I have been working on a technique I call IHP (Implicit Heightfield Projection)...

The goal is similar to POM or FPOM which makes a completely flat surface look like it actually has the geometry described by a heightmap. But IHP gets there differently.

Traditional POM searches for the surface by stepping through sampled depth along the view ray. IHP doesn’t use that kind of depth layer search. It traverses the actual heightfield cells and solves the ray andd surface intersection inside the cell itself. That intersection then drives the UV correction and reconstructed surface normal from the same height data.

The practical difference has been pretty dramatic in my testing. Traditional POM starts falling apart quickly when you get close or hit difficult viewing angles. FPOM looks considerably better but still sensitive to how the surface is viewed.

With IHP I can push the camera extremely close to the surface and the relief keeps holding together. basically until the heightmap resolution itself becomes the limitation.

And the part I amm probably happiest about: in my tests, IHP is cheaper than both POM and FPOM because it doesnt need to repeatedly march and sample through depth to improve intersection accuracy. Once the ray reaches a heightfield cell IHP solves the intersection directly inside that cell. So quality is not bought by simply adding more and more ray-march steps.

No tessellation, no actual displaced geometry, and the underlying mesh is still completely flat.

Same general visual problem. Very different way of solving it.

I am genuinely curious how people here would classify something like this.

Hello Everyone!
Sharing some fiery slashes from my fire FX library
Lemme know if you feel fired up too 🙂 🤔
If you liked the content I invite you to join my discord server 🙂 : https://discord.gg/JjcMj8CGB

In this test Nanite Displacement is fading over to FPOM in the distance. Even with the fade really close it worked surprisingly well!

Stat GPU shows Basepass goes from 0.45 to 0.53 ms (min) in my scene. Rest is unchanged.

The plugin is available on Fab: https://www.fab.com/listings/8ea7850d-13af-4838-a350-635f61ac5af7

IMPORTANT: Based on the feedback we received about the price, we’ve decided to apply a discount. Please don’t purchase it yet, the discounted price should go live tomorrow. You’ll be able to get it for less. Please just add it your wishlist. Thank you!

Scan the full project with one click.
The scan shows you which event or which function causes the FPS problem

Start the AI analysis with one click.
The AI opens your game, records a trace file, and writes a large report.
The report shows the problems in your level: meshes, Blueprints, lights, characters, events and functions.

Find which event causes a network problem.
Find the bad components in your character.
Ask the AI about the result, and get an answer.

**Select a part of a Blueprint. The AI converts it to C++. Use the C++ as a ready block. (**You do not need C++ knowledge)

Tell the AI to build a Mass Entity setup.
Tell the AI to scan the project and find the bad structures.

Select the meshes in your scene. Convert them to HISM or ISM together (auto).
Find the meshes with a high polygon count. Select them together, and add LODs automatically.

Read and change your project with 800+ MCP tools.

The agents can communicate with each other and coordinate their work while developing your game. They also understand the correct order for compiling changes, helping the whole development process stay organized.

With the Loop option, you can let the agents keep working on your game in a continuous development cycle.

A challenge to get right for sure

For a while, I’ve been sharing Hotel 13’s trailer and different scenes here, constantly improving the game based on your feedback. Some of the criticism was pretty harsh 😅, but most of it genuinely helped make the game much better.

Today, our Steam page is finally live. Since I’ve been sharing this journey with you, I wanted to share the news here as well.

If the game interests you, adding it to your wishlist would mean a lot to us. As always, I’d also love to hear your honest thoughts on the final version of the trailer!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5046340/Hotel_13/

Japanese Modular Shrine Is now available on Fab.

https://www.fab.com/listings/e11f9c1d-b052-4747-bd0b-52a57aa7ce40

All the truck model were made by me. I made a fully working truck rig for Unreal using chaos vehicles with control rig and programmed it using blueprints. All the truck meshes are near 50K polygons

Some modern benches and a few street props optimized for games, real-time use, and AR/VR projects, representing a cohesive stylized modern city street.

Included assets have multiple UV channels & use 1 shared material containing 4 texture maps: Diffuse, Normal, Roughness, AO.

It's free for personal license, and it's my first product on Fab! I hope they will be useful for you!

https://www.fab.com/listings/ceee34d0-85e7-4b9b-8e00-3ebf216b4710

I'm following this tutorial: https://youtu.be/GdrMvqoTba8?si=PP8iDTxVyVu0y4KS

I'm using Unreal 5.6.1. I'm rendering out this short sequence, but I noticed that even in the viewport my ShallowWaterRiver clips when the CineCameraActor gets close to it (around 0:10 towards the bottom of the screen). I also noticed there are some trees (passed the bridge) that their animation gets kind of jerky. I got the assets from the Electric Dreams Env from Fab (https://fab.com/s/7ee8c5704aaa). How would I go about fixing this? This is the first time I've ever done this kind of thing on Unreal. Let me know if y'all have any ideas?

