndCopyValue in SmartObjectSubsystem::UnregisterCollection

• Fixed SmartObjectZoneAnnotation by using FActorComponentInstanceData to store data that is considered modified by the UCS and not generically saved during RerunConstructionScripts (i.e., SmartObjectAnnotationDataArray)

• Fixed BoundToSimulation called twice for objects registered in a collection

AI State Tree

New:

• Make StateTree Schema SetContextData virtual instead of forcing the child component class to manually call a static function.

• Merge bindings related types with PropertyBindingUtils types

• Added new debug delegates that can be used for debug purposes and added new dedicated update phases for trace/debug.

• Refactored StateTreeDebugger event buffering to support instance execution for multiple worker threads. Buffered data flushing (when starting a trace session) is now handled by callbacks from the main thread. Locks are used with the assumption that the struct associated to a given state tree instance can only be used by a single worker thread in a given frame. Based on that assumption the locks are only used to protect creation of new entries when new instances are producing events. Note that those "Write" operations are a lot less frequent than the read accesses.

• Expose the SetStateTree function to BP. Add a state tree reference setter. Validate if the tree has the correct schema.

• Reorder the EStateTreeRunStatus to be aligned with ETaskCompletionStatus.

  • Fix EStateTreeFinishTaskType::Failed start at value 0 to make UObject that contains the enum valid. They are memset to 0, so the 0 value needs to be valid.

• Add Debug callback and runtime check framework.

  • Check if the context is the same between each execution context.

  • Check if every call to StartState is met with a StopState.

• Added option for MassStateTree processor to run on multiple threads and use ParallelForEachEntityChunk (instead of ForEachEntityChunk)

• Add icons in the editor to show which task ticks.

• Small optimization to skip tasks ticking if no task requests a tick.

  • Moved bHasGlobalTransitionTasks and bHasTransitionTasks from the compiler to the runtime flag initialization.

  • Reordered the data in FCompactStateTreeState for better memory padding.

• Display the other states that are linked to the selected state.

• Multithread access detection. Detect if 2 threads are accessing the same instance data. The validation can be deactivate with the cvar StateTree.RuntimeValidation.MultithreadAccessDetector

• [State Tree Compiler] Added warning report for Condition Evaluation Mode and Disabled Tasks

• Update TStateTreeInstanceDataStructRef to access data in temporary frames. When selecting a state the evaluator and global task data are not in the active frame.

• For linked assets, test if the schema is the same. Add unit test for invalid SetLinkedStateTreeOverrides.

• Log error when collecting external data fails with the component schema.

• [StateTree] Mark UStateTreeAIComponentSchema for export from the module so it can be overridden by users.

• [State Tree] async MoveTo Task - only tick the task when it is tracking the destination vector - added ICompileNodeContext, FCompileNodeContext - added native delegate in AI MoveTo gameplay task

• [State Tree] async RunEnvQuery Task

• Prevent enter conditions and utilities from binding to task instance data. A parent state can try to enter a child state before it's accepted by the transition. The task instance data is only available once the transition is completed.

• Add a function to set the LinkedStateTreeOverrides from BP.

• Adding filtering of state selection behavior options based on schema.

• Added a find tool for the editor. Highlight task or evaluator that can be in the asset detail view.

• Added custom tick rate in seconds to states. If an active state has a custom tick rate, then the state cannot sleep; all the other states (children or parents) will also tick at that rate. If more than one active state has a custom tick rate, then the smallest custom tick rate wins.

• Tick the global tasks and evaluators in the state hierarchy. That solves bindings order issues and data that are one frame late for the global tasks/evaluators when they execute in a linked state. The old behavior can be set with cvar StateTree.TickGlobalNodesWithHierarchy.

• ScheduledNextTick. A state tree execution can sleep or delay the tick for better performance. A state tree will wake up on a transition request or event. The feature has to be implemented by each schema. The feature for the Actor Component schema can be disabled/enabled with cvar StateTree.Component.ScheduledTickEnabled.

  • Reworked weak execution context to use the execution extension.

  • Renamed the FStateTreeEventQueueExecutionContext for the FStateTreeMinimalExecutionContext since it is now clear that it will be used by other features like Transition, ViewData and Delegate. The FStateTreeExecutionContext extends the FStateTreeMinimalExecutionContext.

  • Only the functionality that doesn't require the context data, external data or linked data is available on the minimal version.

  • Only send events when the execution state is running.

• Added a BP native make node for StateTreeReference. Add a k2 node to set the properties in the state tree reference. The default values are not accepted for the property pins. That detects whether the user wants to override the value or keep the state tree default parameters. The default cannot stay in sync with the state tree asset.

• Added a specific StateTreeEditorData for each schema. A schema can register its desired EditorData type. Then it will upgrade the next time the editor asset opens or when the asset compiles. It is the default editor type when the asset is created. Added the same verification code when you compile the asset to when you open the editor asset (for consistency).

• Added FStateTreeReadOnlyExecutionContext. An execution context that allows concurrent read access. Useful for debugging on multiple threads. Move read-only functions from the FStateTreeExecutionContext (of FStateTreeMinimalExecutionContext) to the new context.

  • Deprecate the variable InstanceDataStorage from FStateTreeExecutionContext, Storage duplicate it.

  • Deprecate StateTreeEvaluatorBase::AppendDebugInfoString and StateTreeTaskBase to make them usable by FStateTreeReadOnlyEecutionContext.

• Add a binding viewer for the editor. That helps identify the bindings used by the state tree asset.

• Add task completion control.    

  • Any tasks that are not on the list are considered "background" tasks. They will not complete the state when they are completed.

  • A state can specify if all the tasks need to be completed or if any tasks can be completed to complete the state.

  • A task failure completes the state as a failure, only if the task is in the list, and regardless of whether the control is any or all.

  • Global tasks complete the tree they are part of. Previously, the behavior was that any global task completes the root execution.

  • You can now define the task that will complete the states.

Bug Fix:

• Global tasks and evaluators are not started if temporary data for them already exists. It's a leftover from times when we were not stopping them in such cases.

• Call the base function for UStateTreeComponent::InitializeComponent and UStateTreeComponent::UninitializeComponent. P4 history doesn't mention it but we guess that it was to skip the UBrainComponent from initializing a behavior tree.

• StateTreeDebugger fixes

  • Added missing information in transition source struct to refer to the proper asset in case of linked trees (this fixes an ensure for mismatching transition information when reading the trace)

  • Fixed scoped state phase display (missing case for Push/Pop)fixed broken icons in frame details view for log events (warning, error and fatal)

• [State Tree Editor] fixed StateTreeViewModel's selected states not synced to StateTree View's ones

• Update transition request to use frame ID. FrameID uniquely identifies the frame and prevents errors in async tasks.

• Removed the property's custom label if its member is bound.

• [State Tree Editor] fixed nullptr access from skipping the header initialization for Property Function Nodes

• [State Tree Editor] Fixed typos in State and Node Height tooltips in a State View settings

• Fix calls to PostEditInstanceDataChangeChainProperty on nodes with TArray property.

• Fixed copy binding for function bindings.

• Make the StateTreeComponent Blueprintable.

• Use the correct tree instance data when migrating a linked asset tree.

• [State Tree] barf nullptr UClass due to BP/c++ class deletion in StateTree link

• Fix bad index usage in transition. The index used was the state index inside the asset, and we needed the state index in the active list.

• Fix runtime issue with context constructed with one owner on start by with another to gather info.

• Fixed crash during bindings compilation (accessing view to array under modification).

• [State Tree] Fixed Random Selector not using the correct StateIndex

• [State Tree] Fixed a few glitches in transitioning logic

  • Fixed when the active path doesn't have any tickable tasks, on-completion transitions in subsequent frames will be ignored

  • Fixed when there are only disabled task on the active path, on-completion transitions will be ignored

  • Fixed unnecessary looping through parent frames when a on-completion transition has already been found that triggers faulty behaviors in ST Debugger

• Make sure there is always one editor color. Fix states color ref when it does not exist.

• Hashing the editor data after the compilation, in case the compilation process changes the data.

• Fixed memory leak in FPropertyBindingBindingCollection::ResetObjects when the binding is a complex type with a destructor since InitializeValue() does not check for CPF_NoDestructor. The issue was seen with a TArray leaking its buffer when it was reset. Fix for a memory leak and crash in StateTree.

• Use the correct tree to iterate on transitions when selecting a new state.

• Add support for transition on PropertyRef K2Node.

• Use redirector when resolving binding path to solve issues with renamed BP property.

• Separates the workspace tab to initialize the tab for the editor toolkit and the editor mode.

• Fixed incorrectly created ArrayView to ActiveStates.

• Rename objects that will be duplicated on compiles to get predictable object names.

• When duplicating the asset, make sure the new binding collection owner is correctly set. Because struct property cannot be DuplicatedTransient, the value is set to the CDO value when duplicating the collection.

  • Licenses should do the same for their implementation.

• Force the UStateTreeEditorData outer to be a UStateTree. When the asset is used or compiled the nodes expect the outer to be a state tree.

• Use the correct buffer when accessing the temporary global buffer.

• Reset the compiled data when the editor data is copied. It prevents old data in the compiled data.

• Fix for weight property being visible in state detail even when schema disabled utility.

• StateTree: Update the K2Node for PropertyRef to use the byte type (as blueprint does) when the property is an enum.

• Update the delete key input for mac.

• Do not update the bound properties, for the delay task, on Tick and ExitState. They are not needed

• Use the correct tree to iterate by active state for GetDebugInfo

• Resetting temporary instances after a transition. Previously, the instance data was reset only when the transition succeeded.

• Fix rebuild state tree view with undo/redo.

• StateTreeDebugger now registers to be notified when the associated StateTree asset gets successfully recompiled to clear any previously recorded data that could mismatch the new compiled tree data version.

• Added refresh on undo/redo for the Editor Data details view to make sure cached data in binding row extensions are up-to-date

• [State Tree] prompt needs recompile and force recompile pre-PIE when binding is changed

• [State Tree Editor] Dirtied Editor Compiler button when changing global data

API

New:

• Refactor MemQuery code to get rid of FString operations, input handling and provide cleaner API.

• Simplified ChangeBundleStateForPrimaryAssets by returning CombinedHandle even for 1 asset requests

• Fixed a state transition logic to correctly handle bundle states when asset is already loaded

• Fixed a state transition logic to correctly handle cancelation of streaming handle

• Made AddTargetLayer optional after calling ALandscapeProxy::Import. Missing layer info is automatically added as needed. This restored the behavior that Import had in 5.4.

Bug Fix:

• Fix assert by skipping refcount checks for property bag instances when exiting the application

Audio

New:

• The ADM plugin is an implementation of the ADM-OSC spec enabling spatial audio workflows in UE.

  • Individual source positions are transmitted via OSC in (x, y, z) coordinates.

  • Corresponding source audio is transmitted through the direct outs of a WASAPI aggregate device enabling large channel count spatialized audio.

• Waveform Editor supports cue points and loop regions (markers)

• Folder actions added for bulk versioning MetaSounds easily either recursively or locally.

