Introduction to Unreal Engine 6
Unreal Engine 6 is the latest version of Epic Games’ popular game engine and toolset. It was first announced at the 2021 Game Developers Conference, with initial preview builds made available shortly after. Unreal Engine 6 brings several major new features and improvements that aim to empower developers and help them bring their creative visions to life more easily.
Some of the most significant changes and additions in Unreal Engine 6 include:
Nanite Virtualized Geometry
Nanite is a virtualized micropolygon geometry system that allows artists to create cinematic-quality source art comprising billions of polygons. Nanite intelligently streams and processes only the detail that’s visible on screen. This removes all polygon count and draw call limits and lets you spend more time on creativity.
Lumen Global Illumination
Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes. This lets developers achieve cinematic-quality lighting and reflections in real-time. Lumen erases the need for lightmap baking and probe placement while significantly reducing iteration time.
Improved World Partition System
Unreal Engine 6 introduces an improved World Partition system that provides a more scalable and optimized approach to managing large open worlds. World Partition divides the environment into a grid and streams in only the necessary cells. This enables the creation of expansive worlds with minimal runtime memory and performance overhead.
Data Layers and Data-Driven Design
Data Layers introduce a new system for associating data with the environment and entities. This facilitates data-driven design workflows where everything from environment details to missions can be fully controlled via data. Data Layers enable more variation and help reduce hard dependencies in game logic.
Optimized Console Support
Unreal Engine 6 brings optimizations and improvements aimed at facilitating game development for the latest generation of consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. This includes taking advantage of new console features like the PlayStation 5’s ultra-fast SSD.
Detailed Overview of Major Unreal Engine 6 Features
Let’s take a closer look at some of the most exciting and impactful new features in Unreal Engine 6.
Nanite Virtualized Geometry
What is Nanite?
Nanite is a revolutionary virtualized micropolygon geometry system that Epic first demonstrated in The Matrix Awakens tech demo. It essentially streamlines the entire geometry pipeline, managing and processing only details that will be visible on screen.
This removes all limits on polygon counts, draw calls, and geometry detail. Artists can create assets comprising billions of polygons and instance them as much as desired. Nanite will intelligently optimize and process the geometry to match what is on screen.
Technical Details
Under the hood, Nanite converts source geometry into virtualized micropolygon geometry at runtime. The Nanite Streaming System intelligently manages level of detail and processes only visible micropolgyons. This essentially converts detailed high-poly models into optimized streaming geometry specifically tailored to what is on screen.
Nanite constructs frustums around the camera and important view locations. It streams in higher detail for more important areas while reducing detail for obscured or distant ones. Nanite also leverages the console SSDs to intelligently cache streamed data.
Benefits for Artists and Developers
With Nanite, game artists can create assets with extreme detail and fidelity, comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons, without worrying about budgets or draw call limits.
Nanite significantly reduces bake times since there is no need for manual LOD setup. The entire pipeline from modeling to game is streamlined.
Developers also benefit from huge improvements in iteration speed and productivity. Changes to high-poly models immediately translate to the game without needing rebakes. The virtualized system efficiently delivers the detail needed for any scene.
Nanite pushes UE6 closer to the “what you see is what you get” workflow that Epic envisioned.
Lumen Global Illumination
What is Lumen?
Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that instantly reacts to scene and light changes in real-time. This removes the need for pre-baking lighting and gives developers much more freedom and flexibility.
Lumen can realistically simulate diffuse global illumination, reflections, refractions, shadows, and other complex lighting effects. It brings rendering quality much closer to offline ray tracing, but runs interactively during gameplay.
Technical Details
At the core, Lumen is a sparse voxel octree global illumination solver. It intelligently samples the scene and fills in indirect lighting based on an efficient approximate reconstruction technique.
Lumen rays trace in screen space to handle reflections, shadows, translucency and other effects. It handles dynamic changes by focusing the solver on modified areas and updating related lighting and reflections.
On console platforms like PS5, Lumen leverages the GPU hardware ray tracing support for some effects like accurate shadows, ambient occlusion and reflections. But it is also designed to scale well on platforms without dedicated ray tracing hardware.
Benefits for Artists and Developers
With Lumen, artists and designers no longer need to spend time manually placing reflection captures or tuning lightmap UVs. The global illumination dynamically adapts to the scene.
Developers can iterate more rapidly by tweaking scene lighting and materials, seeing updates immediately without waiting for lightmap bakes. Lumen also enables new gameplay possibilities and logic by supporting fully dynamic lighting.
The instant feedback and interactive nature of Lumen saves significant development and iteration time. Artists and developers gain more freedom to focus on creativity rather than technical constraints.
Other Notable Updates and Additions
Improved World Partition System
The World Partition system has been overhauled in UE6 to provide a more flexible, optimized approach to managing large worlds. It divides levels into a grid and efficiently streams in only the necessary cells.
World Partition 2 introduces various optimizations around culling, occlusion, streaming and draw calls to help enhance performance in large open environments.
Data Layers and Data-Driven Design
Data Layers allow associating arbitrary data with actors and the environment. This facilitates new data-driven workflows for crafting worlds more flexibly.
Developers can leverage Data Layers to dynamically adjust environment details, activate missions or encounters, and modify gameplay based on player progression or other factors.
Optimized Next-Gen Console Support
Unreal Engine 6 brings various optimizations to take full advantage of the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and other new consoles. This includes harnessing the super fast SSDs for streaming, decompression and caching technologies like Nanite and Lumen.
Next-gen renderer optimizations, new shadows techniques, and audio advancements also aim to maximize new console capabilities. Unreal Engine 6 pushes the boundaries of what’s possible on consumer gaming hardware.
The Future of Game Development With Unreal Engine 6
Unreal Engine 6 represents a major leap forward for real-time 3D graphics technology. Nanite and Lumen specifically enable unprecedented new workflows that remove previous technical limitations and bottlenecks.
Developers leveraging UE6 can focus more on realizing their creative ambitions and spending time on content rather than engine tech. The improvements translate into tangible time savings and productivity gains.
Unreal Engine 6 empowers artists to deliver assets with film-quality fidelity that fully preserve original vision and details. The engine automatically optimizes and processes assets while preserving detail integrity.
For developers, UE6 streamlines iteration speed, reduces dependencies, and opens new possibilities in areas like dynamic lighting, data-driven design, and large open worlds. The flexibility and power enables works with unmatched scale and quality.
As Epic continues honing and evolving core technologies like Nanite and Lumen, Unreal Engine 6 stands to enable artists and developers to bring their next-generation visions to life. Unreal Engine 6 propels key workflows into the future, closer than ever before to the “what you see is what you get” ideal. Game development and creativity will ascend to new heights on the shoulders of UE6.
