January 2011 UDK Beta released

The latest UDK update is out today. It's mostly a bug fix update but there are a few new features as well that might help a couple folks out there with a few specific issues. Either way, its still a nice free update to a great tool.

Here's some cut and paste from the patch notes:

Upgrade Notes

PhysX is now enabled for iOS development!

Rendering

• There is a new Colorize post process.
• You can now force depth of field.

The new Min Blur Amount post process setting can be used to force in-focus pixels to be blurred.

• Various image reflection quality and performance improvements have been made.
• Optimizations have been made to particle emitters, as well as memory improvements.

Mobile

• PhysX is now supported on iOS.

Rigid body physics, fracturable meshes and ragdolls are among supported features.
Note: Cloth, fluids and soft bodies remain disabled on iOS for performance reasons.

• Upgraded to iOS SDK 4.2
• The latest version of UDK Remote supports ping functionality, so it knows when it is talking to a PC.
• The latest version of UDK Remote's text entry box has been fixed on older versions of iOS.

Unreal Editor

• UDK now has a mesh selection preview.

You can now highlight sections of a mesh simply by selecting the corresponding material property.

• UDK now supports editor map favorites.

You can now star maps that you work with frequently and they'll persist in the editor's toolbar.

• Move to End of Track has been added to Unreal Matinee.
• The functionality of the individual translation and rotation track selections in the Matinee curve editor has been improved.
• A box for selecting subgroups within the matinee curve editor was added.

• The rotation widget now draws how many degrees have been rotated in the viewport.
• Kismet undo is now able to undo shortcut key-inserted sequence actions.

• An option to preserve degenerate triangles has been added to the FBX importer.

• Various fixes were made to the FBX importer, including rotations in Matinee, LODs, lightmaps, tangents on movement curves and auto tangents on cameras.
• When importing atop an existing object in an unloaded package, there will now be a confirmation screen instead of clobbering the existing object.
• The AnimSet Searcher now searches all AnimSets that are currently loaded.

• You can now double click on colors in the material editor to open a color picker.
• The new Align to Floor editor lets you snap actors using their pivot point.
• There is now a map check warning for combat volumes and triggers that aren’t referenced.
• You can now re-order properties in the favorites panel.
• A confirmation dialog is now displayed when baking instanced mesh paint data back to the mesh asset.
• The group selection dialog now defaults to listing just the groups in the current package.
• Properties for Location, Rotation and Scale3D are now displayed in real time in the property windows when objects are modified outside of them.
• Ctrl-Shift-A can now be used to select all Kismet actions.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

• Various improvements were made to Unreal Frontend including key bindings, map sorting and new cook/make buttons.
• The Bink player has been upgraded to version 1.99a.
• A new network profiling tool captures server information primarily for outgoing bandwidth as it relates to data transmission and network events.
• The network profiler takes into account all actors types, RPCs and properties that are replicated during a data stream and then summarizes replication counts and sizes.