• ModulationPatchEditor: Tooltip improvements so that when you hover over a point on a curve, it shows you the unit value accompanied by its unit as well as the normalised value

• Waveform Editor GUI - Added support for Add/Remove Cue Points/Markers and to reimport and overwrite transformations

• Added a new CVar (au.Concurrency.IncludeVolumeModulation) which allows the volume modulation on a Sound to impact Concurrency and Voice Management when using Stop Quietest.

  • When set to 0, this behavior is unchanged from before (Audio Modulation has no impact).

  • When set to 1, the behavior only applies to One-Shots.

  • When set to 2, it applies to all sounds.

• Added a new value to ActiveSound, which allows the Virtualization Mode of a sound to be overridden at runtime

• Export marker data to soundwave using the Waveform Editor Toolbar and export marker data to .wav files using the right click context menu in the content browser

• New -muteaudio command line tool and au.MuteAudio cvar apply a mute on the final output buffer without modify audio engine behavior (audio analysis, memory, or performance profile)

• Waveform Editor: Added the ability to tune and preview loop points

• Added a new Duration parameter to Control Bus Mixes.

  • When set to a value above 0, the Control Bus Mix will start a timer upon Activation. When the time set in the Duration value is reached, the Control Bus Mix will automatically deactivate itself.

  • Added a new option on Control Bus Mixes called "Retrigger On Activation"When set to true, affects the behavior when activating a mix which is already activated. The Mix will return all stages to their default values, and then begin the Attack segment again (like retriggering an envelope).

• Added a new experimental Virtualization Mode: Seek Restart

  • This mode mostly behaves like Restart, but once the sound realizes, it will start the sound and seek to the appropriate location in the sound's loop based on how it's been since the sound first played.

  • This feature is currently experimental; you may hear unexpected behavior in some use cases.

• Added smoothing to MetaSound delay nodes

• Append metasound instance unique ID to the graph name for Print Log metasound nodes

  • Helps when debugging a metasound that can have several instances playing at once

• Settings have been added to the Editor preferences for configuring XAudio2, WASAPI and WASAPI aggregate devices. WASAPI support is new to UE and utilizes the high quality, low latency, modern audio device layer.

  • WASAPI aggregate devices unlock all of the channels of physical audio devices whereas a normal, windows device would max out at eight channels.

  • Combining a large channel count audio device with UE's aggregate audio device support and the new ADM plugin enables large channel count spatialized audio configurations and workflows.

• New variant of MetaSound delay node that accepts an audio buffer for delay time, to allow for sample-accurate manipulation of a delay line

• Add new keywords to common MetaSound nodes:

  • "length" and "size" for array Num nodes

  • "append" for the array Concat node

  • "slice" for the array Subset node

  • "gain" and "vca" for the Multiply (Audio by Float) node

  • "if" and "branch" for Trigger Compare nodes

  • "select" for Trigger Route nodes.

• Clamped no-repeats order to be half the array size vs the whole array size using RandomGet in MetaSounds.

• Changed the default settings on newly created Modulation Parameter Patches:Bypass is now false by defaultContains one input, with a custom curve that goes linearly from 0 at 0 to 1 at 1

• Hid the Pitch Modulation option on Source Buses, since it never worked and was never intended to be visible.

• Added Unreal Insights asset scopes for MetaSound building and rendering memory use.

• Added log for the case when the audio engine is unable to initialize due to intentional audio disablement (-nosound or an application mode without audio backend support)

• Added Unwatch functions to MetaSound Output Subsystem to Unbind Output Delegates

• Adding 5.1 and 7.1 markup for audio busses to reflect common string representations

• Improve UX around Submix and Bus Sends. Based on the Send Level Control Method enum selection, we now hide irrelevant properties from view (e.g. only show Custom Curve if the send method is set to Custom Curve).

• Users are now notified to restart the editor after changing audio callback buffer size or number of buffers.

• Polishing up source and submix effects uproperty displays, tooltips, and more.

• Added ability to disable hardware accelerated convolution by commandline or cvar. "au.DisableHardwareConvolution 1" or "-DisableHardwareConvolution"

• Added UAssetUserData to USoundClass to allow users to sidecar custom data that can be shared across a large amount of content more efficiently

• Added new command line argument "ForceSurroundSound", which adds the ability to force a Windows machine to initialize the audio device to render 8 channels of audio. Will downmix to stereo. Useful for scenarios where an 8-channel audio device isn't available and a developer needs to exercise 8-channel audio rendering code.

• Added icons for fade options in the Waveform Editor

• Renamed "Binaural" audio attenuation spatialization method as "Plugin-Spatialized".

• The MetaSound C++ Node API has been updated to support node configuration. This allows node developers to added custom UX and configurable interfaces to their nodes.

• Scrubbing sound waves in Sequencer now implements a real-time granular scrubbing method.

• Added a new experimental engine plugin for subtitles, closed captions, and scene descriptions that can be decoupled from SoundWaves.

  • The widget can be set from the Project Settings.

  • The new Subtitle plugin uses a UMG widget to display text, which makes it easier to modify visual properties and to link those properties to gameplay information.

Bug Fix:

• Fix Audio repeating in sequence when sequence time dilation is set below 1 and audio is not set to looping

• Fixed issue where the ADSR Envelope MetaSound node would only trigger OnSustain if the Decay stage was more than 0 seconds long. Now it triggers when the Sustain stage begins regardless of the Decay stage length.

• Fixed bug where attenuation spatialization and focus settings were dependent. Focus works independent of spatialize.

• Fix for crash due to hardcoded byte size of 4 instead of using size of template numeric type when writing numeric type to OSC stream

• Fixed a bug where sending a submix to an audio bus with a mismatched channel configuration did not properly convert the signal, leading to undefined behavior.

• Fixed crashes in the "Create x" Audio Modulation Blueprint Functions (e.g. Create Control Bus Mix, Create AD Envelope Generator) caused by passing any of them matching names.

• Fixed crash for SoundWave Haptics.

• Fixed one-shot truncation in the audio renderer.

• Fix serialization issue when making and saving a new bitcrusher source effect

• Added tooltips, categories, and a bypass option to source effect dynamics processor

• Fixing crash in simple sound when there are no variations.

• Renamed "real time audio" slider to "Level Editor Volume" and added clear tooltips. Changed volume display to decibels.

• Omniblend is fixed for mono sources using Direct2D for the case of surround sound outputs.

• Fixed up settings category for MetaSounds and AudioModulation plugins to show up in Plugins.

• Omniblend is fixed for mono sources using Direct2D for the case of surround sound outputs.

• Fixed the audio mixer event timeout duration changing to minimum if you attach and then detach a debugger.

• Fixing issue of MetaSounds on sequencer having a gigantic duration. Now, it gives a 1-second region you can drag for the region.

• Fixed a crashing issue in the SoundCue node USoundNodeRandom.

• Fixed a bug where the Wet and Dry Modulation settings on a Submix used the Output Volume Modulation settings instead.

• Fix for MetaSound Editor performance regression causing larger graphs to stall while editing connections, adding or removing nodes, etc.

• Fix issue where MetaSounds Midi Clock State node was not correctly reporting tempo until a tempo change event was received, and equivalent behavior for other outputs

• Fixed issue where sounds played with PlayQuantized / Quartz may have their tails cut one audio buffer early.

• Fix for crash when calling BuildNewMetaSound & BuildAndOverwriteMetaSound via MetaSound Builder Subsystem in Blueprint.

• Fixed a bug where dragging a pin off a submix to create a new one does not automatically connect the two submixes.

• Fixed bug on MetaSound Mid-Side Encode/Decode nodes preventing live update of input values

• General improvements to audio device swapping in XAudio2 and WASAPI mixer backends.

• Fixed an issue where adjusting volume on audio components stops a sound regardless of their virtualization mode.

• Fix for Surround2D non-spatialized radius mode not working when output is stereo.

• Fixed bug where MetaSound relative render cost reporting wouldn't work for MetaSound operators retrieved from the Operator Cache.

• Clamped no-repeats order to be half the array size vs the whole array size using RandomGet in MetaSounds.

• Fixed an issue with GC and bus sends on wave instances.

• Fix for unrolled SoundWaves not looping in sequencer

• Fixed an editor crash when using more than 1024 characters to name Metasound Variable or Vertex.

• Fixed an editor crash when creating a Sound Cue with more than 32 Sound Sources

• Fix for connections in the MetaSound Asset Editor sometimes disappearing when swapping an output's data type on an asset that implements paged graphs.

• Fixed a bug using MetaSounds with a Level Sequence where MetaSound input channels were being sent to Pitch and Volume channels as well.

Deprecated:

• UMetaSoundSource: Generators are stored in an array with their AudioComponentID and InstanceID instead of in a map. Uses of UMetaSoundSource::OnGeneratorInstanceDestroyed and UMetaSoundSource::OnGeneratorInstanceCreatedshould be replaced with UMetaSoundSource::OnGeneratorInstanceInfoDestroyed and UMetaSoundSource::OnGeneratorInstanceInfoCreated

• Deprecated the following Audio Modulation Functions:

  • Activate Bus

  • Deactivate Bus

  • Activate Generator

  • Deactivate Generator

  • To manage the state of Control Buses and Modulation Generators without playing a sound, use the Audio Modulation Destination type in Blueprints (accessible via Create Modulation Destination and Clear Modulator).

• Deprecated the GetModulationParameter function

  • We have replaced this function with one of the same name which returns a const pointer instead of a const reference.

Blueprint

New:

• Update K2Node_SwitchEnum.h (add SetEnum to the DLL export table)

• Allow blueprint compilers to specify FBPVariableDescriptions to generate blueprint variables with during compilation

• Add support for custom k2 nodes to be more easily detected by macros as latent. Currently, we hard code any nodes that might be latent and nested in a macro. However, this is restrictive for anyone trying to create a custom node with latent behavior. Instead, nodes can override IsLatentForMacros.

  • Moved IsLatentForMacros to UK2Node from UEdGraphNode. Macros are a Blueprint-only concept.

• Add autocast to GetAssetUserDataOfClass

• Deprecated BaseClassesToAllowRecompilingDuringPlayInEditor, and allowed compilation during Play In Editor (PIE) by default. If blueprint editing during PIE is problematic use BaseClassesToDisallowRecompilingDuringPlayInEditor to disable the new behavior.

  • E.g. [/Script/UnrealEd.BlueprintEditorProjectSettings]+BaseClassesToDisallowRecompilingDuringPlayInEditor=/Script/CoreUObject.Objectin DefaultEditor.ini can be used to disable all blueprint editing and compilation during PIE

• Corrected comment on Blueprint property meta specifier "BlueprintBaseOnly": The specifier shows classes that can be used as a base for Blueprints, not classes that are Blueprints.

• Blueprint property categories in the details panel are now sorted according to the user defined order.

• Add the ability to set DeprecatedFunction="Note" (and DeprecatedVariable) metadata in C++ to lower the severity of a blueprint deprecation message. This can be used to softly deprecate functions without causing build warnings.

• Updated the comment for BlueprintPure to reflect the correct definition of "pure". BlueprintPure was originally intended to mean functional pure, but that never materialized. It just means that a Blueprint function node will hide its exec pins by default, which can be toggled at the callsite.

