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Build Notes for Unreal Development Kit releases

Document Summary: Important change notes for Unreal Devlopment Kit releases.

Overview

Epic creates new builds of Unreal Engine 3 at least daily, often 2-3 times per day. Each of these builds undergoes regression testing against a series of demonstration levels and content creation tasks to ensure its suitability for use. When we have created a build we feel is appropriate for public use, we release a new version of the Unreal Development Kit. The UDK New Build Workflow page is a guide that explains how to migrate your content over from one build to the next.

Build Support

Epic Games, Inc. will not be providing direct support for this product.

There is however a wealth of information about the engine available on the Unreal Developer Network

Community forums are also available

UDK Versions

The UDK Build version can be found in two ways. First it is on the splash screen when you launch the editor.

Additionally, open up the editor, navigate to the Log Window , and enter gamever at the command line.

Latest Releases

February 2010: UDKInstall-2010-02-BETA

New Features and Tools

  • New color picker
  • Screen door fades
    • New screen door dissolve effect for fading primitives (SM3+ only)
    • Actors can fade in/out based on their MaxDrawDistance
      • Static meshes, ProcBuildings, Skeletal Meshes and SpeedTrees are supported
    • Static Mesh LODs can and Massive LODs can cross-dissolve between each other
    • To enable this feature:
      • Set 'bAllowScreenDoorFade' to True in [Engine.Engine] .ini file
      • Set 'bUsedWithScreenDoorFade' on materials that should fade
  • New package backup system to prevent lost work due to a crash
  • Snap to recovery feature for post process overrides allows you to choose a snap directly to the level pp settings instead of a gradual recovery
  • Whole scene dynamic shadow for dominant directional lights around the camera which blends out to precomputed shadows based on distance

Improvements

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

Optimizations, Upgrades, and Fixes

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

New training videos from Eat3D

Updated UDN Documentation

January 2010: UDKInstall-2010-01-BETA

Improved UDK Features and Tools

  • decal improvements
    • lit translucent decals are now supported
      • allows much better blending of decal edges into the environment
    • shadowmap support for decals
      • works for both static and dynamic shadow maps and allows for decals to receive shadows from dominant directional lights as well as toggleable lights
      • works when decal is attached to texture and vertex lightmapped
  • Animtrails: animation driven trail emitters
  • ongoing UTGame de-nativization
    • Moving UTGame specific C++ functionality that didn't need to be in C++ back into UnrealScript
    • This makes it easier for UDK developers to see how we implemented this functionality, and has also resulted in new engine functionality being exposed to script.
      • Notable examples include the new SVehicle physics interface functions and making it possible to tick skeletal controllers and UTUIScenes in script.
  • fixed Lightmass generating directional lighting being flipped in the texture's V direction

Updated UDN Documentation

December 2009: UDKInstall-2009-12-BETA

New UDK features and tools

  • DLLBind feature
    • This significant feature enables UnrealScript to call functions implemented in Windows DLLs.
    • UDK users can now write native C++ code to interface with script.
    • “DLLBind” gives users the ability to extend the functionality of UDK.
    • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DLLBind.html
  • Material vertex shader control
    • Offset static mesh vertices from within the material using world position, vertex colors and “WindDirectionAndSpeed” data.
      • Artists can now modify vertex world position in the material editor, which allows arbitrary deformation effects and custom ambient animation for different types of objects.
      • “WindDirectionAndSpeed” is useful for obtaining wind parameters from any wind actors placed in the level, which can be changed at runtime.
    • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/WorldPositionOffset.html
  • New visual-only “InteractiveFoliageActor”
    • Simulate a spring based on input touch and damage forces.
      • Walk through tall grass and bushes, which will be pushed out of your way and then sway back when you stop pushing them.
      • Weapon projectile and explosion damage will also apply forces to the foliage actor.
    • Extremely low performance impact; costs nearly the same as a static mesh and therefore can be used extensively.
    • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/InteractiveFoliageActor.html
      • Includes example videos for explosions, walking through fields and advanced foliage animations.
  • New Unreal Editor features
    • UDK users can now import 32-bit BMP images.
    • View original, displayed, and effective texture resolution in the new Texture Info panel.
    • Check out the many other editor upgrades here
  • Navigation mesh additions
  • ActorX has been updated to support 3ds Max 2010!
    • UDK users using 3ds Max 2010 can now export skeletal meshes and animations to binary file formats that the Unreal Editor can import using the ActorX plugin.
    • Find it in the /Binaries/Tools/ActorX directory.
  • Custom lighting and transmission improvements
    • Custom lighting can emulate Phong for two-sided materials via new “TwoSidedSign” node.
  • In-game debugging tool
    • "ToggleDebugCamera" now supports selection and shows all materials used by mesh components.
    • UDK users can now select meshes at runtime to view what is in front of the player.
  • Translucent sorting features

