| Unreal Engine 4 | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Screenshot of Unreal Engine 4.20 | |
| Original author | Tim Sweeney |
| Developer | Epic Games |
| Initial release | 4.0 / March 19, 2014; 11 years ago (2014-03-19) |
| Stable release | 4.27 / August 19, 2021; 4 years ago (2021-08-19) |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Windows,Linux,macOS,Playstation 4,PlayStation 5,Xbox One,Xbox Series X/S,Nintendo Switch,Nintendo Switch 2,IOS,Android |
| Predecessor | Unreal Engine 3 |
| Successor | Unreal Engine 5 |
| License | Source-available commercial software withroyalty model for commercial use[1] |
| Website | unrealengine |
Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is the fourth version ofUnreal Engine developed byEpic Games. UE4 began development in 2003 and was released in March 2014, with the first game using UE4 launching in April 2014. UE4 introduced support forphysically based materials and a newvisual programming language called "Blueprints". It was succeeded byUnreal Engine 5.
In August 2005,Mark Rein, the vice-president of Epic Games, revealed that Unreal Engine 4 had been in development for two years.[2] "People don't realise this but we're already two years into development of Unreal Engine 4. It certainly doesn't have a full team yet, it's just one guy and you can probably guess who that guy is," he toldC&VG.[3] Speaking in an interview in early 2008,Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games, stated that he was basically the only person working on the engine, though he affirmed hisresearch and development department would start to expand later that year, developing the engine in parallel withUnreal Engine 3.[4] "In some way, we resemble a hardware company with our generational development of technology. We are going to have a team developing Unreal Engine 3 for years to come and a team ramping up on Unreal Engine 4. And then, as the next-gen transition begins, we will be moving everybody to that. We actually are doing parallel development for multiple generations concurrently," he said.[4] In 2011 Sweeney said he spends 60% of his day doing research work on Unreal Engine 4.[5]
In February 2012, Rein stated "people are going to be shocked later this year when they see Unreal Engine 4";[6] Epic unveiled UE4 to limited attendees at the 2012Game Developers Conference,[7] and a video of the engine being demonstrated by technical artist Alan Willard was released to the public on June 7, 2012, viaGameTrailers TV.[8] One of the major features planned for UE4 was real-timeglobal illumination usingvoxel cone tracing, eliminating pre-computed lighting.[9] However, this feature, called Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination (SVOGI) and showcased with theElemental demo, was replaced with a similar but less computationally expensive algorithm due to performance concerns.[10]
On March 19, 2014, at theGame Developers Conference (GDC), Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4 through a new licensing model. For a monthly subscription atUS$19, developers were given access to the full version of the engine, including theC++ source code, which could be downloaded viaGitHub. Any released product was charged with a 5% royalty of gross revenues.[11] The first game released using Unreal Engine 4 wasDaylight, developed with early access to the engine[12] and released on April 29, 2014.[13]
To prepare for the release of its free-to-playbattle royale mode inFortnite in September 2017, Epic had to make a number of Unreal Engine modifications that helped it to handle a large number (up to 100) of connections to the same server while still retaining high bandwidth and to improve the rendering of a large open in-game world. Epic said it would incorporate these changes into future updates of the Unreal Engine.[14]
Unreal Engine 4 officially supports the following platforms as of 4.27 (August 2021):[15]Windows,[16]macOS,[16]Linux,[16]iOS,[16]Android,[16]Nintendo Switch,[17]PlayStation 4,[18]Xbox One,[18]PlayStation 5,[19]Xbox Series X/S,[19]Stadia,[20]Magic Leap,[21]HTC Vive,[22]Oculus,[23]PlayStation VR,[24]OSVR,[25]Samsung Gear VR,[26] andHoloLens 2.[27] It formerly supportedGoogle Daydream[28] andHTML5.[29][30]