• Renamed the "Max" parameter in RandomInteger and RandomInteger64 to "Max Exclusive". This only affects Blueprints. The "Max" sometimes throws off users thinking that it means inclusive max, when it's actually exclusive. While the tooltip does mention this, renaming the parameter helps enforce the meaning.

• Add support for the AdvancedDisplay markup on properties when using K2Node_ConstructObjectFromClass

• Add additional pixel formats to FImportanceTexture to support high dynamic range Data is linearized on load for RGBA8 formats, and floating point data is loaded directly.

• Expand 'HideAssetPicker' meta usefulness This expands the metadata to work on other node types besides function calls (eg: property setters). Additionally, the metadata was renamed to "HidePinAssetPicker". Previously, it was a little ambiguous because it could give the incorrect impression that it hides the picker on the details panel for any properties.

• Convert Bool to Branch similar to Validated Get Getter nodes for bools can be converted to branches via the context menu. This is a minor quality of life issue that obviates the need for manually adding a separate branch node. The implementation generalizes the bIsPureGet to an enum that represents either the 'validated object get' or a regular boolean. This also removes some really old and irrelevant code that was intended to catch issues tied to another change.

• Implement ForEachLoop node for TSet datatypes. Additional changes made by Epic:

  • Used minimal API to reduce export count.

  • Added value name customization.

  • Changed PinConnectionListChanged to NotifyPinConnectionListChanged.

  • Replaced type state-tracking with RefreshWildcardPins, which updates the pins based on the current set link. This also simplifies the implementation.

  • Removed pin tooltip customization.

  • Fixed an iterator bug in GenericSet_GetItemByIndex.

• Create a blueprint node for iterating TMap's in a ForEach style similar to the ForEach for TArray. Additional changes made by Epic:

  • Used minimal API to reduce export count.

  • Changed PinConnectionListChanged to NotifyPinConnectionListChanged.

  • Replaced type state-tracking with RefreshWildcardPins, which updates the pins based on the current set link. This also simplifies the implementation.

  • Removed pin tooltip customization.

  • Added an InferType overload for setting a pin type from a FEdGraphTerminalType.

  • Fixed a bug in ResetToWildcard that didn't reset value pin data.

Bug Fix:

• The Details Panel's Create New Blueprint button now works correctly with Soft Class Properties

• Nodes within math expression sub-graph can be edited to show exec pins We shouldn't enable the pure toggle during any type of debugging mode.

• Fix `NotEqual_IntPointIntPoint` function meta Keywords and ScriptOperator

• Able to add a Custom Event to a function graph using Create Event node When adding new custom events via the Create Event node, we need to ensure that we add them to the Blueprint's event graph, and not the node's current graph. Additionally, we should only allow this option if the Blueprint actually supports event graphs (eg: Blueprint libraries do _not_ have these).

• Fixed crashes when running GenerateBlueprintAPICommandlet

• Fix compile error on Mac.

• Editor crash after disconnecting EnumToString node input from a wildcard output pin

  • When an EnumToString node is created, its widget creates a SGraphPinEnum that also generates a combo box of enumerator values based on the currently linked enum. If there's no attached enum, it creates a generic byte-based SGraphPin.

  • The logic of SGraphPinEnum assumes that its corresponding pin remains invariant. However, that's not the case if a link is ever broken or changes enum type. As a result, we can trip various asserts in SGraphPinEnum that assume there's a valid UEnum.

  • We can fix this by forcing a node reconstruction if the linked enum ever changes. In fact, we have to do this when breaking a link because we need a SGraphPin as opposed to a SGraphPinEnum.

  • Additionally, we need to trigger the reconstruction in NodeConnectionListChanged. NotifyPinConnectionListChanged isn't safe for calling ReconstructNode because it's frequently called in contexts that expect stable pins, which reconstruction will destroy.

• Blueprint nodes that are replaced on load can now reconnect mistakenly orphaned pins

• Structure assets in the error state will no longer remove themselves from other structure assets

• The [/Script/Engine.Blueprint] bRecompileOnLoad config value is once again honored by the blueprint compiler. It has been ignored for several releases and now warns when it is used to suppress compilation on load

• Bitfield enums don't cast correctly in Blueprints

  • Casting bytes to an enum wasn't working correctly if the enum was a bitfield and the byte value was a combination of valid flags.

• Subobjects: Fixed DefaultToInstanced subobjects breaking on blueprint duplication.

  • When blueprint assets were duplicated, previously instanced subobjects became orphaned due to UPROPERTY pointers to them becoming null in the duplicated blueprint.

  • This was caused by a SkeletonOnly blueprint compilation for the new asset which creates the CDO while the blueprint generated class did not have correctly initialized class flags yet.

  • This caused instanced subobject reference restoration to be skipped in the CDO's PostConstructInit->InstanceSubobjects.

  • This fix makes some workflows with instanced and DefaultToInstanced subobjects possible again, including GAS default subobject AttributeSets.

Blueprint Compiler

New:

• Blueprints will now have their Tick function disabled if it's empty.

Bug Fix:

• Fixed bug that caused MakeArray with wildcard pins not behaving correctly when using smart macro inference

• Harvest metadata from user-defined function local variable descriptors at compile time to support details customizations that may expose it for editing.

• The blueprint reinstancer is now less aggressive about disallowing RootComponent overwrites, use bp.UseLegacyRootComponentPreservation to return to the baseline behavior if the RootComponent is incorrect after blueprint compilation

• Fixed crash when creating a macro blueprint based on a blueprint that is not up to date

• Don't map subobject archetypes until they've been reinstanced during a batched Blueprint compile on load.

• Disallow reference replacement on derived class artifacts left over from a previous compile during Blueprint reinstancing.These may be kept alive due to e.g. transaction records that can still reference reinstanced build artifacts across a Blueprint compile.

• Retain archetypes cached during the CDO/archetype reinstancing phase that may be needed later to resolve old instance subgraph archetypes during non-archetype reinstancing.Also hooked the editor's archetype cache into core UObject archetype lookup logic for outer chains. This maintains archetype coherency during reinstancing if the chain is not fully reinstanced.

• Fix for a regression in Blueprint reinstancing that could lead to data loss of an editor-spawned nested instanced subobject archetype.

• Blueprint function calls with literal values supplied for interface parameters now compile correctly

• Interface parameters in blueprints that are assigned to 'self' on the function call node now behave correctly

• Fix instability in the generated class for blueprints that use UMVVMK2Node_MakeBrushFromSoftResource

Blueprint Editor

New:

• Modify SGraphNodeResizeable so that the resizing hotspots grow along as the node panel zooms out. This makes resizing & moving derived nodes such as Blueprint Comments much easier.

• Localization fixes: The Blueprint Graph Editor will be localized for all Functions/Events/Actions again. This should be consistent across all Blueprint Graph Editor areas.

• Mark UK2Node_BaseAsyncTask::GetFactoryFunction as public so it can be used for external validation

• Adding multiline Details field to Comment block node. This info will show up in the tooltip as well.

• When connecting incompatible pins in a blueprint graph the context menu is now shown, allowing the user to search for a compatible node. This new behavior can be disabled via the ShowPanelContextMenuForIncompatibleConnections Blueprint Editor Setting

• Adds a Stack command for Blueprint node alignment + with some general cleanup and icons

• Collection Manager Scripting Subsystem is a new subsystem exposing the Collection Container system to Blueprint.

Bug Fix:

• The blueprint compiler no longer attempts to add a scene root component to blueprints that do not support a construction script but currently have one

• Do not mark Blueprint assets dirty when reconstructing graph nodes outside of a transaction scope.

• Fixed crash when adding an interface with functions that have "AnimBlueprintFunction" metadata to a non-animation blueprint

• Fixed cashes when creating blueprints based on blueprints in the dirty state

• Fix potential for a new race condition during async Blueprint indexing.

• Fixed an ensure that would fire when diffing some blueprints with custom details panel controls

• Fixed crash when changing levels after restoring an editor session that had open blueprint editors

• Fixed a crash when adding abstract Components and other invalid Blueprint classes to a Blueprint Graph. The nodes now result in a compilation error.

• Auto-generate BP class path name if asset tag is missing during component type registration.

• Fix a potential race condition during Blueprint asset search data indexing.

• Fixed performance problem when booting the editor with an open blueprint editor when the palette tab is active

• Fixed crash when editing a blueprint math expression node

• Ctrl clicking on wires with multiple connections now behaves as expected, disconnecting from the closest pin rather than the pin with the fewest connections

• Fixed crash when attempting to implement an interface inherited function in a Blueprint Macro Library, instead a toast is triggered explaining that this is not permitted

• Fixed an ensure that fired when diffing blueprint assets that contained TMaps

• Fixed ensure when navigating to a function via the Blueprint Callstack Viewer when there were multiple classes with the same name

• Fixed a crash after renaming and replacing the DefaultSceneRoot component. It now resets its name to the default one when "deleted".

• The blueprint diff tool now reports changes to Create Event Node's signature function

• Fix editor crash after clicking on a deleted graph node hyperlink in the Blueprint editor's compiler results tab.

Deprecated:

• Marked editor-only Asset Tags Subsystem functions as deprecated with an encouragement to migrate to Collection Manager Scripting Subsystem

Blueprint Runtime

Bug Fix:

• Fixed an old regression that caused components attached to Blueprint actors dynamically spawned at runtime using the fast path option to fail to instance subobject templates in a cooked build.

• Fixed memory leaks when accessing TArrays out of bounds or searching TMaps for keys that are not present when the contained type allocates in its native default constructor

Gameplay

New:

• Trace Targeting Selection / Engineering: Added option to use Single trace instead of Multi trace. This allows for ensuring only one hit result is given, avoiding the case where an initial overlap hit is given along with the first hit past the initial overlap.

• Add GetPossibleDataRegistryIdList to the DataRegistrySubsystem to allow iterating registries from blueprint. Deprecate GetCachedItemFromLookupBP in favor of new "Find Data Registry Item From Lookup" that uses multiple output pins.

• Mover: Adding NavWalkingMode to support more efficient walking movement for actors using a navmesh

• Expose `APlayerController::IsPrimaryPlayer()` to BP as `BlueprintPure` This will allow games to check if a controller is a primary player from Blueprint, without having to try to expose it through BP function libraries, components, or other methods.

• Mover: Added BlueprintInternalUseOnly to LayeredMove, InstantEffect and MovmentModifier base structs to disallow making and queueing the base structs in Blueprint.

• Add AsyncMessage.EnableWorldSubsystem (defaults to on) and AsyncMessage.EnableWorldSubsystemForEditor (defaults to off) cvars to control when the async message world subsystem is actually created

• Mover: Teleport instant effect now supports setting rotation in addition to location

• EnhancedInput: Add RegistrationTrackingMode to Input Mapping Context to select how multiple registrations of the IMC is handled

• Mover: Fixing performance concern where nav walking modes perform duplicate GetNavData queries

• Mover: Adding display name to instant effects so they are easier to find/make/break in Blueprints

• Mover: Adding option for input production to be performed in parallel for the standalone backend

• Mover: Updating NavMoverComponent GetLocation functions to get rid of unneeded casting

• Gameplay Ability System: ATTRIBUTE_ACCESSORS macro which was commented as a suggestion in AttributeSet.h is now usable out of the box as ATTRIBUTE_ACCESSORS_BASIC.

