Epic is committed to providing the UDK community with regular software releases at no charge, and the latest beta is available now at http://www.udk.com/download.
Are you creating something great with UDK? Drop us a line in the Project Show-Off forums, where links to tech demos, gameplay videos and screenshots are always welcome.
You can see many of the top UDK games and applications at http://www.udk.com/showcase. This month we would like to congratulate Teotl Studios on their upcoming commercial release for The Ball.
It?s easy to sign up as a commercial UDK developer online. Our FAQ can help you determine which type of license is right for you.
This month?s beta release includes many upgrades, such as:
* Scaleform pipeline improvements
* Improved motion blur
* New detail lighting view mode
* Recompile materials directly from Content Browser right-click menu
* New character indirect lighting controls
* Better hair lighting
Plus, new documentation like the Scaleform workflow, introduction to FaceFX and camera technical guide will be helpful to those getting started with UDK.
Here?s the full list of improvements in detail:
Scaleform GFx
* Scaleform GFx 3.3.85 is now merged in and all UDK UI is GFx-based.
* Made many improvements and fixes to the Scaleform import pipeline.
Point Light Shadows
* Whole scene shadows for point lights are now supported.
Precomputed Visibility
* Precomputed visibility allows occlusion on platforms that don't support hardware occlusion queries.
Motion Blur
* The quality of Motion Blur has been significantly improved without a performance loss.
New Detail Lighting View Mode
* Replaces diffuse and specular color but keeps all other material parameters like normal map, opacity mask, two sidedness, etc.
* Useful for viewing lighting without material diffuse color influence.
* Lighting-only view mode is still useful for looking at lightmap artifacts and compression.
Character Indirect Lighting
* Added new controls for fine-tuning runtime indirect lighting settings on characters.
* Added distinct controls for both lit and shadowed environments.
Hair Lighting
* Implemented a new, single-pass technique for translucency lighting.
* Previous technique relied on multiple passes, which over-brightens on multilayered objects, such as hair.
* The single-pass technique uses about half the number of shader instructions as multipass lighting, so hair will be much cheaper.
Normal Maps, Indirect Lighting & Lightmaps
* Normal maps are now taken into account for indirect lighting with simple lightmaps.
Other New Stuff
* Can now recompile materials directly from the right-click menu in Content Browser.
* New texture streaming system saves memory and prioritizes textures more effectively.
* Added limited support for importing non-power-of-two (NPOT) textures into the editor. MIP maps are not allowed, and image dimensions must be divisible by four for DXT compression.
* Vertex normals are now correctly saved with static meshes exported as OBJ files.
* Terrain export now supports holes.
* New ContentComparison commandlet helps optimize content.
* Lightmass static shadows now have texture space filtering on by default, which smoothes out aliasing.
* Material editor Undo and Redo are now much faster.
* Added multiple camera offset support for particle modules and camera offset support for mesh emitters.
* Spawn at bone/socket now allows rotating mesh particles to the orientation of the bone/socket.
New Documentation
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CameraTechnicalGuide.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ScaleformWorkflow.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/EditorConsoleCommands.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentAuditCommandlet.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PrecomputedVisibility.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/RadialBlur.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MovieTexture.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/IntroductionToFaceFX.html
Updated Documentation
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentBlog.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitBuildUpgradeNotes.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGettingStarted.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitProgramming.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitContentCreation.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKProgrammingHome.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKContentCreationHome.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKLevelCreationHome.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKCommunityLinks.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKCustomCharacters.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Scaleform.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ScaleformImport.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CreatingCinematics.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UnrealEdUserGuide.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CascadeUserGuide.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/AnimSetEditorUserGuide.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/StaticMeshEditorUserGuide.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TaskBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TextureStatsBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ReferencedAssetsBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/AttachmentsBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/GroupsBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/SceneManagerReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LevelBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ActorsBrowserReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/FractureTool.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/SettingUpTerrain.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ModularEnvironmentCreation.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MeshPipeline.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ColorPicker.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ColorGrading.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VisualizeTexture.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TranslucentHairSorting.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Lightmass.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MotionBlur.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VisibilityCulling.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PhysicalMaterial.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsTutorial.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/NavigationMeshTechnicalGuide.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PostProcessTechnicalGuide.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UnrealScriptReference.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/StringsInUnrealScript.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CompilingNativeClasses.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CommandletList.html
Community Links
UDK Forums: http://www.udk.com/forums
UDK Developers on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2493123
UDK on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/UDK/183744733429
Epic Games on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/EpicGames
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