Epic Games has officially released an updated version of the Unreal Engine — 5.4. It has significantly improved the quality of animation and improved rendering performance.
In particular, the company has updated the experimental Motion Matching tool to create realistic character movements, taking poses from a special database. In addition, the engine has acquired the functions Modular Control Rig and Layered Control Rigs for easier work with rigs.
Unreal Engine now boasts an improved Nanite dynamic detail system, which includes the Tessellation feature. This feature allows you to add various small details like cracks and other irregularities during rendering without changing the original meshes. The AnimToTexture plugin has also started working with Nanite geometry.
In Unreal Engine 5.4, the Neural Network Engine tool, which allows you to upload pre-trained neural networks to projects, has moved from the experimental stage to the beta test stage.
Epic Games first introduced Unreal Engine 5.4 during the GDC 2024 developer Conference. We talked about some of the innovations in March. You can view the full list of changes on the Unreal Engine website.