• Improvements to the performance and thread safety of the tick.AllowBatchedTicks system first added in 5.5.

• Mover: Adding an external gameplay tag container allowing outside systems to add gameplay tags for Mover evaluations.

• [GAS] Allowing AbiiltySystem.Ability.Activate to distinguish between previously granted abilities and ones that need to activate immediately. This helps debug situations where you can't activate a granted ability.

• GameplayCueNotify_Actors that receive multiple WhileActive/OnBecameRelevant events will now ensure that OnRemove/OnCeaseRelevant events are executed afterwards. The console variable "AbilitySystem.GameplayCueNotifyMultipleRemoveEvents 0" can be used to force a single OnRemove/OnCeaseRelevant event per instance in all situations.

• UGameplayTagsManager::IsValidGameplayTagString - Add overloads for using FStringView and FStringBuilderBase. Address cases where the value of OutFixedString would not be valid if TagString was an invalid gameplay tag string of a particular format.

• Mover: Removing FMoverDefaultSyncState data collection add from FMoverSyncState constructor. Also adding a workaround for the NPP liaison to make sure start state has valid persistent sync states.

• GameplayTags: Added a ShowOnlyLeafTag UPROPERTY meta tag, which allows you to show only the leaf name in the tag chip instead of the full tag path.

• Mover: Editing NavMoverComponent to remove Tick and adding some uint64s to help keep track of when input is requested and consumed to help with caching and clearing cached nav input values.

• Change ticking to use ProcessUntilTasksComplete to periodically call an update function while waiting for tasks on other threads. Added tick.IdleTaskWorkMS cvar to control this, if > 0 the game thread will spend that many milliseconds trying to process other work (like worker thread tasks) when the game thread is idle

• [GAS] GAMEPLAYABILITIES_API added to cue notify structs so they are exposed and can be aggregated for use with custom GameplayCueNotify objects.

• Mover: Exposing functions, parameters and structs/properties to allow for a Movement Mode to be created entirely in Blueprints.

• Mover: reduced costs of various queries by ensuring we always have a valid cached state to refer to

• Moved Modifier Magnitude stack calculation into the GE so that stacking can be changed per effect.

• Mover: added navmesh walking options for sliding along edges, and for alternative behaviors when attempting to go off the navmesh

• Mover: NavWalkingMode changes that grab the NavigationSystem directly and find NavData based on properties from the NavMoverComponent.

• Added gameplay tag binding and unbinding functions to the UAbilitySystemBlueprintLibrary.

• Mover: added BP access to trajectory sample variables

• Mover: improving copy implementation of data collections and sync state to avoid memory reallocation when possible

• Mover: Adding AdditiveVelocity MixMode support to MultiJump Layered Move. Also making small adjustments to the extended Mover pawn to make sure additive velocity is respected by turning off extra jump input from CharacterMoverComponent Jump

• Change GameFeatureSubsystem::AddObserver to notify the new observer about any already loaded plugins

• Passing -m to gamever will display the gameversion components on separate lines to make it easier to view the information you want

• Add checks to prevent adding invalid tags (consistent with FGameplayTagContainer).

  • FGameplayTagCountContainer:

    • Added ensure in UpdateTagMap_Internal. Logic should return early before reaching this point.

    • Early returns in UpdateTagCount and SetTagCount if the tag is invalid.

  • FMinimalReplicationTagCountMap:

    • Early returns in AddTag and SetTagCount if the tag is invalid.

  • GameplayCues:

    • Early returns in GameplayCueManager's InvokeGameplayCueExecuted and InvokeGameplayCueExecuted

    • Early return in UAbilitySystemComponent::AddGameplayCue_Internal.

• Physics Mover: Jumping can now apply a reaction force to the ground if it is a dynamic body

• Mover: Adding support for arbitrary gravity directions to default movement modes and util libraries.

• Gameplay Tags: Added the DevComment to the tooltip for tag chips in both SGameplayTagCombo and SGameplayTagContainerCombo

• [GAS] GameplayTagsManager will not ensure against Fast Tag Replication network indices size when not using Fast Tag Replication. We achieve this by not reconstructing the Net Indices when using non-Fast Tag Replication (e.g. the new Dynamic Tag Replication). This allows Dynamic Replication to continue past the size of uint16 Gameplay Tags without workflow issues.

• Add GameFeaturePlugin.ForceSyncRegisterStartupPlugins (defaults to true) cvar to make the game feature state machine synchronously register plugins during engine startup even if async loading is enabled.

• Mover: Moving bShouldNextModeReenter from UImmediateMovementModeTransition to UBaseMovementModeTransition so we can check it and avoid reentering a mode as the default behavior.

• AActor::CheckActorComponents has misleading warning. This warning is _really_ old, and not very useful to begin with. It'll always trip because the component template objects have the GEN_VARIABLE suffix, which instances don't have. This warning was never updated to reflect that. It tends to pop up when users enable all warnings (i.e.: -logCmds="global warning").

• Mover: Providing a gameplay tag that can be used to skip proposed movement in RootMotionAttributeLayeredMoves

• World: Add support for disabling Time Dilation in GetEffectiveTimeDilation() without modifying any of the time dilation values; When disabled, time dilation can still be set via existing functions, but calling GetEffectiveTimeDilation() will return 1.0, indicating no time dilation. Once set back to true, GetEffectiveTimeDilation() will return the time dilation as last set (even if it was set while time dilation was disabled).

• Adjusting APawn::UpdateNavAgent and APawn::GetNavAgentPropertiesRef() to use the NavMovementInterface

• Mover: Removing unneeded MoverDataCollection additions in constructors and reset functions

• Mover: Exposing BaseVisualComponentTransform with a getter and setter function so we can set the offset of visual components. We now also use these functions to properly adjust the visual component of the pawn when crouching.

• Add a way to attach a breakpoint to specific game feature's state changes. This can be enabled while editing a game feature or using the console command "EnableDebugGameFeatureState "

• Mover Examples: Adding new flying BP movement modes to show making a mode entirely in BP.

• Mover: added new move input type to differentiate between none and invalid, avoiding erroneous warnings

• [GAS] Added EditorGetAssetTags() for a mutable version of the Ability Tags for use in Editor Tooling.

• Mover: misc memory-related improvements during simulation

• Mover: improving thread safety with locked access around certain operations

• Add an optional deferred component move handler (s.GroupedComponentMovement.Enable) on the UWorld to allow scene components to request movement to be propagated later on the frame as a larger group of updates to help improve performance

• Add LevelStreaming.VisibilityPrioritySort to change the order that it processes level streaming adds and removes

• Mover: added warnings to detect excessive speed coming from root motion attributes

• Mover: Adding double buffer for cached sync state to avoid issues with reading in data that may be freed/overwritten

• Mover: Adding Mover-Mass translators along with a Mover Integrations plugin to house various integrations between Mover and other systems

• Mover: Making NavWalking mode set floor results in the Mover Blackboard when projecting to level geometry is enabled.

• Mover: supporting the combination of root motion + kinematic gravity, and ensure gameplay tag checks are against current state

• Added a new (experimental) TaskSyncManager to the engine which allows registration of globally accessible tick functions that can be used to synchronize different runtime systems and efficiently batch per-frame updates.

  • If tick.CreateTaskSyncManager is enabled, it will create the manager at startup and register sync points that are defined in the Task Synchronization section of project settings.

  • RegisterWorkHandle can be used to request work at a specific sync point, and RegisterTickGroupWorkHandle can be used to request work to run on the game thread during a tick group.

  • The TickTaskManager was modified to support this system and other methods for improving tick performance.

  • Added support for manual task dispatch to FTickFunction so functions can wait to be triggered halfway through a tick group.

• Introduced a shared time budget for ProcessAsyncLoading and UpdateLevelStreaming that can be enabled with s.UseUnifiedTimeBudgetForStreaming 1. When this is set, it runs the async asset and level streaming at the end of the frame from HandleUnifiedStreaming which also handles high priority streaming. UpdateLevelStreaming will have less time if there are hitches in ProcessAsyncLoading, and time unused by UpdateLevelStreaming will be used to process more loaded assets.

Bug Fix:

• Fix for AActor's ForEachComponent crashing when using default constructed TSubclassOf.

• Mover: Fixed issue with nav movement consuming invalid data causing slow/bad movement when framerate differed from fixed tick rate of Mover.

• Mover: Fixing issue with sim step infinite loop detection if movement modes refund an impossible amount

• Mover: Adding more nullptr checks to the NavMoverComponent to avoid crashes with using NavMoverComponent before it's initialized

• Mover: Vertical speed is now properly clamped in positive and negative directions when going over terminal vertical speed.

• [GAS] Fixing a crash in FMinimalReplicationTagCountMap::UpdateOwnerTagMap. If we received a Tag Count Update which in turn causes a callback to remove that same tag, it would invalidate our iterator and cause a crash.

• Changing LogActor CompileTimeVerbosity to All rather than Warning.

• [GAS] Preventing potential crash in CheckForClearedAbilities. This was occuring in Lyra when traveling between levels (e.g. playnextgame).

• [GAS] - Fixed Targeting Selection Debug display.Targeting selection debug for cylinders display correctly. Now enforcing size rules to avoid incorrect overlap detection for cylinders.

• Fixed double * on dirty Gameplay Ability Blueprints.

• Gameplay Cues: Addresses a race condition involving first-time async loading of GameplayCueNotify classes where deferred cue events (OnActive, WhileActive, OnRemove) could execute out of order.

  • Additionally, GameplayCueManager now avoids doing multiple async load requests for the same GCN class.

  • Previously, GameplayCues could be executed out of order when the async load of a GCN class has progressed enough that the class is resolvable by path, but the FStreamingDelegate async load callback hasn't fired yet since those are deferred until next frame.

  • During that frame, gameplay cues will execute immediately while prior cues that were deferred haven't executed yet. Cues had a chance of being executed out of order: i.e. calling AddGameplayCue and RemoveGameplayCue could result in the remove being executed before the add. In practice this ends up with cues that remain active while they shouldn't.

• Increased PawnRemoteViewPitch precision from 8 bits to 16 bits, to greatly improve the quality of sim proxy aim animations and firing in default configurations.

• FGameplayAbilityTargetDataHandle::IsValid() accounts for negative indices.

• [GAS] Fix for UGameplayEffect::PostLoad potentially causing an attempt at DataRegistry loads prematurely.

• Mover: Properly cleaning up our movement modes when a MoverComponent is destroyed. Unregistered is now called on all movement modes on the state machine and Deactivate will be called on the active mode.

• Fixing issue with FScopedMovementUpdate::RevertMove not updating the cached rotations of the Scenecomponent which could lead to some bad rotation applied to the component after reverting movement with rotation and then applying a different move.

• Mover: fix cases where turn generator options were not filtered properly on some movement modes

• Mover: Removing a setting NavAgentProps.NavWalkingSearchHeightScale to default nav values in UpdateNavComponent as it erases set values set by user

• [GAS] RootMotionJumpForce ability task updated so clients don't call EndTask() before the server.

