Unreal Engine 5.5 Megalights - Tech Demo | Unreal Fest 2024

Thank you, Simon. Hey, Victor. Hey, everyone. Let's jump right into it. When we look at where to take Unreal Engine in the future, we start with the user. Asking ourselves how the tools and the tech get out of their way as they bring their ideas to life. One challenging limitation for our creators has been the cost of shadow casting lights. To that end, we've developed new technology that enables artists to use orders of magnitude more and higher quality light sources than ever before. Let's take an early look at this new feature we're calling Megalights. And who better to guide us through this experience than our intrepid explorer from Lumen in the Land of Nanite, Echo. Let's see what's up ahead, Victor. Before we get into the details of Megalights, I first wanted to talk about this environment. Built using a suite of brand new assets from the Quixel Megascans library, we've also partnered with Kitbash3D. They're an awesome resource for 3D models and materials. You can soon find many of these assets on our new Fab Asset Marketplace if you want to use them in your own projects. Moving on, let's talk Megalights. Unreal Engine is at its best when users can express themselves without technical constraint. Like Nanite did for Triangles or Lumen for global illumination, Megalights removes limitation in a whole new category, direct lighting and shadows. Take for example these textured area lights, considered the gold standard of offline rendering. Here they are in real time, spilling vibrant color into the scene, casting soft shadows and illuminating the environment in a way artists simply couldn't have done before. And a whole new tool in the creator's toolkit is huge, but that's not the only way Megalights makes things better. Let's see what's next. So it looks like Echo has found herself in quite an interesting marketplace here, just about to open for the day. Let's turn on some of these shop fronts and see what's for sale. There's something missing though, the scene, it's flat, it's undefined. Let's turn on shadows, but not just for a few important lights, for every single light in the entire view. From these main shop fronts to the screens, the displays, the flickering oil lamps, string lights, candles, signs, we're free to use whatever lights we need to tell our story and bring this beautiful environment to life. Now, the density of light sources you see here, it's extremely high. And this is what you get when artists are working playfully, without limitation. Okay, let's go back to the scene. Victor, let's go further. Let's activate all these animated drones and robots. Over 1,000 individual shadow casting light sources in this view alone. All of these lights, they're movable, dynamic, scattering through the volumetric fog, and Megalights handles this impressive scene without missing a beat. As we continue on, it's worth mentioning that removing these limitations around light count and shadows, it doesn't just apply to point and spotlights, but to area lights as well. Megalights enables artists to use area lights as freely as they would any other light source. Now, whether you're using textured area lights, light functions, crisp shadows, or lovely soft shadows, you can have huge numbers of lights of any type in whatever configuration works best for your scene. Now, as we send Echo off on her next adventure, we should mention performance. What you've seen here is running live on a PlayStation 5. Megalights is included in UE 5.5. It's an experimental feature in 5.5, and you can also check it out on the expo floor if you want a closer look at all the pretty pixels. Thank you very much. Back to you, Simon. Wow, thanks, guys. That was truly amazing.