Improved UDK Features and Tools

  • Level Browser improvements
    • New tagging and filtering system with keywords makes searching levels easier than ever before.
    • Persistent level actors can now be easily hidden or shown.
    • New "PIE Only Visible Levels" toolbar toggle limits which levels get loaded in PIE to only levels that are currently visible.
    • New “Lock/Unlock/Hide/Show” settings for all levels via right mouse button (RMB) are now available.
    • New "Find in Content Browser" option has been added to the Level Browser.
  • Unreal Kismet upgrades
    • Kismet editor now has navigation history. Handy “Back” and “Forward” buttons make it easy to toggle between actions in the history log.
    • Dropping Kismet nodes down on top of ports now auto-wires the node.
    • New "Select in Level" option to Kismet right-click menu is now available.
  • Particle improvements
    • New camera-facing options for mesh emitters will override “AxisLock” settings.
  • Unreal Lightmass
    • Scene data exported to Lightmass is now compressed.
      • Reduces disk usage and network bandwidth.
      • Increases speed of Lightmass startup.
  • Mesh Paint Tool
  • Animation
  • Miscellaneous editor improvements and fixes
    • Greatly improved “Convert Light” tool now supports all light types. Simply right-click on lights in the level viewport to convert them to other types of light.
    • New material for geometry mode editing makes it much easier to align volumes and BSP in the world: New Geometry Mode Texture
    • AnimSet Editor log spew has been fixed.
    • UDK users can now build old UE3 lighting on SM2 cards.
  • BSP and "Accept Lights" change
    • Lights no longer "bleed" through BSP corners.

New and Supplementary UDK Documentation

November 2009 Version 2: UDKInstall-2009-11-BETA-2

Fixes

  • Fixed crash in shader compiler when the log is not writable
  • Removed check for script files existing before allowing the game/editor to run
  • Fixed a problem with emissive lights on Windows XP causing purple lighting
  • Added check for GPU being below minimum requirements
  • New SpeedTree binaries to fix a problem on Windows 7
  • Fix for some SpeedTree trees causing crashes
  • Fix for invalid characters being allowed in journal files causing database corruption
  • Fix for making a game in non English, then trying to run on a different non English machine
  • Installer
    • If a prerequisite fails to install, the install will still continue and warn at the end
    • Enhanced the check for a valid install path
    • If the installer is skipped, the EULA comes up once
    • Fixed CZE install not finding the EULA
    • Fixed problem if temp install folders were deleted between install and uninstall
    • Fixed problem if maps were named in non ASCII characters

November 2009: UDKInstall-2009-11-BETA

Major changes to the engine since the release of Unreal Tournament 3

New features and tools

Content Browser
The new Unreal Content Browser is a revolutionary tool for searching and organizing game content. The Content Browser gives you instant access to all assets – meshes, materials, sounds, animations, and more – without the need to manually navigate directories or load content files A Flickr-inspired content tagging system enables designers to categorize game assets for instant retrieval. Search for “pillar”, for example, and all pillars will be rapidly retrieved and displayed, in thumbnail format, from among up to terabytes of game content. Optional database support exists for creating and sharing collections of assets enables artists to manage groups of game assets independent of file location. In all, the new Unreal Content Browser brings a welcome “Web 2.0” feel to the process of browsing, searching, and creating game assets, greatly enhancing artist and designer workflow.

Global Illumination
Unreal Lightmass, a new global illumination solver, produces high quality static lighting with next-generation effects with very reasonable build times on modern hardware. Lightmass features include soft shadows from area lights with accurate penumbrae, translucent shadows, smooth multi-bounce shadowed diffuse interreflection, arbitrary lights defined from emissive texels on meshes, baked ambient occlusion, environment lighting and indirect lighting for dynamic objects through volumes of precomputed Spherical Harmonic lighting samples. The result is improved lighting fidelity for the entire world, while retaining full compatibility with UE3's existing lighting and shadowing features. Lightmass is specifically designed to handle large levels with fast build times and therefore is heavily multithreaded and massively scalable through Unreal Swarm.