• Don't invalidate the CurveTable cache id when emptying an already empty table or a CompositeCurveTable that is still being loaded. We only want to invalidate when something could possibly be referencing the curve

• Make sure touch is considered when checking if a key is from keyboard in UKismetInputLibrary::Key_IsKeyboardKey.

• Use a more standard and predictable Quat to Rotator conversion when gimbal locked at +/-90 degrees pitch.

• Mover: Ensure consistent turns when rotating by 180 degrees. Previously, if the target motion was a 180 degree turn, the character could turn in different directions on client and server causing a desync

• Gameplay Effect / Engineering: Gameplay Effect Handles are now no longer removed from the global map while the Gameplay Effect is locked. Instead they will now be removed while handling pending removes after the Gameplay Effect is no longer locked.

• Mover examples: Fixing up some animations that were causing load warnings

• Fix the Add Gameplay Tag window to correctly show tag sources (it would randomly fail before). Also improve the window to handle filtering by name

• FixedEditor Crash when adding components to a Editor Only BP Actor

  • Iteration over child nodes didn't have sufficient safeguards for any entry removal. After calling FactoryCreateInheritedBpSubobject, we need to ensure that the iteration index is still within bounds.

• Mover: Fixing FindMovementModifier to search through queued modifiers in addition to active ones

• Moved the call of UWorld::OnActorSpawned to FinishSpawningActor so that we can be certain the Actor is fully initialized before that event is broadcast.

  • Previously, spawning an Actor through Blueprints would cause this OnActorSpawned to trigger between the first call of a Deferred Actor Spawn and the FinishSpawning call, meaning that the listener would receive a half-initialized AActor.

• Gameplay Ability System: Initial OnRep_SpawnedAttributes from DefaultStartingData no longer clears attribute aggregators for already replicated ActiveGameplayEffects. This fixes a bug where client-side attributes will have the wrong value when modifiers are applied before the first time SpawnedAttributes are replicated over from the server.

• [GAS] Fixing up an issue where the Blocked Ability Tags HasAny checks were transposed, thus doing logic such as "A".HasAny("A.1") would return false, when in reality, the old logic was "A.1".HasAny("A") and it should return true.

• Mover: Fixed issue with Velocity input only being used to calculate direction input. It now is taken into account and Mover tries to match the velocity given its own constraints.

• Correctly unregister actor tick functions when streaming out sublevels, these were previously getting freed on the next tick when it couldn't find the actors

• [Bugfix] Correct the bit value of EMoveComponentFlags::MOVECOMP_CheckBlockingRootActorInIgnoreList (from 10110 to 10000)

• Mover: Fixing NetSerialize issue with JumpTo layered move where jump rotation was only synced when bUseActorRotation was true

• Fixing an issue where the Visual Logger does not work with Immersive mode.

• [GAS] Adding back the explicit call to AreAbilityTagsBlocked so that users can continue to choose to override that function rather than DoesAbilitySatisfyTagRequirements. I also added some better logging to figure out why an ability was not activated properly.

• Fix tick dependency bug where if a tick function with an early start and end group depended on a function with an early start but a late end group, it would deadlock forever. With this change it now defers the end group separately from the begin group

• Cine Camera: The Camera Rig rail's display now properly shows the last loop when Closed Loop is enabled

• [GAS] When we're destroying an Actor that owns an AbilitySystemComponent with an active Gameplay Ability, it's possible that we will miss the FGameplayAbilitySpec::PreReplicatedRemove. In order to ensure we get a proper EndAbility call, let's force the Cancellation of the Ability using a Replicated RPC. This RPC is guaranteed to execute before the destruction of the Gameplay Ability Instance.

• [GAS] - Fixed loading invalid or deleted attributes in Blueprint.Now provides a warning when loading. reassigning invalid or deleted attributes in Blueprint doesn't crash.

• Actor Spawning: FActorSpawnParameters::bNoFail has more coverage of upgrading spawn collision handling method to a spawning one. Before it would ignore spawn collision upgrading for some settings of SpawnCollisionHandlingOverride + SpawnCollisionHandlingMethod but not others.

• Fixed loss of precision in UKismetMathLibrary FTimeSpawn functions taking or returning float when they should use doubles. Modified from contrib #13055.

• [GAS] GameplayEffectSpec::GetPeriod() will always return NO_PERIOD if it has instant duration policy, fixing GameplayEffect prediction for instant effects that had duration data.

• Mover: fix bugs where an actor could violate the min/max distance it's supposed to float above walkable floors

• Improved Character movement floor check code when we have a valid walkable floor hit result but no PrimitiveComponent, which happens with SG meshes.

• Mover: changing init flow so that all movement mechanisms are ready before BeginPlay, alleviating the need to wait

• Chaos Mover: Fixing floating point precision error in ChaosMoverStateMachines's fixed delta time calculation

• Mover: Finding a movement modifier by handle and by type now searches through the queued modifiers on the Mover State Machine as well. Fixes an issue where modifiers weren't found immediately after queuing them.

• Mover: fix issue with navmesh movement to refresh floor information after teleportation

• Mover: Initializing the Mover mode state machine earlier so it can be used in backend initialization if desired

• Mover: changed "remain vertical" behavior to be enforced at in all default movement modes' simulation functions, so that other motion contributors don't need to be aware of the setting

• Mover: fixed bad local-to-world root motion conversions when multiple axis rotations were involved

• Removed "transient" from CMC server properties allowing client authoritative position. Typically they are dynamically set at runtime but this now allows them to be globally set and saved as intended, since they are editable.

• Mover: Fixing floating point precision error in mover's fixed delta time calculation

• Mover: fix bug in standalone backend where the time step was being truncated

Mass

New:

• Added a way to clear out specific tag requirement from FMassFragmentRequirements

• Added a way to fetch FMassISMCSharedData indicated by an ISM component

• Allow Mass phases to run outside the game thread

• Change LogMassBehavior to be UE_VLOG_ALWAYS_UELOG (not just vlog anymore).

• EntityBuilder can now be used when IsProcessing == true - the appropriate command will be issued instead of synchronized creation

• Debugger processor view overhaul

  • Added resource usage highlight to debugger processor view

  • Added "Go To Code" button to processors in the Mass debugger

• Improved MassEntityView so that it can detect if the stored data is still correct (i.e. whether the underlaying archetype/chunk has changed)

• Made Mass subsystems ini-configurable via DefaultMass.ini

• Mass State Tree changes to support creating dedicated dynamic processors per-ST-requirements

• Introducing TypeInfoManager, where we store type traits so that Mass can deduce things about accessing data at runtime. We use this to determine whether a subsystem dependency expressed at runtime with a TSubclassOf is gamethread-only.

• Added support for adding and removing shared fragments via FMassEntityManager::AddCompositionToEntity_GetDelta and FMassEntityManager::RemoveCompositionFromEntity, respectively.

• Added the ability to retrieve all archetype handles that match a Mass query.

• Added Entities list to Mass debugger

  • Added real-time entity fragment data inspection to mass debugger

  • Added fragment entity-specific write breakpoint support to mass debugger

• [MassGameplay] Made entity-spawning functions of MassSpawnerSubsystem return the creation context so that the call-sites have some control over when the accumulated commands and observers get executed.

  • This new functionality is utilized in `UMassAgentSubsystem::HandlePendingInitialization` where entity views are being created with an assumption that the entities being processed had not changed their archetypes just after spawning.

  • This assumption can be invalidated with entity creation observers changing entity's composition with commands that get flushed as soon as the creation context gets released.

• Introduced the concept of debug-time "color" to MassArchetypeData. Used by `mass.debug.DrawAllEntities`.

• Improved Mass processor dependency cycles detection and reporting

• Added a new entity collection type, that can store an arbitrary array of entity handles, that can be then efficiently passed to the EntityManager's Batch API via the FMassArchetypeEntityCollection array the type caches and can rebuild to make it up-to-date.

• The change makes MassProcessingContext capable of creating properly configured FMassExecutionContext instances, as well as hosting one and cleaning up when going out of scope. Simplified logic for commands flushing at the end of processing.

• Updated MassGameplay category in GameplayDebugger to handle more fragments as optional.

• Added a concept of "ActivationState" for Mass processors. These are Active, OneShot and Inactive. Processor CDOs can also be configured (via project settings or DefaultMass.ini) which affects all instances created after that point.

• Changes to how MassDebugger collects its information about processors. Now everybody can register as a provider of processors! The collected processors are also nicely grouped in the Processors View.

• Mass can now optionally auto-balance parallel queries. This comes at a slight scheduling overhead, but can improve performance for processors that don't have even performance for all their chunks.

• Made instances with settings of MaxActorDistance == 0 never hydrate, including as a response to physics queries. This makes never-hydrating InstancedActors a lot cheaper. The new feature is disabled by default and is controlled by IA.EnableCanHydrateLogic console variable.

• Reduced the cost of setting the debug execution description in Mass. This change also introduces the ability to selectively turn debug features on/off through a central flag on a per entity manager basis.

• Minor modification to how a MassProcessor can declare it doesn't want to be pruned based on queries - no longer needing to override ShouldAllowQueryBasedPruning

• Added debug per-entity and per-processor breakpoint support

• Made FMassProcessingPhase.bRunInParallelMode `true` by default.

  • Also switched application of changes to `mass.FullyParallel` from taking place in FMassProcessingPhaseManager::OnPhaseEnd to FMassProcessingPhaseManager::OnPhaseStart

• EntityBuilder extension:

  • Can use pre-reserved handles now

  • Can seed a builder instance with composition and values of an existing entity

  • Can append composition and values of an existing entity to the builder

• Added Breakpoints list to Mass Debugger

• Made it thread-safe to register and unregister dynamic processors. It's also allowed while the Mass processing is underway now.

• Added ability to Pause and Resume a Mass Simulation

• Added Mass trace channel for MassEntity Unreal Insights plugin

• Introducing "versioned" archetype handle, that will become "out of date" when the target archetype goes through changes that change the ordering of the hosted entities (essentially removing entities or compaction)

• Added a way to export actual entity handles from FMassArchetypeEntityCollection.

• Made debug-time requirement access detection by entity queries a bit more automatic (with a scoped "detector") which fixes an edge case of not cleaning up the detection on failed `FScopedEntityQueryContext` initialization (can happen when required subsystems are missing, for example).

• [Added functionality that creates EntityBuilder instances configured in-bulk with provided data. This functionality is then used to create a FMassEntityTemplateData function that spits out a builder configured with template's data.

• Extension to FMassArchetypeEntityCollection's functionality. It's now possible to compare two collection's archetype handles and append one compatible collection to another.

• Introduced ExecutionPriority for MassProcessors that is used to position the given processor (and its dependencies) earlier in the processing graph (modified with mass.dependencies.ProcessorExecutionPriorityEnabled)

• Changed how `WITH_MASSENTITY_DEBUG` is defined so that it's possible to disable it on a per-project basis without modifying engine code.

• Improved detection and reporting of LODCollector class issues with LODCollectorTraits

• Added a way for Traits to remove tags from FMassEntityTemplateBuildContext. It comes with full editor-time explanation when a needed tag has been removed (via the validation tool).

