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Unreal Development Kit February Beta

Author: Epic Games

The Unreal Development Kit is a standalone version of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 framework, the engine and tools behind such games as Gears of War 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum. The UDK is completely free for non-commercial and educational use, perfect for anyone looking to dabble in development.

Included are tools for everything from programming to level design, plus code and assets for a barebones Unreal Tournament 3 to get you started.

The February update brings several improvements and new features, detailed below.

New UDK Features and Tools
  • New color picker
    • Update in real time, e.g., change color and see level lighting update as you drag!
    • Properly deal with HDR colors
    • Capture from the entire screen – even your desktop!
    • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ColorPicker.html
  • Screen door fades
    • New screen door dissolve effect for fading primitives (SM3+ only)
    • Actors can fade in/out based on their MaxDrawDistance
      • Static meshes, ProcBuildings, Skeletal Meshes and SpeedTrees are supported
    • Static Mesh LODs can and Massive LODs can cross-dissolve between each other
    • To enable this feature:
      • Set 'bAllowScreenDoorFade' to True in [Engine.Engine] .ini file
    • Set 'bUsedWithScreenDoorFade' on materials that should fade
  • New package backup system to prevent lost work due to a crash
  • Snap to recovery feature for post process overrides allows you to choose a snap directly to the level pp settings instead of a gradual recovery
  • Whole scene dynamic shadow for dominant directional lights around the camera which blends out to precomputed shadows based on distance
UDK Improvements
  • Dramatically improved Navigation Mesh simplification
    • 50-60% reduction in polygon counts, with corresponding 50-60% reduction in memory footprint
    • Faster at runtime due to less nodes to traverse, etc.
    • Makeup of mesh is much improved with edges that span obstacle to obstacle and provide more accurate width representation of the geometry
  • Matinee improvements
    • Multi-select support for Matinee groups and tracks
      • Users can now copy and paste many tracks at once in Matinee
      • Multiple Matinee groups can now be moved into a folder in a single action
    • Curve Editor new feature: Movement axis locking
      • Hold down the Shift key before dragging a key to lock to an axis
  • Kismet improvements
    • Added Kismet "And" gate
      • Fires its output once, only after every linked input has fired at least once
    • Ctrl + Enter now adds line breaks to Kismet comment boxes
  • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/KismetReference.html
  • CameraAnim Improvements
    • Greatly improved CameraAnim handling and blending of post-process values
  • Static mesh LOD improvements
    • Screendoor fade between static mesh LODs for supporting materials based on time
      • Static meshes are forced down the dynamic rendering path while transitioning
      • Static mesh dynamic rendering path now uses the same LOD heuristic as the static path
      • Screendoor fade even works on dynamic shadows from the static mesh
  • Necessary to avoid popping due to LODs shadowing each other
    • Lightmap resolution is now halved for each static mesh LOD level
  • Moving UTGame native code to UDKBase native package
  • Volumes, static meshes and triggers now have more apparent collision hull wires
Optimizations, Upgrades, and Fixes
  • Bink update fixes the #3 most common UDK crash
  • SpeedTree applications upgrade from 5.0.0 to 5.0.2
    • Fixes an incompatibility with tablet drivers
    • Exports the G channel of normal maps correctly for use with UE3
    • A few other minor fixes
  • Static mesh component vertex color memory savings
    • Painted vertex colors now use half as much memory
  • Save System overhaul to unify map and content package code paths and enhance usability for content creators.
New UDK training videos from Eat3D
  • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Eat3D.html
Updated UDN Documentation
  • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VisibilityCulling.html
  • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LitTranslucency.html
  • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CustomLighting.html
  • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentCooking.html
  • http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentBlog.html
Filename: UDKInstall-2010-02-BETA.exe
Size: 536.68 MB
Post Date: Feb 08, 2010 8:03pm PST
Last Updated: Sep 23, 2010 8:22pm PDT
Downloads: 230

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