Distributed Computing
Unreal Swarm is a massively scalable job distribution system optimized for high-speed networks of multi-core PCs. Designed in tandem with Unreal Lightmass to accelerate lighting computations, Swarm can manage clusters of computers of mixed brands, configurations, and performance levels, automatically distributing tasks on-demand and employing a transparent distributed cache system that allows for dramatically increased performance. Swarm is configured and managed entirely through a visual interface that provides detailed information about jobs in progress, including both local and remote agents participating in the job, and color-coded activity per worker thread on all agents. Swarm is an extremely flexible job distribution system that is currently used to accelerate Unreal Engine 3’s new global illumination system, Unreal Lightmass, with outstanding results.

Ambient occlusion / post-processing filter
UE3’s ambient occlusion technology renders an approximation of global illumination by calculating the accessibility of each pixel. The result is increased perception of geometric shape for the entire scene, including dynamic characters. The effect is scene-independent and operates with constant memory and performance overhead with no pre-processing.

High-density crowds
UE3’s new crowd system with flocking technology can simulate in real time hundreds of characters within a scene. Designers have complete control of the movement and interaction of crowd agents with players and other NPCs, using a "plug-in" behavior system.

Artificial Intelligence: Navigation Meshes
Unreal Engine 3's artificial intelligence system now supports the automatic creation and use of navigation meshes, giving AI-controlled characters increased spatial awareness of the world around them and enabling them to make smarter movement decisions. Navigation meshes further optimize the performance and memory usage of AI relative to traditional node-based navigation systems, thanks to a more efficient representation and less reliance on collision-detection for movement. This includes support for fully 3-D navigation with variable heights as well as navigation on vertical and inverted surfaces (e.g. walls and ceilings).

Dynamic fluid surfaces
The water technology in UE3 breathes life into liquid surfaces. Sophisticated water physics combined with realistic specular and environment reflections produce a realistic, liquid-like feel. Characters have dynamic interactions with the water, produce more realistic sound effects and create more lifelike splashes using particle systems – and all this scales to very large environments.

Soft body physics
Through the incorporation of AGEIA’s soft body physics simulation technology, UE3 can realistically simulate elastic and deformable objects, and thus produce more organic game worlds. Players can interact with flexible objects, and gelatinous surfaces can exhibit sticky properties.

Destructible environments
UE3’s new fracturing tool and runtime enable developers to take virtually any existing mesh, slice it up into as many fragments as desired, and destroy structures. This structural analysis tool produces far more realistic, destructible environments.

Property Window Searching
UE3's Property Window is the easy-access method for interacting with variables declared in UnrealScript. Now, the Property Window comes with a search bar for quickly filtering the extensive list of properties down to only a select few. Also, property names are now displayed with friendly names. With this new workflow enhancement, it's as easy to find the properties as it is to edit them.

Skeletal mesh blend weight rendering
The mesh viewer now allows developers to visualize the blend weights of skeletal models. Useful for artists, they are now able to see just how bone weights affect individual vertices within game assets.

Bone weight influence editor
The engine now supports a notion of storing alternate bone weight / influence "tracks" per skeletal mesh. At runtime these tracks can be swapped per bone pair allowing a clean break from the main skeletal mesh. Each vertex influenced by the specified bone is swapped with a new set of bone weights on the alternate track. Possible effects include gore and gibbing by separating a limb from a character body.

Mesh paint tool
Use the new Mesh Paint tool to paint textures and colors directly onto your scene's geometry. You can modify vertex colors and paint texture layers on individual mesh instances, allowing for unprecedented variety and control.

Mesh simplification tool
The new Mesh Simplification tool allows you to optimize your level's static meshes by automatically reducing their complexity on a per-level basis. You can interactively adjust polygon counts and update actor instances using a clean and simple user interface.

Texture Adjustment tools
We've added new settings to the Texture Editor that allow you to make last-minute changes to textures right inside of Unreal Editor! You can use this tool to modify a texture's brightness, vibrance, or gamma curve non-destructively.

Cloth tearing and welding
In addition to physical simulation of cloth, the PhysX integration into the Unreal Engine now also supports dynamic tearing as a result of physical interaction. The new welding feature makes cloth simulation work correctly on a wider range of graphics meshes.