This is the Crew Cafeteria & Recreation Area from my Industrial Sci-Fi Space Station environment.

I wanted this section to feel like a more social and lived-in part of the station — somewhere the crew can eat, relax, and spend their downtime between shifts, away from the heavier industrial areas.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the atmosphere and overall feel of this space.

Primary asset loading fails quietly. GetPrimaryAssetIdList comes back empty, LoadPrimaryAsset does nothing, and the log says nothing at all.

The causes are unrelated to each other. The expensive one is the _C suffix: a Blueprint registered by class needs the generated class name, and an entry typed by hand doesn't have it. Others include Has Blueprint Classes set on the wrong scan entry, an Asset Base Class that doesn't match what the assets derive from, duplicated scan directories that shadow each other, and a chunking setup that drops the assets out of the cook without an error.

I built an editor plugin that detects which one is live in your project, says which, and writes the corrected DefaultGame.ini entries instead of making you type them.

AI disclosure: this plugin was written with AI assistance, code and graphics.

https://csaf.itch.io/primary-asset-doctor

I’m in the process of following a locomotion tutorial series and I’ve run into a problem with the distance matching stops. The stop animations I’m using have several seconds worth of walking before it goes to the actual stop. So what’s happening is when my character stops it’ll play the walking part of it and then before it plays the stopping part the legs kind of slide back into the idle pose.

For the anim graph the transition from “stop” to “idle” has “automatic rule based on sequence player in state” checked with “blend logic” being standard blend. At one point it was inertialization but I didn’t notice a difference. In the blend settings “duration” is set to 0.25. I’ve tried increasing it and what I’ve noticed is increasing will not play the stop animations and have the character very slowly go back to idle pose, and then decreasing it just quickly goes into idle pose without playing the stop animations.

The tutorial series has me using animation layers and referencing the main animation blueprint with property access. In the stop layer the sequence evaluator has “sequence” and “explicit time” set to dynamic, “should loop” and “teleport to explicit time” are unchecked.

For trimming the stop animations I’ve tried checking “explicit time” and then setting it to the point in the animations when the actual stopping happens. I’ve tried “teleport to explicit time”, and I’ve tried setting something in “start position” but haven’t noticed any difference.

Is there a way to set the start time here or do I just need to make duplicate animations and cut out a bunch of frames?

This was mainly a level design and modular environment project. I modeled all the modular pieces and made sure they worked well together. I focused on the composition and flow of the environment, while trying to make the scene feel lived-in and believable.

This environment is part of a project I plan to develop in Unreal Engine 5.

*Third-party assets are used for foliage, materials and some props.

For more visit Artstation page: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/b05oQm

Here is mine:

stat unit | stat fps | t.MaxFPS 120 | r.ScreenPercentage 100

I have a fresh install of ue5.8 and it's completely stuck on 0% initialising. I turned logging, tried dx11 and vulcan through the target in the exe to no avail. Using ai (yes don't shoot me) the log seems to indicate the "!" In my windows username Seems to be an issue when unreal stores files in the app data folder. Has anyone had this issue? Ue4.25 works fine. Is there an easy solution other than creating a new windows user?

Announcing Apex Volumetrics for UE5!

A complete volumetric toolset built for high-performance open worlds. Place and fine-tune volumetric effects such as rolling fog, waterfall mist, campfire smoke, smoke grenades, etc, with ultra-low performance impact.

Apex Showcase Trailer

Features:

• Hand place fully customizable volumetric points
• Full gameplay implementation, full 3D player paths, bullets create paths, grenades clear fog etc...
• Each fog point has full frustum, distance, and occlusion culling.
• Overlap and stack fog points as much as you want with literally zero overdraw.
• Does NOT require distance fields to work, just enable volumetric fog and your good to go!
• Mix and match 4 unique fog noise values together to blend and sculpt each fog point uniquely
• All fog self shadows in the direction of the sun, values fully adjustable
• Landscape conforming fog with day/night adjustable heights/densities
• Fully adjustable mid air light rays (Without shadow casting objects)
• Full time of day support for transitioning values (Dense fog at night, no/less fog in day, height values, etc.)
• Sphere fog points provide infinite distance representations so fog can render at any distance.
• Fog gives artists full control over color, self shadowing color, wind direction, fog scale, time of day values, and more.
• No size limitations to how large or small fog points can be.
• Multiple fog shapes from cubes, rectangles, spheres, capsules
• All fog points can be cut in half with adjustable heights and billowing along cut edges.
• All fog points allow fully unique wind speed/directions and fog noise shape/scales, mix and match at no extra cost.
• Use fog points to remove fog inside interior spaces such as buildings/caves.
• Fog points have vortex wind mode for allowing shapes to spin tornado style.

Out now on Fab Marketplace - Apex Fab Link