Epic Games' Brian Karis, in a 2013SIGGRAPH presentation, described improvements made to UE4's shading model.[31][32] According to Karis, Epic "decided to invest some time in improving [UE4's] shading model and embrace a morephysically based material workflow".[31] One of the goals was to "make major workflow and quality improvements in how [artists] authored materials, by layering and blending pre-made materials from a library instead of authoring components separately and redundantly for every use".[33] The material model adopted by Epic was based on a similar model fromDisney's Brent Burley, who outlined its use inWreck-It Ralph at SIGGRAPH 2012.[31] The base parameters of the model consisted of "BaseColor," "Metallic," "Roughness," and "Cavity".[31] Cavity, a component not present in Disney's model, describes "shadowing from geometry smaller than [UE4's] run-time shadowing system can handle," such as the cracks between floor boards or the seams in clothing.[31] Parameters omitted from Disney's model were "Specular," "Subsurface," "Anisotropy," "Clearcoat" and "Sheen," which are instead treated as special cases.[31]
A major focus for Unreal Engine 4 was creating tools that simplified theuser interface. According to Sweeney, "with Unreal Engine 3 it was a big, complicated user interface. With Unreal Engine 4, the effort is to expose at the base level everything in a very simple, easy-to-use, and discoverable way and to build complexity on it so that the user can learn as they go".[34]
With Unreal Engine 4, we really want to be able to build an entire small game on the scale of Angry Birds without any programming whatsoever, just mapping user input into the actions using a visual toolkit. This technology will be really valuable. We're also expanding the visual toolkit for everything: for building materials, for building animations, for managing content when we have a huge amount of game assets. We're just greatly simplifying the interface so that it's basically as easy to use as Unity.
— Sweeney,Game Developer, 2012[34]
In line with UE4's focus on simplicity, it included a new visual scripting system called "Blueprints" (a successor to UE3's "Kismet"[35]), which allows for rapid development of game logic without using code, resulting in less of a divide between technical artists, designers, and programmers.[36][37]
I could say: 'I'm going to convert this pillar into a blueprint [in the Engine] and add some sort of trap to it.' It means I can really go in and start enhancing my world with interaction that just would not have been possible without a technical artist, a designer and a programmer and now any one of those three can do all of it, provided they have the assets handy. The fact that I can just go in and say, 'If you're within X distance of this thing, start to glow and take my distance to it, normalize it zero to one and then just lerp [linearly interpolate] between two different brightness values, so as I reach for something it gets hot'...that would have been something do-able but very difficult for anybody except a gameplay programmer. And he wouldn't have known how to set up the assets, but now any one of the three could do it.
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On September 4, 2014, Epic released Unreal Engine 4 to schools and universities for free, including personal copies for students enrolled in accredited video game development, computer science, art, architecture, simulation, and visualization programs.[38] Epic opened an Unreal EngineMarketplace for acquiring game assets.[39] On February 19, 2015, Epic launchedUnreal Dev Grants, a $5 million development fund aiming to provide grants to creative projects using Unreal Engine 4.[40]
In March 2015, Epic released Unreal Engine 4, along with all future updates, for free for all users.[41][42] In exchange, Epic established a selective royalty schedule, asking for 5% of revenue for products that make more than $3,000 per quarter.[43] Sweeney stated that when they moved to the subscription model in 2014, use of Unreal grew by 10 times and through many smaller developers, and believed that they would draw even more uses through this new pricing scheme.[44]
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In an attempt to attract Unreal Engine developers,Oculus VR announced in October 2016 that it will pay royalty fees for all Unreal-poweredOculus Rift titles published on their store for up to the first $5 million of gross revenue per game.[45]
With the opening of theEpic Games Store in December 2018, Epic declared it would not charge the 5% revenue fee on games that use the Unreal Engine and are released through the Epic Games Stores, absorbing that cost as part of the base 12% cut Epic is taking to cover other costs.[46]
Effective May 13, 2020, and retroactive to January 1, 2020, the royalty exemption amount has been increased to US$1,000,000 in lifetimegross revenue per title.[47]
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