Lens flare support
Lens flare systems can now be created in the lens flare editor and either placed as 'static' objects in the level or spawned dynamically and attached to actors in the scene. The system integrates the occlusion of the flare source as well as a wide variety of controllable properties for simulating realistic reflection elements on camera lenses.

New geometry mode tools

  • Pen
    • Creating difficult or oddly shaped brushes is easy now with the pen tool. Just click to drop points in the editor viewport to define the shape you want. When you're done a properly tessellated brush is created for you automatically, ready for use as BSP or a volume.
  • Brush Clipping
    • The interface for brush clipping has been rewritten so that it falls in line with the new pen tool. Simply place control points in the viewports to define the cutting plane and press ENTER.
  • Lathe
    • The lathe tool offers an alternative to the 2D Shape Editor that was present in older versions of the editor. Now level designers can create a brush shape using the pen tool and then revolve that shape around the pivot point to create new curved brushes.

Auto-complete in the in-game console
The engine now will offer auto-complete suggestions when typing in the in-game console. All script exec functions, local map names, and any currently loaded Kismet console event commands are automatically entered into the auto-complete list, along with a manual list as specified in BaseInput.ini.

WASD controls in the editor windows
Improved viewport controls. You can now fly around level quickly and smoothly using the new WASD flight controls. Simply hold down the right mouse button and use WASD and mouse-look to pilot the camera. You can also use the Q/E buttons to fly vertically or Z/C to zoom in or out.

SpeedTree 5.0
The SpeedTree 5.0 integration provides an improved modeller application and runtime LOD support.

Lit Particle Effects
Support for efficient lit particle effects has been added. Particle systems can now be lit with Light Environments, which allow them to integrate into the environment's lighting. Translucency can also be rendered downsampled now, which allows more fillrate for increasing lighting quality or volumetric appearance. A new texture coordinate type called ParticleMacroUV has been added to increase effect continuity.

Improved features and tools

Editor functionality improvements

  • Material Editor
    • now supports GPU shader-based deformation of meshes using the new Vertex Position features.
    • inline Search and source code viewing, and new expression nodes have been added.
    • material statistics can now be toggled on and off with a new tool bar button.
  • Viewport improvements
    • A new option called "Allow Translucent Selection" is available in the main tool bar.
      • It sets whether translucent objects will be selectable in the level viewports.
    • The default control scheme for orthographic viewports and most 2D editor windows has changed to be much more intuitive.
      • You can click and drag the mouse to pan the canvas around, and scrolling the mouse wheel now zoom directly to the cursor's location.
    • A new tool for converting lights is available in the level viewport right click context menu.
    • The shader complexity view has been improved to show more specific performance details.
    • Viewports will now draw in Unlit mode when no lights have been placed yet.
  • Workflow improvements
    • In Geometry Mode, you can now use Ctrl+Shift with Click/Drag to move vertices with the camera.
    • Many properties now have slider controls that let you quickly change and preview different values without having to type numbers.
    • Static Meshes can now be reimported quickly and end easily. Just right click on the mesh in the Content Browser and select "Reimport" in the context menu.
    • You can now press the F11 key to toggle full screen mode in game. Also, pressing Alt+Shift+Enter will toggle UnrealEd between full screen (maximized) and regular view.
    • Added 'Yes to All' and 'No to All' when saving multiple maps at once.
    • The editor will now warn you about references to assets in external packages when saving.
  • Misc
    • Several new normal map compression formats are now supported which may yield higher quality lighting results.

Matinee improvements
Matinee is used to build real-time cinematics that play back in-engine. This UE3 system has been substantially improved to give artists movie director-class control over all of the objects in a scene, as well as cameras and cuts, plus we have added an in-engine, real-time preview feature that plays back all the visual effects of a cinematic. Dozens of other new Matinee features and bug fixes have been implemented including:

  • You can now summon the Matinee window through the editor's main tool bar or menu.
  • Improved standard frame rate support in Matinee. The Matinee time line and level viewports now display SMTPE-style timecodes, and most standard frame rate presets are built-in. Additionally, Matinee now supports fixed time-step playback.
  • New Matinee transport modes are available. For example, sequences can now be played in reverse. Also you can now bind transport controls to keyboard shortcuts in the Matinee keybinding dialog.
  • The new Audio Master track type allow you to globally control the volume and pitch of all audio tracks in your cinematic.
  • Actors can now be easily hidden and shown in Matinee using the new Visibility track type.
  • The new Particle Replay track type allows you to create and play back pre-recorded particle simulations. This is especially useful when you want the particle to behave the same way in all shots.
  • Matinee now has built-in support for creating "low gore" variations of cinematics. You can set whether keys will trigger or actors will be visible based on user preferences.

