Ultra Engine 0.9.6 Introduces a new Foliage System

Entry posted by Admin in Articles · July 15

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Ultra Engine 0.9.6 is here, with a new foliage system that replaces and improves the vegetation system used in Leadwerks. Whereas Leadwerks uses a geometry shader, Ultra uses a compute shader that provides more power and better performance. The most significant improvement is the inclusion of sublayers, which allow a mesh layer to use multiple variations to easily populate a scene with a variety of different objects, while spacing them out in a natural way.

Imposters

Imposters are also added, which allows high-poly meshes to be reduced to just a single quad when they are viewed from a distance. This feature can be used with or without the foliage system. A series of images are generated for color, normal, and metallic/roughness values, to provide an accurate representation of the object from any angle.

Nature Starter Kit DLC

The first DLC for Ultra Engine is the essential Nature Starter Kit, which provides trees, plants, and rocks for your outdoor environments. This free DLC is available for Ultra Engine Pro, Standard, and for the standalone version of the engine from our site.

New Animation Tools

The model editor interface has gained several new tools focused on improving support for animation. Animations can be loaded from external files, partial animation sequences can be extracted and added as a new sequence, and bind poses can be reset.

Free Web Assets

The new Asset Library provides an interface to install both DLCs, and to browse and download remote content from third-party providers. The first official integration is with AmbientCG.com, providing instant access to more than 2000 game-ready PBR materials.

No-Limits Royalty-Free License for Game Developers

We've revised our end user license agreement to remove all restrictions related to revenue or company size. (Restrictions on military and government usage still apply.) Buy Ultra and develop games freely with no additional costs or hidden fees.

You can get Ultra Engine on our website or on Steam. Use coupon code SUMMER2024 in our store for a discount this week.

This and so much more is ready to use in Ultra Engine 0.9.6:

More than 100 bug fixes(!)
Model file format updated, now supports LODs and colliders.
Added cubemap IBL sampler. See "Scripts > Utilities > Cubemap to PBR" in the main menu.
Shaders are now using correct sRGB > Linear > sRGB transform.
Revised environment probes GI calculation,
HDRI to cubemap tool no longer using OpenCL so it will work on all machines now.
Translate tool in the 2D viewports now uses the selection bounding box to grab and move objects, instead of individual objects.
Flowgraph editor initializes faster when you view it the first time.
Project manager sync view much faster now.
Added "Extract Animation", "Remove Animation", "Reset Bind Pose" and "Load Animation" tools in model editor.
Drawing guidelines in 2D viewports now used dashed lines.
Search in Asset Browser now acts like a filter for the folder you are in, with some pre-defined search terms provided.
Added COMBOBOX_EDITABLE widget style.
Revised terrain creation interface and workflow.
Added back-face lighting material setting (good for foliage).
Model Editor now shows default pose of animated models.
Improvements to the glTF model loader.
Added "Reset Transform" tool in Model Editor.
Added "Generate Imposter" tool in Model Editor.
Added "Load LOD" tool in Model Editor.
Translate tool in 3D viewports now uses a conventional gizmo.
Added viewport layout toolbar buttons.
Added Load and Save buttons to World Settings window.
User-defined groups are now supported in the Scene Browser.

About Ultra Engine

Ultra Engine was created to solve the problems we saw while working on virtual reality projects at NASA. We are developing game engine tools to provide order-of-magnitude faster performance for 3D and VR applications in entertainment, defense, and aerospace.