• Added type-safe, simplified Mass Query/Processor API with MassQueryExecutor

• Mass Command Buffer can automatically lock observers execution to improve batching of "Add" operation observers. Disabled by default, controlled by `mass.commands.LockObserversDuringFlushing` console variable (can be set via ini file too).

• New way to fetch fragment views from ExecutionContext has been added. It lets users fetch the view as a view to some base class, while providing the actual fragment's type with a UScriptStruct pointer.

  • Note that the provided UScriptStruct type must have been declared as query's requirement for the operation to work.

• EntityBuilder for procedural entity configuring and spawning.

• Archetype/entity grouping: Added capability to group entities/archetypes with groups created at runtime. Groups can be used by EntityQueries to control the order of archetype processing. An example of when that could be useful would be a hierarchical structure where parents get processed before their children. Current limitations:

  • Supported only in non-parallel ForEachEntityChunk approaches.

  • No way to create entities with groups assigned at the very start - can only group entities after their creation (resulting in additional archetype creation and entity move).

  • Grouping is not "observable" via MassObservers.

Bug Fix:

• Added MT access detector in MassSignals for delayed signals and replaced calls to DelaySignalEntity by DelaySignalEntityDeferred to fix threading issues

• Fixed Mass debug FAgentDebugVisualization wire shape visualization, should work again.

• Fixed a bug in how FMassArchetypeEntityCollection::FArchetypeEntityRange.Length == 0 is treated - the comments (and the design) say it means "all the entities in the chunk starting at index SubchunkStart", while only FMassArchetypeData::ExecutionFunctionForChunk was actually respecting it.

• Fix crash when debugging Mass entities due to inverted range.

• Fixed inconsistencies in MassEntity's shared and const shared fragments-related API. The change also significantly reduces code duplication in the related code. The change fixes a flaw in existing API allowing calling ForEachSharedFragment on FMassConstSharedFragments which in turns let them modify the instances, which is conceptually wrong.

• Fixed UMassSimulationSubsystem's editor-time event handles still being active after the subsystem has been Deinitialize-ed. The bug resulted in UMassSimulationSubsystem::StartSimulation being called upon PIE end even if the given subsystem instance has already been deinitialized (for example due to the editor world's reinitialization, like after geometry rebuilding).

• Made UMassSceneComponentLocationToMassTranslator gamethread-only to sidestep data races when the engine updates components' transforms.

• Fixed FMassObserverManager::Initialize stomping any observer processor instances registered beforehand via FMassObserverManager::AddObserverInstance

• Marked the movement and orientation translators as "gamethread-only" to avoid data-race with the UObjects being touched by the translators.

• MassLOD: Use Correct `bLocalViewersOnly` Setting

  • The change makes listen-servers behave the same as dedicated servers when considering Mass LOD Viewers (i.e. considering all viewers, not just the local ones).

  • The change also makes Standalone games use the same path, which doesn't make any difference since there are no non-local viewers in that scenario.

• Fixed MassAgentComponent trying to register with the agent subsystem in inactive worlds

• Regenerating entity config GUID when copy-pasting MassAgentComponent-owning Actor into a scene in the Editor

• Fixed a bug in FMassEntityManager::MoveEntityToAnotherArchetype resulting in observers not being triggered.

• Switched UMassDebugVisualizationComponent from using HISM components over to ISM components. This change fixes issues with DebugVisualization trait.

• Calls to FlushCommands after entity manager deinitialization are now gracefully handled

• UMassCapsuleTransformToMassTranslator are now marked as "game-thread only" to avoid data races when the observed component is modified in game thread as the data is being accessed by the processor

• InstancedActors Project Settings Fixed to apply changes on every engine load or change via editor's UI. The change also fixes the bug that was causing the editor's "Convert To IA" option to not use the settings-indicated subsystem.

• Fixes to standalone-game IA use cases by properly talking to ServerInstancedActorsSpawnerSubsystem, which fixes some IA representation issues. fixes to ServerInstancedActorsSpawnerSubsystem's to call `FinishSpawning` actors only once their IAComponent has been configured.

Deprecated:

• Deprecated some of the MassObserversManager API in preparation for the larger observers change. This change affects only people that called MassObserverManager's functions directly, which the user shouldn't need to do.

Networking

New:

• Implemented FConnectionHandle which carries both parent connection and child connection information. This can be useful for APIs where it's important to keep track of child connections as well, such as in split screen code.

• Iris - Ensure fully push based classes remain so. The classes known to be fully push based are manually configured in DefaultEngine.ini via the ReplicationStateDescriptorConfig.

• Iris - ReplicationDataStream runtime togglable debug features.

  • Cvar net.Iris.ReplicationWriter.WriteBatchSizePerObject 0/1 controls whether sizes are sent per object or not rather than just one size for an object batch. This allows the reader to more quickly detect bitstream overflow and underflow errors.

  • Cvar net.Iris.ReplicationWriter.WriteSentinels 0/1 controls whether sentinels are injected at a certain point in the object replication to more quickly detect errors within a single object.

  • The cvars can be changed at any point in time and both the reader and writer will adjust accordingly. Different build configurations are still 100% compatible with each other but the code to handle the debug features is compiled out in shipping.

  • If a non-shipping executable is connected to a shipping executable the non-shipping executable will cause a disconnect of the shipping executable if any of the debug features are enabled.

• Iris - NetBitStreamReader substream support.

• [Replay Subsystem] Added GetReplayTotalTime function to the ReplaySubsystem.

• Iris - Don't send state with subobject destroy. Behavior can be controlled via cvar net.Iris.AllowSendStateWithEndReplicationForSubObjects which defaults to false.

• Iris - Added delegates for when a valid connection is added and removed to the ReplicationSystem

• Added ForAllExclusiveBitsByPredicate to FNetBitArray and FNetBitArrayView. This makes it easy to iterate over the same pair of bitarrays multiple times using different conditions for when to invoke the exclusive bit functors.

• Iris - Implemented AlwaysRelevantNetObjectFilter. When you want to be more explicit about something being always relevant rather than configuring the class to a None filter.

• Iris - Handle object hierarchy destruction atomically. Limit the number of objects and destruction infos sent per frame using the new cvar net.Iris.ReplicationWriterMaxDestroyObjectsPerFrame which defaults to 150.

• GameModeBase DispatchPostLogin has been deprecated and the behavior was moved to OnPostLogin, so subclasses can override it.

• Iris - Added command Net.Iris.PrintDynamicFilterClassConfigIssues with options SkipBPIssueDetection and SkipActorChildIssueDetection. I

  • t will report filter configured classes that cannot be found and potential issues with unconfigured subclasses that aren't being filtered as their parent.

  • SkipBPIssueDetection will not report filtering issues for blueprint classes.

  • SkipActorChildIssueDetection will ignore reporting potential issues for classes whose nearest configured super class is Actor.

• Added support for recording CSV stats in AActor::ForceNetUpdate and AActor::FlushNetDormancy. Recording is only enabled in Non-Shipping builds and when compiling for Dedicated servers only.

  • The new CSV Categories (Actor_FlushNetDormancy and Actor_ForceNetUpdate) are disabled by default.

  • By default we record the NativeParentClass name of the Actor.

  • The CVar: net.Debug.ActorClassNameTypeCSV, controls which type of class name to record:

    • 0: Record the Parent native class name of the given Actor

    • 1: Record the TopMost non-native class name of the given Actor

    • 2: Record the Actor class name

• Replication:

  • Allow actors to opt-in to full init state replication by settting FOutBunch::bOutWantsFullInitState in their OnSerializeNewActor

  • This causes ALL replicated properties to be sent even if they are identical to the Archetype/CDO of the replicated object

  • Can be used to fix issues where the authority sets the replicated value of a loaded (stable) actor back to the CDO value.

  • In non-iris replication this prevents the client from receiving the replicated value and causes a divergence between each.

  • EngineNetTest:

    • Added UnitTest Net.Engine.InitState showing the issue and the fix.

• Replicated UProperties no longer need to register themselves via DOREPLIFETIME in GetLifetimeReplicatedProps.

  • Now unregistered properties will be replicated using default settings.

  • This simulates the default behavior when Iris is enabled

  • Revert to the previous behavior of not replicating missing DOREPLIFETIME by setting Net.AutoRegisterReplicatedProperties=false

  • You can now also ensure when unregistered properties are detected with Net.EnsureOnMissingReplicatedPropertiesRegister=true

Bug Fix:

• Iris - Don't ensure on clients ending replication on actors due to a level being streamed out.

• Iris- Fixed FieldOfViewNetObjectPrioritizer issue causing incorrect priorities at view positions other than origin.

• Network Insights - Display all HugeObject packet contents.

• NetDriver

  • Fix memory leak if a PIE session is stopped while the PendingNetGame is still active

• Fix seamless travel crashes by explicitly clearing the network object list during the transition to make sure nothing from the old world is still there

• Fix crash when receiving NMT_JoinSplit with unique net ID V2

• NetDriver:

  • Prevent crash when NetDriver destruction is triggered while NetDriver is ticking. Ex: Calling Shutdown from inside an RPC.

  • Now NetDriver will wait until PostTickFlush to shutdown. Previously queued destruction request could also occur earlier in PostTickDispatch

• Iris - Fixed a few cases where we did not properly propagate HasPushBasedDirtiness. Make sure function descriptors are marked as push based. This is a small polling performance optimization.

• Fix ForkProcess logs and log the timestamp at which the fork signal event was received

• Iris - The Net.Iris.PrintAlwaysRelevantObjects console command now includes objects filtered through AlwaysRelevantNetObjectFilter.

• Iris - Don't clobber not replicated properties when applying instanced structs.

• Iris - Fix issues with owning connection information and replication conditionals not always being correct under rare circumstances. Prior to this fix tear off might not have replicated some updated properties due to the incorrect information.

• Iris - Structs with custom serializers with Apply will now prevent the AllMembersAreReplicated trait from being added to the ReplicationStateDescriptor. Prior to this fix Apply weren't being called in some cases.

• Iris - Fixed ensures related to tear off and object scope changes.

• Fixed some rare crashes during replay recording.

• Iris - Update autonomous role replication condition as part of updating the owning net connection, regardless whether it's to be enabled or disabled. Fixes issue with for example COND_SimulatedOnly properties not replicating to the former autonomous proxy connection when unpossessing a pawn.

• Iris - Fixed bitstream errors with blueprint implemented interfaces.

Learning Resources

Sample Content

Bug Fix:

• Updating templates that weren't setting r.AllowStaticLighting to either False or True, to r.AllowStaticLighting=False

Level Design and Art Tools

Geometry Core

New:

• Added a bitflag enum to the mesh transform methods, so the caller can specify which attributes should be transformed

• Add optional 'sculpt layer' feature to Dynamic Mesh attribute sets

• Made convex decomposition produce a decomposition for planar inputs, by applying the 'thicken on hull failure' pass to the input mesh

• Added a new cluster-based simplifier, based on mesh edge-graph Voronoi connectivity, for quick simplification of large meshes.

• Add dynamic mesh overlay / attribute set methods to test if a vertex is on a seam intersection

Bug Fix:

• Added optional thickening/inflate parameter to FitKDOP3, and set default to .1, to match previous KDOP fitting behavior and guarantee that flat shapes still generate valid KDOPs. This fixes an ensure and collision generation failure on asset import.