ActorX support for the latest versions of 3ds Max, Maya and XSI (32-bit and 64-bit)
ActorX now supports all versions of Autodesk 3ds Max up to 2010, and all versions of Autodesk Maya up to 2009. Additionally, new features have been added to support morph target export and various bugs have been squashed. 64-bit versions are also available.

Improved the rendering quality of character's hair

  • Anisotropic lighting model.
    • It works best on dynamic meshes, so use it for metal shields and armor, and for clothing.
  • Lit translucency for dynamic objects such as skeletal meshes.
  • Multiple static triangle sorting options for skeletal meshes to minimize translucency sorting artifacts in hair as much as possible.
  • "Custom" material shader node, for implementing HLSL code from within the material editor.

Performance and memory usage improvements
Unreal Engine 3 receives frequent upgrades to ensure a smooth and responsive experience. A significant collection of performance and memory optimizations were implemented for shipping Gears of War 2, ranging from better level streaming to refined console support. More recent enhancements have overhauled established systems as well as newer tools, e.g. Unreal Content Browser performance improvements; crowd system performance and memory optimizations; and Unreal Build Tool fortifications."

Animation

  • Additive Animation
    • Can convert any animation based on first frame of any animation, another animation scaled, ref pose.
    • Preview support in AnimSet Viewer
    • Support AnimNodeAdditiveBlending node for AnimTree
    • Added support for AnimNodeSlots to play additive animations on demand.
  • Animation Compression Improvement
    • New animation compression algorithm - Remove Linear Keys
    • Commandlet to go through all animations to find the best fit compression for the animation
    • Reintroduced lossless compression of Raw animation data, uses less disk space, and memory in editor.
  • AnimSet improvements
    • Added the ability to manipulate the skel mesh by clicking on the bones and using the translate/rotate widget
  • Foot Placement improvement
    • SkelControlFootPlacement : [[http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UsingSkeletalControllers#SkelControlFootPlacement
    • Support while moving/moving bases/floor conforming
  • AnimTree editor Improvement
    • Copy/Paste support
    • New Animation Metadata System. Replaces BoneControlModifiers with a more flexible class system.
  • Morph Target Animation
    • Support morph target animation (Maya only)
    • [[http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MorphTargets#Morph Targets Animation
  • Morph Target Viewer improvement
    • Support for previewing each morph target (adjusting weight)
    • Batch import/export
    • Support material change via morph target
    • Support vertex indices fix-up when influence weight changes
  • Profiler
    • Profile system added to AnimTree editor, to easily switch between multiple assets (SkelMesh, attachments, AnimSets).
    • TRACKANIMUSAGE
    • Track how much animation is visible to player
    • Track what animation hasn't been used

Audio

  • Ambient sounds have been updated and consolidated significantly;
    • AmbientSoundSimples can now play multiple sounds at once
    • each ambient sound type has its own editor icon
    • the attenuation ranges have been reduced from a distribution to a constant
    • attenuation types have been fixed
    • the min radius is now shown along with the max radius
  • SoundGroups have been renamed to SoundClasses to avoid confusion with package groups.
  • Ambient Zones are a new feature designed to emulate occlusion for ambient sounds.
    • They hook into the reverb volume and apply volume and/or filter modifications depending on whether the ambient sound is inside or outside, and whether the listener is inside or outside.
    • A sample usage case would be a single ambient wind sound could be used to cover an entire level if you define any inside areas with settings to reduce the volume of external sounds.
    • Previously, each 'inside' area would have to be surrounded by several ambient wind sounds to get the proper fill.
    • The UTGame test map DM-SoundInterior illustrates this.
  • The PC sound system is now XAudio2
    • It also means you can easily get proper 5.1 sound on the PC.
    • Everything works in 6 channels internally, and either outputs as 6 channel or stereo
  • There is now a sound class editor (as opposed to editing an ini file)
  • Importing now has the ability to add a default modulator and/or an attenuation node on import
  • You can now add multiple selected waves to a sound cue at once, with or without being attached to a random node

