Just tried the Unreal Engine 5.7 preview, and I’m really impressed with two standout features that will push environmental realism and efficiency in game development — Procedural Vegetation and Substrate Materials. The Procedural Vegetation Editor, available as an experimental plugin, lets you create highly detailed, Nanite-ready foliage right inside Unreal Editor. I tested building complex natural environments procedurally using just base assets like branches and leaves, which dramatically speeds up workflows while maintaining great visual fidelity. It reduces reliance on external tools and enables real-time iteration—something every game developer will appreciate. On the materials side, Substrate Materials are now production-ready in this preview. This new system offers a modular, physically based layering framework that lets you combine different material layers like metal, clear coat, skin, and cloth in a highly realistic and scalable way. The adaptive blending and lighting interaction provide unmatched realism on various platforms. #UnrealEngine #UE5 #gameDev #proceduralvegetation #substratematerials

🌌 Unreal Engine Lighting & Environment Test | My Breakdown I recently worked on a test project focused on environment creation and cinematic lighting — and it turned out to be one of my favorite experiments so far. The challenge was to make the scene feel alive — not just visually, but emotionally. ✨ I started by setting up a dynamic lighting system using Unreal Engine’s Directional + Sky Light + HDRI combo for balanced illumination. 💨 To enhance realism, I added volumetric fog and atmospheric height fog to create natural depth and soft light scattering. 🌊 For the water simulation, I tweaked reflection captures, adjusted refraction parameters, and used panning normal maps to achieve realistic surface motion. 🌠 To bring life to the atmosphere, I introduced particle effects like dust and subtle falling debris, driven by Niagara — giving the scene that cinematic “after-storm” feeling. ✨ Lastly, I used light bloom and glitter materials to highlight reflective surfaces for a magical yet grounded tone. This project helped me explore how lighting, fog, and reflections can completely transform storytelling within an environment. Every small detail — from particle motion to light direction — makes a huge impact when the goal is to make the viewer feel the space. #UnrealEngine #3DEnvironment #LightingArtist #VFX #CGI #RealTimeRendering #Atharv3dx #EnvironmentDesign

🚀Investigating Epic’s new Mover plugin in Unreal Engine 5.6! 🏃🏾♂️ The Mover plugin is Epic’s next-gen system for character and actor movement. It’s modular, flexible, and comparable to a Finite State Machine, with rollback network support. It’s set to replace the classic Character Movement Component (CMC). Even though it’s still experimental, it has benefits that CMC doesn’t have: ✅ Works outside the Character class ✅ No required capsule collision ✅ No +Z-up restriction As a designer who loves working on character controllers and 3Cs, I wanted to see how usable it is for Blueprint users. So, I dove into the example content, explored the C++ setup, and started experimenting. Here’s my summary I created on Miro (shown in image): 🟢 Green = Available in Blueprints 🟡 Yellow = Example content only in C++ Based on my investigation, I think it’s possible to already tinker with the Mover plugin using Blueprints in 5.6! You just need a few creative workarounds for missing features like Shared Settings and Movement Modifiers. Or you can simply wait for the full release. 😆 Next up: building a skateboarding character to test custom movement modes in action. There’s still plenty to explore, so wish me luck! 😄

🎥 How I Built a Toronto Neighborhood Inside the Unreal Engine 🗺️ 𝟭. 𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗞𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 I wanted to create a neighborhood inspired by Kensington Market. I went inside Google Maps and used it as reference images for which assets need to be created. I then 3D modeled the assets — clothing racks, fences, awnings, trees, etc. 🧱 𝟮. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗚𝗿𝗶𝗱 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 Modular assets and grid positioning made it quick and easy to build out homes and align them perfectly. 🏙️𝟯. 𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗠𝗣 (𝗗𝘂𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗳𝘆, 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲) 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗡𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗱 I used a process called DMP — duplicate, modify, and populate. It’s about taking one home, creating variations, and using those to form a full neighborhood efficiently. ✨ 𝟒. 𝐆𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐥 After the neighborhood was built, I used “World Alchemy” — to give the world a soul. Arthur reruns on an old style Tube TV, a self-playing Monopoly board, a car that turns left, and even a Super Nintendo beneath the TV to help the city feel greater than the sum of it's parts. #GameDevelopment,#LevelDesign,#EnvironmentDesign,#WorldBuilding,#3DArt,#GameDesign,#UnrealEngine,#EnvironmentArt,#DigitalWorlds,#UrbanDesign,#Arthur,#Monopoly,#Risk,#SuperNintendo,#2000sNostalgia,#NostalgicDesign,#MemoryDrivenDesign,#EnvironmentArtist,#3dModeling,#GameDesign,#Environmentalstorytelling,#UnrealEngine,#KensingtonMarket,#TorontoInspired,#WorldAlchemy ,#Photorealism,

🚀 New in Unity 6.3 – Terrain Shaders in Shader Graph! 🎨🌍 The Unity team has introduced one of the most requested features in world building — the ability to create Terrain Shaders directly in Shader Graph without writing a single line of code. With this release, developers and artists can now: ✅ Customize terrain materials in URP & HDRP ✅ Break up tiling artifacts with multiple methods ✅ Use advanced techniques like parallax mapping, detail mapping, and triplanar projection ✅ Optimize terrain rendering for mobile and XR platforms ✅ Access a new Terrain Texture Node to bring in terrain data directly into Shader Graph The update also includes 18 sample shaders, 14 terrain subgraphs, and a complete demo scene to help get started. 📺 Learn more and see it in action here 👉 https://lnkd.in/dfVSsvWs Unity Terrain Shader Graph More information: https://lnkd.in/dChVc3wU