• TAxisAlignedBox3: fix for implicitly converting an Empty box into an Infinite box

• Fixed TDynamicMeshOverlay::GetElementIDAtVertex to be more robust to unset triangles in the overlay

• Made dynamic mesh overlay more robust to the case where a seam edge is flipped (e.g., due to not setting constraints correctly before remeshing)

• Made dynamic mesh handle vertex attribute set changes more consistently

• Fixed an issue with Dynamic Mesh serialization loading of meshes with disabled attributes

• UDynamicMeshComponent::ApplyTransform: pass the VertexPosition and NormalsTangents flags to EditMesh. Avoids triggering an ensure in UDynamicMeshComponent::FastNotifyVertexAttributesUpdated

• SparseMatrix: guard against integer overflow when computing how many entries to allocate

• Fixed parameters mappings in the ftetwild wrapper code, so scaling field and ideal edge length parameter should now work as expected

• Fixed a crash in DynamicMesh's 'compact in place' method when the mesh has zero triangles

• GeometryCore: Fix a crash in FDynamicMeshAttributeSet::CompactInPlace due to compacting the same skin weight attributes twice. SkinWeightAttributes are also RegisteredAttributes so just compacting the RegisteredAttributes should take care of it

• Made point hash grid / scale indexing clamp the cell size above zero, since a zero cell size will not work. Also changed the radius search to a <= test, so it will find exactly coincident points when using a zero-radius search.

• Fixed crash in implicit morphology offset operation when offset grid dimensions overflow int32

• Made mesh surface point sampling more robust to inputs w/ very small bounds

Geometry Script

New:

• Added more edge selection methods to geometry script

• Cleaned up various geometry script methods display names, and added keywords to make nodes easier to find

• Exposed point set component to blueprint (equivalently to line set component)

• Added a new geometry script macro to iterate over the valid polygroup IDs in a mesh

• Added additional mesh polygroup query functions for polygroup bounds, uv bounds, and uv centroid

• Added selection-based version of geometry script flip normals method

• Added box2d bounds overlap method to geometry script w/ support for testing for overlap in a wrapped [0, 1] space (for testing for UV overlap)

• Added geometry script nodes: "Add Named PolyGroup Layer" and "Find Extended PolyGroup Layer By Name"

• Exposed the optional Dynamic Mesh sculpt layers attribute to geometry script

• ScriptableTools: Make the gizmo respect the "scale uniform" flag, and add the free translate and rotate flags so that uniform scale, arcball, and screen translation can be used.

• Added InverseTransformMesh and InverseTransformMeshSelection methods to geometry script

• Added capsule fitting as option in convex hulls -> simple collision geometry script fitting method

• Added a new TransferMeshUVsByProjection geometry script method to transfer UVs from a source mesh to a target mesh by projection along a direction

• Added control over whether lightmap UV generation is enabled in the build settings of a target LOD when updating a static mesh via geometry script. Defaults to copying the existing setting, or LOD 0's setting if the target LOD doesn't exist yet

• Added a vertex-overlap-based split mesh method to geometry script, matching the one in modeling tools

• The CopyMeshFromComponent geometry script method now also supports Geometry Cache components

• Added option for geometry script 'voxel' functions (solidify and offset) to operate with caller-specified bounds rather than the input mesh bounds

• Added geometry script methods to sort an array of meshes, optionally either by volume, bounds volume, surface area, or by a second array of float values

• Added a mesh isocurves algorithm for cutting a mesh by marching triangles on a function over the vertices

• Added world context object version of the geometry script "Create New Volume From Mesh" method

• Add directional scaling options to convex decomposition tolerance, so decomposition can require more accuracy e.g. on floors vs ceilings

• Added uniform random mesh sampling methods

• Added a method to clear a UV channel

• Added geometry script methods to merge mesh vertices -- either a pair of specific vertices by index, or closest pairs in two selections of vertices

• Added support for applying nanite settings in Geometry Script's Skeletal Mesh asset update/creation methods

• Added geometry script support for more boolean operations: trim inside, trim outside, new polygroup inside, and new polygroup outside

• Added option to choose the output space for geometry script mesh booleans

• Added an editor-only node to run the 'UE Standard' mesh simplifier in geometry script

• Added height map bake support to the BakeTexture and BakeVertex nodes.

• Added GutterSize to the BakeTexture node.

• Allow key capture behavior to notify its target of a forced end capture, and expose this in scriptable tools. Also fix a bug with multi key behaviors incorrectly triggering release callbacks after the first time all keys were pressed.

Bug Fix:

• Geometry Script's AppendBoundingBox method now does not attempt to append invalid (e.g., empty) boxes

• Added a missing null pointer check to geometry script set simple collision on static mesh function

• Fixed an issue where a skeletal mesh LOD written by geometry script could have incorrect materials -- we now clear the LOD material remapping when setting up new materials on skeletal mesh LOD

• Made dynamic mesh component broadcast the property changed event for dynamic mesh changes

• Added an error message for scene component conversion failing due to an unsupported component type

• Fixed the split mesh by polygroup and split mesh by material ID geometry script methods not ordering the returned IDs in the same order as the split meshes.

• Fixed the 'preserve vertex positions' flag in the geometry script simplify nodes, which previous was not used

• Added a guard against infinite recursion or adding-to-loop-while-iterating issues when generated dynamic mesh actor adds new actors or triggers rebuilds of actors inside its own rebuild

• Fixed simple polygon query functions not returning their computed results, and clarified display names for different Polygon Area geometry script methods

• Changed the dynamic mesh component log message category from 'display' to 'warning' when it is refusing to generate complex collision for a too-large mesh, to make it a bit easier for people to see why their mesh isn't getting collision in this case

• Fixed CreateVolumeFromMesh in editor to use actor factories to ensure that the Brush is correctly assigned to the resulting actor.

• Fixed a dynamic mesh component crash when the mesh is non-compact and the complex collision physics mesh is built with UV hit result support

• Fixed an issue where the material slot names would not be properly copied over when copying a dynamic mesh to a skeletal mesh.

• Fixed output param display name for the GetMaxMaterialID node.

Deprecated:

1. Deprecated dynamic mesh component's distance field support. For lumen support with dynamic mesh, use hardware ray tracing instead.

Landscape

New:

• Disabled Retopologize tool button when unsupported.

• Landscape error reporting improvements :

  • Removed erroneous "unsynchronized landscape properties" map check error when fixing up unused edit layer data only

  • Unified post-load fixup map check messages to display the landscape proxy's actor label (rather than its package path) and let the the user fix the problem by clicking on a "Save Modified Landscapes" token

• Added proper material compilation error when reaching the max number of landscape physical material outputs

• Optimization for landscape sculpting. Add ParallelFor to ULandscapeComponent::UpdateCachedBounds and ComputeMipToMipMaxDeltas.

• Small optimization for landscape sculpting. Faster version of generating the material index array for the UseDefaultMaterialOnly case in WriteRuntimeData.

• Disable TAA when in landscape mode : landscape brushes don't play well with temporal algorithms

• Added console command to force rebuild of landscape physical material data. landscape.RebuildPhysicalMaterial

• Landscape edit layers batched merge :

  • Fixed edit layer BP brushes that would not get disabled by their parent layer's visibility state when using batched merge, unlike global merge

  • Fixed weightmap alpha not being properly applied to edit layers

  • Optimized renderer / render item analysis

  • Fixed some confusion around CanAffect/Affects for BP brushes

  • Fixed performance issue with BP brushes by trying to use intermediate (scratch) render targets of constant size from one batch/one run to another (instead of using only the size necessary for a given batch). This avoids calling Initialize repeatedly (which is very inefficient in the case of the water brush, for example, as it flushes all cached render targets)

  • Fixed landscape patch manager not supporting the individual "enable heightmap/weightmap/visibility" toggles

• Added Landscape Spline scale and z-offset variables configurable in project settings to improve Spline icon visibility

• Expose ReadOnly blueprint access for HeightTextureAsset and HeightEncodingSettings in LandscapePatchComponent

• Refactored the landscape edit layer renderer API to be able to run via a minimal amount of render commands (and FRDGBuilder)Fixed crash with water brush when running with batched merge due to an uninitialized BP brush render target size

• Added Landscape Spline linear path navigation and selection controls. Navigation controls include Select First/Last, Prev/Next, Add Prev/Next to selection, Select All/NoneNew button to convert selection between spline control point and segment mode

• Landscape Editor - Paint

  • Added Create Layers From Assigned Materials new workflow with Auto-Fill layers button

  • Create Layers From Assigned Materials creates layers but no longer auto selects Target Layer Info Assets

  • New Auto-Fill Target Layer Assets button opens a dialog allowing users to find or create new assets based on the Default Target Layer Asset Path

• Landscape Paint

  • Added Rename option to target layer quick action menu

  • Refactored action menu to show disabled states

  • Automatically select/rename new target layers on creation

• Deprecating SDragAndDropVerticalBox::CanAcceptDrop. Adds new CanAcceptDrop with a slot index parameter.

• Made water body exclusion volumes not spatially loaded by default as they tend to be costly when spawned dynamically

• Removed auto-filling of empty landscape target layers : this is purely arbitrary as it will almost never be the user's intention to fill a layer with a fully painted layer.

• Added option for landscape sculpt and erase tools to apply only when moving the brush.

• Landscape Editor - Blueprint Brush UX updates

  • Disables tool for edit layers that don't support blueprint brushes

  • Moved Blueprint Brush Tool from the Paint/Sculpt panel into the Manage panel

• Landscape Paint - Show unique thumbnail for target layers not referenced by any landscape proxy material

• Added option for landscape BP brushes to tell if they require power-of-2 render targets to operate.

• Fixed landscape target layers UX refresh issues

  • Added info message to explain to the user that all the landscape's target layers are hidden (either by the "Hide unused layers" filter of by the filter text box)

  • Used a standard show/hide icon button to the "Hide unused layers" toggle button" in order to help the user understand the status of that filter

  • Allowed drag and dropping target layers even when the "Hide unused layers" filter is active

• Landscape mode : display the level instance prefix when editing a landscape that is inside the level instance being edited. This allows to distinguish between the world's landscape(s) and the edited level instance one(s) when they are named similarly

• Small optimization for FHeightField::BuildGeomData and EditGeomData. Convert indirect callback function into inlinable plain lambda template param.

• Optimization for landscape sculpt when many proxies are loaded.

  • Don't lock UTextures for write when we know the data isn't changing.

  • Avoids expensive ComputeChannelLinearMinMax and FIoHash for unchanged proxies at the end of the stroke.

  • Most applicable with a large number of landscape proxies loaded.

• Added debug color to physical materials, to have them maintain the same color from run to run and be tweakable by the user. Currently only supported by landscape collision display (with landscape.CollisionMesh.ShowPhysicalMaterial). Initialized with a random color.

• Optimization for landscape sculpting. Bypass expensive serialization steps for collision data in the editor.