Decals
Decal system that works on all primitive types and uses materials in the same way as any other scene primitive does. This includes the various combinations of lit, unlit, bump offset, translucent, and distorted modes supported by materials. Decals support animated projected UVs. Lighting on decals can be either static or dynamic based on the receiver geometry. Decals projecting on translucent receiver geometry are now sorted to render correctly with those primitives. Decal performance on the render thread has been improved by using batches for both dynamic spawned decals and static level placed decals. Decals are also culled by view frustum and distance checks as well as the occlusion results of the primitives they affect. GPU performance of decals has been improved by using dynamic branching as well as hardware scissor tests. Attachment costs for dynamic decals have been improved by performing decal frustum clipping on the GPU and only doing a quick bounds test on the CPU. Decal attachment also handles fractured geometry and the visibility of its fractured elements. Decals have options to specify how the decal color or opacity should fade based on projected angle. Decal memory usage has been greatly reduced.

ASE Importer

  • There is now an option to have single smoothing group objects ignore calculated tangents when doing vertex comparisons...
    • When importing an ASE file, there is a new option on the StaticMeshFactory dialog, bSingleSmoothGroupSingleTangent.
      • When TRUE, if the mesh being imported utilizes a single smoothing group, generated tangents will be ignored when comparing vertices.
    • This resulted in a significant decrease in the generated vertex count in our test model, with no noticable artifacts.
    • The importing of ASE files will also now write the generated and imported vertex counts to the log.
    • If the ratio exceeds that of the ASEImporter.ImportVertexCountWarningPercentage value in the editor ini setting, a pop-up dialog will warn the importer of the large increase in vertex count.

TextureRenderTarget2D

  • The render-to-texture can now be compressed, and can have no mips (as used by ProcBuildings)

Changed the code to no longer ask whether you want to update your .inis and just do it.

  • If you prefer the old way better you can add
    • -NOAUTOINIUPDATE to a global environment variable called UE3-CmdLineArgs.
    • You can do this via Control Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings -> Advanced -> Environment Variables and then either add it to the user of system variables.
  • User is probably the better choice.

Other misc new tools and smaller improvements

  • UI System
    • Made to be more user friendly.
  • Bloom quality has been improved
  • Added 3 pass SkeletalMesh Compose, and Twist bone controller
    • To make twist bones fully procedural, and work with IK controllers
  • Added RBCC_BlockingVolume collision channel, and set BlockingVolumes to use it.
    • May require your own classes using rigid-body physics objects to add this channel if collision is still desired with BVs.
  • tear off and floating viewports
  • lightmap import export tool
  • Lit translucency for dynamic objects such as hair skeletal meshes.
  • Static triangle strip sorting for lit translucent skeletal meshes.
  • Flipped Y/Z in OBJ exporter (so Maya has a chance). Max needs FlipYZ checkbox checked.
  • Added new .lod.obj exporter. Exports staticmeshactors and their materials to .obj format.
  • New Kismet object types.
  • Texture mip-maps fades in/out when streamed in/out
  • Added a non-realtime blur post process node, which applies a gaussian blur to the final image
  • SpriteComponent can now use UV coordinates to index into a graphic
  • Textures now supports DXT1a (DXT1 with 1 bit alpha)
  • Improvements to lightmap encoding to save memory and improve performance.

Known Issues and Workarounds

  • Emissive lighting issue on Windows XP
    • On Windows XP emissive lighting built using lightmass can cause maps to have incorrect lighting
    • Workaround #1
      • Don't use emissive lighting when creating mods on XP
      • or build lighting using UE3 lighting instead of lightmass
    • Workaround #2
      • Set WorldInfo->LightmassSettings->EmissiveBoost to 0
      • rebuild lighting
  • Mods created on a non-english OS will crash on launch on any other language OS
    • Workaround #1
      • Delete UTGame\Config\UTEngine.ini and then recook and repackage your game
    • Workaround #2
      • Edit UTGame\Config\UTEngine.ini and change 'Language=???' (e.g. 'Language=JPN') to 'Language=INT'
    • To check to see if these workarounds worked, look in your UTGame\CookedPC folder after cooking; you should see a file 'Startup_INT.upk'. Before the workaround, there would be a 'Startup_JPN.upk' file there. If this game were then packaged and installed on a machine with a different language (e.g. KOR), the game would try to look for 'Startup_KOR.upk', and if that were not found, fall back to loading 'Startup_INT.upk' - which did not exist before the workaround.