At GDC 2023, Epic Games gave us a glimpse of Unreal Engine 5.2 during their keynote presentation. In addition to other features, this update will introduce a new Substrate material system and a new procedural content generation framework.
The preview release is now available for download (links at the bottom). Note though that according to the Unreal team, preview releases are not fully quality tested, are still under heavy development, and should be considered unstable until the final release.
Let's have a look at what's new:
Procedural Content Generation Framework
The new in-editor and runtime Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) enables you to define rules and parameters to populate large scenes with UE assets of your choice, making the process of large world creation fast and efficient.
Demo of the Procedural Content Generation Framework being used to create a densely populated environment with trees, lush vegetation and towering craggy rock structures.
Substrate
Substrate is a new shading system that gives artists the freedom to compose and layer different shading models to achieve levels of fidelity and quality not possible before in real time.
Demo of a Rivian R1T's exterior coming to life thanks to the new "Substrate" shading system.
VP improvements
Unreal Engine offers multiple improvements to virtual production workflows through new shot creation and scene control tools. For example: shooting with multiple VCams is now possible, giving filmmakers more creative power.
Apple Silicon support
The Universal Binary of Unreal Engine that natively supports both Apple Silicon and Intel CPUs is now available to download from the Epic Games launcher.
Download links
You can download Unreal Engine 5.2 Preview from the Epic Games launcher.
For the Linux version visit the Unreal Engine Linux page.