• Cleanup Landscape Build commands:

  • Added log at the end of each command, indicating how many landscape proxies were effectively processed by each

  • Added additional log at the end of the actionable message-issued build command to indicate how many landscape proxy packages still need to be saved after the user has clicked on the "update/build" button

  • Removed Build Physical Materials / Grass Maps / Nanite Only commands since they are all covered by Build Landscape and we should not need to run them individually

• Detect re-entrant calls to UpdateLayersContent or other main entry points to add or remove layers during UpdateLayersContent.

• Changed default landscape edit layer method to BatchMerge. landscape.EditLayersLocalMerge.Enable default value changed to 2.

• Fixed crash when landscape proxies (somehow) end up with an invalid root component. It's unclear how this can happen but the landscape collision heightfield component failed to survive this as it would contain a Chaos heightfield with an invalid heighfield geometry. On top of this, we now try to re-assign a root component if we find that it's missing from the proxy on load

• Added project setting to disable landscape target layer thumbnails. Because of how the thumbnail renderer is implemented, this can cause several hiccups at the moment (synchronous GPU readbacks) and the thumbnails are not working well anyway because of the RVT usage in the landscape material, so this setting represents an easy kill switch

• Landscape Editor - Create New Tab

  • Added auto-fill button for target layer info assets

  • Hid Layers/LayersBrushStack sections when creating new landscapes

• Improvements to landscape thumbnail renders:

  • Don't bother generating landscape thumbnail MICs if the option is disabled and display a generic layer icon instead

  • Optimize landscape thumbnail material generation

• Added separate blend step for landscape edit layer renderers. This moves the blend step into a separate, standardized blend step, which allows to apply blend methods in a way that works across renderers

• Automatically migrate legacy LandscapePatchManager setups to the new system when a scene is loaded. Can be disabled by setting "LandscapePatch.AutoMigrateLegacyListToPrioritySystem=0".

• Updating various Landscape Editor icons including Landscape Paint, Sculpt, Visibility, Auto-Fill Layers, Create Layers From Materials, and Landscape Spline icons.

• Made autosaves faster by not forcing a build of landscape nanite.

• Adding Transaction support for Landscape Spline selection and navigation. Modifications to the landscape spline selection are tracked and supported by Undo/Redo transactions.

• Improved undo performance for large landscape changes

Bug Fix:

• Fixed wrong warning when importing landscape weightmap from 8bit source image. Prevented cached result from attempted 16-bit import from preventing the 8bit attempt from running at all.

• Fixed target layers filter not appearing when no target layer was selected

• Fixed landscape heightmap import in expand mode when the target region extends outside the landscape.

• Fixed landscape heightmap export tile filenames when regions are not loaded. Hide UI control for export mode (loaded-only vs all) when export is selected, where it has no effect.

• Fixed crash with landscape edit layers batched merge

• LandscapePatch: Fix external texture asset patches slightly aligning incorrectly due to using incorrect resolution for coverage calculation. Existing instances that used an external texture asset should be checked and resaved. LandscapePatch.UseExternalTextureAlignmentFix can be set to 0 to revert to old behavior temporarily if needed.

• Fixed checkSlow when building Nanite landscape with visibility

• Fixed crash when showing collision mesh after a material asset fails to load.

• Update the physical material mask correctly when unpainting or clearing a landscape target layer.

• Fixed landscape proxy marked as "not using edit layers" when using the Add Component tool. This would then lead to non-edit layers->edit layers data migration on load, which would stomp the existing edit layers data, leading to a potential crash because of a missing weightmap texture. Also added a post-load fixup when this type of problem is detected

• Fixed crash when destroying a landscape after an Undo

• Landscape Editor - Stores persistent Landscape debug view mode to ensure debug visualization is not reset when opening and closing Landscape editor mode

• Fixed regression with legacy weight-blending not being applied when using landscape edit layers batched merge

• Fixed landscape weightmap import comparison vs heightmap resolution.

• Fixed memory stomp when "reinitializing" heightmap or weightmap in landscape patches

• Defensive fix for landscape (wrongly) assuming a root component is available (same approach as everywhere else in the code)

• Fixed case where, in WP, the landscape heightmaps' FTextureSource could have an initialized mip0 (non zero) but zeroed-out mip1 and up, which would break the assumption that the texture hash (which is only based on mip0) is representative of all mips. Instead, we now make sure that when using edit layers, all mips are initialized to zero, so that the first GPU readback appropriately updates the heightmap

• Fixed crash introduced in UE5.5 (likely happening following an undo, but also 100% repro when spawning a landscape actor via the BP Spawn Actor function)

• Fixed race condition crash in landscape when async physics state creation is enabled

• Prevent landscape components that render in an additional tool-specific pass from being occluded

• Prevent performance warning related to calling FindConsoleObject too often in landscape

• Prevented Water Body River component from greatly increasing memory usage in the editor with large landscapes.

• Fix for disappearing water when hit proxy renders are those that trigger the water info texture render

• Fixed assert in landscape on undo

• Fixed ensure when analyzing the grass map count in parallel, but on the game thread

• Fixed crash when unloading a map while landscape mode is active

• Moved landscape visibility layer info asset to from EditorLandscapeResources to EngineResources so that it doesn't get stripped on cook when "Exclude editor content when cooking" is used

• Fixed editor crash from importing heightmap images with invalid tile coordinates.

• Fixed landscape heightmap import from tiled image set when file path contains brackets.

• Fixed Build > Build Landscape dirtying the main level. The landscape proxies' outer is already properly dirtied if necessary and there's nothing in the persistent level that requires to be dirty (it's also not happening when using the in-viewport actionable notification)

• Fix new Landscape offset not matching preview Landscape

• Fixed up layer info objects that have been re-mapped to a new asset in the main landscape actor without re-saving all the associated proxies:

  • In such a case, the layer name can be used to retrieve the new layer info object from the main landscape actor so we can do the fixup.

  • Also, those layer fixups now mark the landscape proxy as "soft-"dirty (i.e. the landscape way of notifying the user that a re-save is needed) in order to make it more visible to the user that a user action is needed

• Fixed assert/crash when trying to resolve a soft object ptr from BeginDestroy/FinishDestroy in landscape

• Fixed landscape proxy holding references on some of its foliage components if those components are selectively removed

• Landscape crash fixes

• Fixed generating bad landscape physical material data after opening a map.

• Added safety code to flush pending work related to landscape layers and physical material when saving.

• Fixed undo on new landscapes (i.e. when they haven't been saved yet).

• Added landscape project setting to prevent landscape mode from disabling Temporal Anti Aliasing. Some projects are just so noisy that the lack of TAA is too detrimental

• Moved TargetDisplayOrder and TargetDisplayOrderList out of ALandscapeProxy and into ALandscape. This is just a UI setting that doesn't need to be duplicated to all streaming proxiesFixed landscape thumbnails disappearing anytime we unload a region

• Fixed landscape splines always dirtying the proxies on load when they affect the weightmaps.

• Prevented landscape edit layers merge context from automatically changing the RT state when cycling render targets.

• Fixed crash in actionable message system when reloading a level without clicking Update.

• Fixed grass map generation being stalled forever when one of the landscape actor of the map has no loaded components.

• Fixed selection getting lost on landscape undo

• Landscape Editor: Fixed a problem in where landscape editor UISettings weren't refreshing correctly when switching between different landscapes or maps

• Moved creation of landscape nanite's UStaticMesh out to the game thread to remove danger of threading issues.

• Fixed PCG refresh on undo/redo landscape painting.

• Fixed bad ensure condition when trying to cache data from an empty area in the landscape smooth/flatten/erosion tools

• Fixed crash if saving when landscape subsystem is not available.

• Fixed race condition that could lead to invalid Nanite landscape static meshes on cook, breaking the entire Nanite streamer at runtime

• Landscape Editor: Making Blueprint brushes non-placeable from the Place Actors panel. Brushes are only addable to supporting Edit Layers from the Landscape Blueprint brush tool.

• Fix landscape crash when deleting a newly-created map containing a landscape from the content browser

Deprecated:

• Cleaned up LandscapePatch public API

• Declared batched merge APIs as experimental rather than internal

• Removed deprecated/unused landscape grass CVar

• Deprecated landscape's per-proxy setting for enabling/disabling heightmap compression. It's now only controlled by the per-platform CVar landscape.HeightmapCompressionMode

Modeling Tools

New:

• Add tooltip for the status/help bar at the bottom of the editor.

• Change some primitive creation tools to default to PerQuad, and make LatLong sphere PerFace mean PerQuad.

• Updated the default Mesh Element Selection colors

• Add an "isolate selection" option to the attribute paint tool.

• Added a 'show target' option to the collision inspector tool

• Add "isolate selection" option to vertex color paint tool.

• Made tool target factories generate writable or non-writable targets depending on the source, so that e.g. users will not lose work running a modeling tool on an engine asset that the tool cannot modify.

• InteractiveToolsFramework: Add support for hotkeys in tool extensions.

• Added "Hit Back Faces" option to the modeling mesh element selection system.

• Added height map bake support to the BakeVertex tool.

• Added height map bake support the BakeTextures tool.

• Added 'material ID' options to the generate polygroups tool

• Added option to use new mesh cluster simplifier in the simplify mesh tool

• Added alpha support for vertex color bakes in MeshPropertyMapEvaluator.

• Added Mesh Element Selection controls to the viewport toolbar

• Added an option to BakeVertex tool to reuse existing vertex color topology rather than always generating it.

• Modify FEditor2DScrollBehaviorTarget to work in orthographic viewports

• Refactor UBrushAdjusterInputBehavior to support any brush tool.

• The following Modeling tools have been promoted to the Beta MeshModelingToolset plugin:

  • DeformMeshPolygonsTool

  • HoleFillTool

  • PolygonOnMeshTool

  • SimplifyMeshTool

  • RemeshMeshTool

  • WeldMeshEdgesTool

  • RemoveOccludedTrianglesTool

  • ProjectToTargetTool

  • ConvertToPolygonsTool

  • MeshGroupPaintTool

  • MeshVertexSculptTool

  • DynamicMeshSculptTool

  • SmoothMeshTool

  • OffsetMeshTool

  • MeshSpaceDeformerTool

  • LatticeDeformerTool

  • DisplaceMeshTool

  • AttributeEditorTool

  • MeshAttributePaintTool

  • MeshVertexPaintTool

  • SkinWeightsPaintTool

  • SkinWeightsBindingTool

  • SkeletonEditingTool

• Modified the default CollisionMode for new meshes to SimpleAndComplex.

  • The previous default CollisionMode of UseComplexAsSimple was chosen to get a quick out of the box collision from generated meshes. Although this default works for out of the box collision, it does not work for physics simulations. It can be difficult to deduce why that is the case when you have collision.

  • To make this easier to discover and more consistent with the rest of the engine, the default for new meshes is now SimpleAndComplex. Users can use the collision tools under the Attribs category of Modeling Mode to generate collision.

• Changed the look of modeling mode gizmos to better match the editor gizmo, and add a free rotate and free translate handle when not using combined gizmo.

• Modeling mode's mesh element selection support is now default-enabled.

• Added toggleable stylus pressure sensitivity support to the brush 'Size' property in the Vertex Sculpt and Paint Vertex Colors tools.

• Added toggleable stylus pressure sensitivity support to the brush 'Strength' property in the Vertex Sculpt tool.