I posted a video showing some gameplay with a Gaussian Splatting scene, and a lot of people have asked me how collisions are handled with GS. We use polygon colliders, because our physics engine is polygon based and I'm not aware of any Gaussian Splatting based physics engine. But how do you auto-generate polygon colliders from a GS scene? Gaussian Splatting tends to introduce a lot of noise, and the shapes are not exactly accurate. I've tried various ways, and the most reliable solution so far is by voxelizing the Gaussians and then generating colliders around the voxels. You'll need to extract the alpha from each Voxel (which is compressed in SPZ files) and discard those voxels that are almost transparent, to eliminate dust and flares from the collisions. Here's a video that shows some preliminary work on this - you get a fairly accurate representation with voxels that are about 0.25 meters in size, and by merging the voxels you get a reasonable number of colliders in the end. It would probably be OK to wrap convex colliders around groups of voxels to get a much simpler scene, and it might also be necessary to shrink the resulting colliders by some amount, but you get the idea. In my tests this accuracy is enough for most in-game situations (remember - the voxels won't be visible and it's hard to see small collision discrepancies in a 3D world). The voxels don't need to be colored, but coloring them makes it easier to visualized them. Generating a voxel scene like this out of 2 million Gaussians produces about 10-15k colliders without optimization. When done on the client in Typescript it takes about a second, so it's something that can be done in realtime if needed. I think ultimately we will process these at upload time on the server using compiled scripts, instead of doing it in realtime on the client. This allows for much heavier processing (for example, floors should be fully flag) and smaller voxel size (halving the voxel size produces 8x more voxels), to ensure there are no performance issues on mobile devices. Once you have produced minimized voxel-based colliders, you will also be able to use them as shadow casters and shadow receivers, which is a great way to increase immersion. I think you should also be able to fast lighting effects on them and blend the result with the underlying Gaussians for explosions other bright but temporary lighting. So, there you have it! I've had this question asked so many times, I thought I'd write a post about it to make it easier to share. Please share this to anyone who is working with Gaussian Splatting.

🎮 Analyzing Ghost of Tsushima Through a Game Developer’s Lens I’ve been spending time with Ghost of Tsushima lately, and as a game developer, I’m genuinely impressed by the technical and design craftsmanship behind it. What stands out most to me is how seamlessly the game integrates narrative design, environmental storytelling, and system-level mechanics. Every design choice from the wind navigation system replacing traditional waypoints to the adaptive AI combat behaviors feels intentional and player-centric. The visual composition is another masterclass: the dynamic weather system, procedural foliage movement, and lighting pipeline all work together to maintain immersion without breaking performance. The camera framing during duels, paired with the minimal UI approach, shows how technical design can elevate emotional depth. As a developer, it’s fascinating to see how each subsystem animation, world streaming, particle effects aligns under a unified design philosophy: immersive simplicity through technical excellence. Games like this remind me that the best engineering often hides behind the art and that balance is where true game design mastery lies. #GameDevelopment #TechnicalDesign #GhostOfTsushima #SystemDesign #LevelDesign #GameEngine #PlayStation #GamedevInsights

⭐ After 10 months of exceptionally hard work, Atlux λ 2 for Unreal Engine is here! 🥳 It has been an incredible journey developing this new version, and I hope you enjoy the plugin as much as I loved making it. ❤️ This 2.0 version is a free update for all existing users, and it comes as the default version for all the new ones. It brings plenty of new features, including: - New UI - Fixed crashes! - New Light assets reworked for best Lumen performance - New Procedural Gobos - New Capture tab with Scan presets for #GaussianSplatting generation in external software (I am hugely excited about this one!) - New Prop tab with Backdrops, Colour Checker, Reference Spheres, Podiums, Particle Effects... - New Action tab - New Post-Process Materials and LUTs And much, much more! 🙌 Thanks Epic Games and Bill Clifford for creating such a wonderful tool as #UnrealEngine — empowering independent developers to grow alongside you and support one another. And special thanks to the love of my life, Iona Brinch, for her unconditional love and support. I love you with all my heart ❤️ #ue5 #unreal #epic #visualization #light

🧩 What 3D file format do you usually use in your Three.js projects? In most of my projects, I prefer using the GLB format — it’s compact, loads fast, and keeps everything (geometry, materials, and textures) in a single file. In one of my recent projects (a kitchen configurator), our main 3D model was initially around 40 MB. After optimizing the geometry and compressing textures, we reduced it to about 20 MB — but I still think there’s room for improvement, especially for mobile users or slower connections. https://lnkd.in/dmwbvcs4 🔹 What format do you use for your 3D assets? 🔹 What’s the average size of your models? 🔹 Have you tried geometry compression (like Draco) or texture optimization tools? I’d love to hear your experience — especially how you balance visual quality vs. performance in real-world Three.js projects. 🚀 #threejs #THREEJS #3Dweb #frontend #creativedeveloper #glb #gltf #3dmodel #reactthreefiber #r3b #js #3dwebdevelopmet #ar #vr

🎮 Unskippable UI #1: Material Driven UMG Our latest stream takes a deep dive into Unreal Engine UI, exploring spiral radial menu systems, material-driven wedges in UMG, and C++ vs Blueprint tradeoffs. It also covers practical debugging and optimization topics like Widget Reflector, performance benchmarking, widget pooling, and list-view style implementations. The session wraps up with an in-depth look at Unreal’s MVVM system, including conversion functions, custom resolvers, gameplay tag based button handling, and how the new workflow improves efficiency for teams of all sizes. 🎥 Full episode in the first comment. #GameDev #UI #UnrealEngine #UXisFine #UnskippableUI