Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) Tools

Last Updated: 2024-11-10

Overview

The tools being developed for Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) are designed to streamline the development process and provide our team with the features and capabilities needed to create a high-quality game. These tools are tailored for a general developer audience but can be customized to meet the specific needs of our project. The tools are designed to work seamlessly with UE5 and provide a unified workflow for creating assets, implementing gameplay mechanics, and testing the game.

Metahumans

The Metahumans tool in UE5 allows us to create realistic human characters with lifelike animations and facial expressions. However, for our game we won't be using the default Metahumans, but rather custom Metahumans that match our visual aesthetic and style. That being said, we will still be able to utilize the advanced animation capabilities of the tool.

Animation Tools

Audio Driven Animation

Unreal Engine's audio-driven animation system allows us to create dynamic animations that respond to sound and music. This will allow us to record audio from our voice actors performances and use that to drive the animations of our characters. This gives us a great starting-point for our animations where we can then tweak and refine them to fit the game's needs. You can read more about audio-driven animation here.

Motion Matching

Unreal Engine's motion matching system allows us to create fluid and responsive animations for our characters. This system uses motion capture data to create realistic movement and interactions, providing a high level of fidelity and immersion for players. This system is used to create complex animations for our characters, such as combat moves, stealth takedowns, and environmental interactions. You can read more about motion matching here.

Mesh to Metahumans

A tool that allows artists to convert character models into Metahumans. This tool streamlines the process of creating realistic human characters with lifelike animations and facial expressions. Though the results are not perfect, it gives us a great starting point for converting our characters into Metahumans. From there we will use our in-house tool built inside of Houdini using their Topo Transfer node.

Procedural Content Generation (PCG)

Unreal Engine provides us with a robust set of tools for integrating gameplay mechanics, AI, and other systems into our game. We'll be using Blueprints, Unreal Engine's visual scripting system, as our main driver for planning out gameplay scenarios. This allows us to quickly prototype and iterate on our game mechanics without needing to write code.

Houdini Engine

The main DCC app being used in our pipeline to create procedural content for our game is Houdini. Our custom made tools allow level developers to place geometry into the game level (like boxes for walls, floors, etc.) and then use Houdini Engine to procedurally convert those elements into game assets by generating the final geometry. This allows us to create complex and detailed environments quickly and efficiently, while not getting bogged down in the details of asset creation.