UDK April Beta

adam

Epic has just released the UDK's April Beta. Check out some of the new goodies after the jump!

Epic has released the April beta for the Unreal Development Kit - Epic's free-to-use editor and content creator. It hosts a bevy of changes to the tool set so be sure to familiarize yourself with them before jumping in.

Unreal Editor

• Unreal Content Browser now has an option to generate private collections containing the resources a specific asset references.
• You can now look at an object against a character using the ‘preview player height’ preview feature ("" key). This enables users to visualize a predefined mesh in a level without having to add it to the world.
• Organize your favorite properties any way you want using the up and down arrows.
• It is now possible to view each channel individually in the texture viewer.

• There are new buttons to toggle desaturation and the checkerboard pattern for transparent textures.
• Previewer padding is now adjustable as well.

Unreal Cascade

• The new particle collision module, CollisionActor, lets you pick specific actors to collide against.
• A new option to particle ‘LocationSkelVertSurface’ module allows for optionally specifying materials that limit spawning.
• A new option enables converting particle modules to their seeded equivalents if available.
• Cascade now has an optional display of approximate memory the particle system will use.
  • ‘Template’ is the memory the particle system template uses.
  • Instance’ is the memory each particle system instance uses.

Unreal Matinee

• Matinee has a new preset group for lighting.  Adding a new lighting group adds tracks for movement, brightness, color and radius.
• A new ‘Move to end of track’ option moves the timeline to the end of the currently selected track.
• The AI Group in Matinee has been fixed so that no custom animation can overwrite current Matinee-driven animation.

Unreal Kismet

• New keyboard shortcuts for are now available for Kismet.
  • ‘Ctrl-Shift-A’ selects matching actions and variables of the current selection within the active sequence.
  • ‘Ctrl-A’ selects all sequence objects within the active sequence.
• The Kismet level sequences browser should no longer constantly close itself.
• When making a new comment box around a selection, the size of the box now fits properly around the selection.

Unreal Landscape

• Added ‘Flatten’ tool to the Landscape Editor.
• Landscape now has DX11 support!

Autodesk FBX

• Static meshes can be exported to FBX via Unreal Content Browser (vertex colors and UVs are exported as well).
• Whole levels or selected actors, including BSP, can be exported to FBX with world position.
• Fixed not being able to export lightmaps as FBX via the static mesh editor.
• Material auto-assignment now works for material instance constants.

Other Improvements

• Drag and drop of materials with multiple static meshes selected now applies the material to all selected meshes.
• Floating viewport configurations are now saved between editor sessions.
• Better undo and redo support has been added to the Sound Cue Editor.
• Custom triangle sorting information should now be retained when re-importing a skeletal mesh.
• The ‘SkinXX’ syntax for material order should now work correctly for meshes.
• When using mesh paint, paint and erase should now influence the same vertices.
• Importing a mesh over another one no longer erases material assignments.
• There is new a ‘Copy to clipboard’ option in the materials section of the actor right-click menu.
• ‘Brush edges’ is easier to select in the perspective viewport while in geometry mode.
• UDK has been updated to FaceFX version 1.7.4.0.
• You can now toggle SSAO and visualize SSAO from the editor, as well as by using the 'show' console command.
• There are new ‘Snap Constraint To Bone’ and ‘Snap All Constraints To Bone’ buttons in UnrealPhAT Editor Rendering.

Get the full list of UDK and UDN changes here.

Special thanks to Leif 'LMP' Peterson for the heads up!

Wiktor

Good to see the FBX Exporter, as well as the SSAO news!

VidGameDude

if max can't work with import/export in the new UDK, it does not interest me but thanks for the update.

Makkon

VidGameDude: What do you mean? There are shloads of official tutorials using Max and UDK with no trouble at all. It's been like that for ages.

passerby

dont know what problems he's haveing but max has been working fine with udk useing either ase or fbx export for a while

Makkon

He's just a hater :P

Jeremy-S

I REALLY wish I could do something with UDK. All these awesome updates, and new tech, and just awesome awesomeness... Maybe someday I'll be able to do something with it. Oh and VidGameDude, if I can get something from Max to UDK, ANYONE can. Simple google search will turn up a hundred billion links on the subject.

yiannisk

max works perfectly with FBX.

you just need to export to FXB with your textures embedded then import to UDK and it will have your base shader ready.
(or without embedded textures if you want to do this manually) which part of it you find difficult?